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Church Planter is now available. Check out this video that The Resurgence says “should be seen by every man.”

“Church Planter” by Darrin Patrick from Crossway on Vimeo.

“Worship is unavoidable,” explains Darrin Patrick. “Whenever we stop worshiping God, we worship some kind of substitute instead of God.”

In his chapter “Idol-Shattering” in Church Planter, Patrick helps explain and expose idolatry.

The first idolatry: When Adam and Eve willfully placed their trust, significance, identity, security, and future in something other than God. When Paul describes the root of human rebellion, he talks about sin as not just a breaking of the law but rather as an exchange of worship: “[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.”

Idolatry is: What we put in the place of God that captures our imagination and heart, and then we become servants of our object of worship. Our object of worship will always be the primary influencer of our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and of course, our lives.

What idols do: They seduce us and draw us into complete intoxication, enslavement, and dependence. They steal the love that should be directed toward God alone. In idolatry we willfully exchange what our hearts should love for a cheap prostitute.

Exposing idols: Patrick proposes some questions that help expose our idols by demonstrating where our ultimate source of trust is:

• What do I worry about most?
• What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?
• What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?
• What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?
• What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?
• What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proud- est? For what do I want to be known?
• What do I lead with in conversations? Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?
• What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?
• What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?
• What is my hope for the future?

The answers to these questions help identify what a person is truly trusting in, no matter whom they claim to worship. The answers to these questions describe what a person is serving as their functional lord.

Excerpt modified from chapter 12 of Church Planter.

There’s more to church planting than methodology and strategy. Darrin Patrick addresses the most vital part of a church plant—the church planter.

His new book, Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission, is a call for men to be biblically qualified in character, doctrinally sound, and daring in ministry in order to impact cities for the glory of God through the local church.

What people are saying…

• Tim Keller: “Church planters should all read this.”
• Matt Chandler: “Whether you are considering planting a church or have been a pastor for decades I couldn’t more highly recommend this book to you.”
• Dave Ferguson: “When it comes to church planting Darrin is a guy that absolutely ‘gets it’ because he has done it! And you will ‘get it’ too if you read this book!”

Preview Mark Driscoll’s Foreword and Chapter 13, “The Heart of Mission: Compassion”.

Christopher Catherwood is live at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC discussing “The Evangelicals Beyond the Border: Who They Are, What They Believe, and Their Global Impact,” based on his new release The Evangelicals.  Tune in here August 31, 2010 from 7-8:30pm EST.

“I hadn’t been a pastor very long when I realized people were carrying around a lot of luggage,” explains Chris Brauns. “If I was going to shepherd them, I would have to help them through the stuff that they were carrying around.”

Unpacking Forgiveness: Chris Brauns from Peacemaker Ministries on Vimeo.

Learn more about Unpacking Forgiveness here or learn about Chris Brauns and his ministry here.

Bible teachers often distinguish between two kinds of repentance. The first kind is what they call attrition. It isn’t heartfelt sorrow for wrongdoing, but a selfishly motivated response to potential punishment. It avoids further discipline. It’s external, self-preserving, and even self-centered.

The second kind of repentance Bible teachers talk about is contrition. Contrition is true repentance. It entails heartfelt sorrow for offending God and others. It involves not just turning away from disobedience, but also turning toward obedience. It’s an external change motivated by an internal change. It’s self-sacrificial. It’s God-centered.

False repentance, or no repentance, leads to bitterness, anger, and unwillingness to acknowledge wrongdoing. Until we can recognize our own wrongdoing, we’ll continue to be mastered by this self-centered bondage. Our relationships will continue to be strained and frayed. Freedom comes only with true repentance.

When true repentance is offered, God promises to forgive and restore. True repentance is the means by which God brings about real restoration, a restoration that brings the deepest experience of peace.

Modified from Surprised by Grace by Tullian Tchividjian. Learn more.

If you’ve ever been confused about the Trinity, Fred Sanders just came out with a helpful book called The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. In chapter 4, “The Shape of the Gospel“, Sanders distinguishes the separate but complimentary roles of the Son and the Spirit in salvation:

“We would be in danger of missing the Spirit’s distinctive work by confusing his work with Christ’s,” Sanders explains. “The best way to keep them unified is to see their difference.”

“A classic way of looking at the two-handedness of God’s work in salvation is the relationship between how the Trinity accomplishes redemption and how the Trinity applies that redemption to us. This idea of redemption accomplished and applied is a handy way of considering salvation in its objective and subjective aspects, even when the two phases of God’s saving work are not correlated with the Son and the Spirit. Redemption would not reach its goal without being applied, but there would be nothing to apply if it were not already accomplished. But recognizing the Son and the Spirit, respectively, as the leading figures in the two phases enriches the idea even more. Christ the Son accomplishes redemption in his own (Spirit-created and Spirit-filled) work. The Holy Spirit applies that finished redemption to us in his own (Son-directed and Son-forming) work. The two works are held together by an inherent unity. The Son and the Spirit are both at work in both phases; nevertheless, the Son takes the lead in accomplishment, and the Spirit takes the lead in application.”

Learn more about The Deep Things of God.

Join Desiring God and Tullian Tchividjian (pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and author of Surprised by Grace) in a live broadcast this Wednesday, August 25th from 7-9pm CT.

Submit questions to Tullian at any time using the Twitter hashtag #dglive. Be sure to check out Tillian’s blog, On Earth as it is in Heaven or follow him on Twitter at @PastorTullian.

The Trinity is undoubtedly a mysterious and deep doctrine. There’s an old quote that goes something like: try to understand it and you’ll loose your mind; try to deny it and you’ll lose your soul.

In his new book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, author Fred Sanders helps readers not only grasp the doctrine of the Trinity, but what it means to be immersed in what he calls Trinitarian reality.

“Nothing we do as evangelicals makes sense if it is divorced from a strong experiential and doctrinal grasp of the coordinated work of Jesus and the Spirit, worked out against the horizon of the Father’s love,” explains Sanders. “Personal evangelism, conversational prayer, devotional Bible study, authoritative preaching, world missions, and assurance of salvation all presuppose that life in the gospel is life in communion with the Trinity.”

Check out Fred Sanders’ two recent blog interviews with Michael DeBusk and Andrew Faris or learn more about The Deep Things of God.

Stereotype: An evangelical is a white, middle-class male Republican from the southern part of the United States.

The Real Picture: Now, for sure, many evangelicals would indeed fit into this description, and they are the demographic about which the mainstream news media writes the most. But, in truth, this description presents a highly misleading picture, and also a dangerous one, as it confuses evangelicalism as a whole, which is a worldwide, global movement, with just a tiny segment of it, and gives it a political coloring that is utterly atypical of evangelicals in most countries today. For it is now widely said that the average evangelical is an economically poor black Nigerian woman with numerous family members suffering from HIV/AIDS.

So wrong gender, wrong skin color, wrong country, wrong social class—in fact wrong everything when it comes to the stereotype of evangelicals we commonly see on television or in the newspapers.

Join Crossway and author Christopher Catherwood at Capitol Hill Baptist in DC for The Evangelicals Beyond the Border: Who They Are, What They Believe, and Their Global Impact (based on his new book The Evangelicals).

• What: A Seminar, Q&A, and Book Signing
• When: Tuesday, August 31 2010, 7-8:30pm EST
• Where: Capitol Hill Baptist Church
  525 A Street NE
  Washington, DC 20002
• Cost: Free and open to the public
• Webinar available right here at crossway.org/blog

Be sure RSVP if you plan to attend the event at Capitol Hill Baptist. Complimentary copies of the book available to all attendees in addition to a free ESV Study Bible for the first 50 to RSVP by August 25th to acheatham@crossway.org.