What is a Covenant?

This week is a special week at The Road. We are going to covenant together as a body officially. People will step up and make this promise below to each other in Christian brotherhood. A covenant is an OT idea stronger than an agreement or a contract; more like a blood oath, a solemn vow, or a three-way promise which we enter into with each other. We will still worship with all the family of Christ who joins us on Sundays, but this group will have a promised commitment to one another, with a desire to be accountable to it, as they follow Christ themselves. Baptists have always been a covenant people, with many churches designing their own in order to capture the important points for their congregation. Here is ours

Having, as we trust, been brought by divine grace to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to give up ourselves to him, and having been baptized upon our profession of faith, in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, we do now, relying on His gracious aid, solemnly and joyfully covenant with each other.
We will work and pray for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We will walk together in brotherly love, as becomes the members of a Christian Church, exercise an affectionate care and watchfulness over each other and faithfully admonish and entreat one another as occasion may require.

We will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, nor neglect to pray for ourselves and others.

We will endeavor to bring up such as may at any time be under our care, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and by a pure and loving example to seek the salvation of our family and friends.

We will rejoice at each other’s happiness and endeavor with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows. 

We will seek, by Divine aid, to live carefully in the world, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and remembering that, as we have been voluntarily buried by baptism and raised again from the symbolic grave, so there is on us a special obligation now to lead a new and holy life. 

We will work together for the continuance of a faithful evangelical ministry in this church, as we sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines. We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the Gospel through all nations. 

We will, when we move from this place, as soon as possible, unite with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word. 

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

So excited for this Sunday, and for the body of Christ known as The Road!

Why Wouldn't You?

This post will seem a little self-serving, but it needs to be said, regardless of my role in the related subject.

Politics, have you ever seen a politician turn down more endorsements? Bad example, I know it happens sometimes. Have you ever seen a charitable organization turn down more money? Have you ever known of a team that turns away more fans? How about a battalion of soldiers trying to take a town or a hill, ever heard of them turning down reinforcements? Of course not. Why not? These are all achievements that cannot be done alone; or at the very least, could be accomplished better with more help. So, welcome the endorsements, receive the unanticipated funds, give the fans a t-shirt and a big foam #1 hand thingy, and let the reinforcements roll in!

Now, why is it that in the white fields of the harvest of the Master, new churches are looked upon by many (not all) as danger and a threat, rather than reinforcements? If churches are laboring together to take a city and make as many disciples as possible, why not rejoice in more help? New churches in unreached areas are great! New churches in the Pacific Northwest, New England, or Canada are great too! New churches in major metropolitan areas, especially LA, NY, Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta are great too! New churches in rural towns, not so much. NIMBY.

Yes, I am planting a new church in my rural town.Yes, it has a lot of other churches. Yes, it has lots of believers. Yes, it has more unbelievers. Yes, our church is aiming for unbelievers. The Road is going to bring God much glory, by bringing many people to God; that's the means to the end. The end: glorify God, the means: make disciples from people who are not Christians.

Why is competition a focus, instead of kingdom advance?

Leading To Die

Fifty-nine years ago Jim Elliot and his four missionary brethren were speared to death on the Curaray River in Ecuador. Great blog post was posted this morning about it. His courageous view on giving his very blood for the kingdom of Christ through the evangelism of a vicious people group was demonstrated there. He wrote about his willingness, and he courageously received it. Great example for us. And to follow his example was that of his wife courageously going back and reaching the same people that killed her husband. Life springs forth from death. Eternal life springs forth from temporary death.

Last week I saw a great example of a church that exhibited the same willingness to give its life and die for the future life of others. This church was in an area of our town that had transitioned from a middle class, Caucasian neighborhood to a predominately impoverished African American and Hispanic area. Rather that taking a typical "white flight" and moving to the suburbs, they truly desired to reach their neighborhood, and continued to evangelize and attempt to make disciples, but with little success. So after much loss and much prayer, they decided to die. They weren't giving up, quitting, or being forced out; they were choosing to relinquish their resources in view of a higher calling, greater purpose, and the leading of God.

They decided that God was leading them to disperse as their current gathering, and put all their assets and resources toward a new congregation that will be able to reach the neighborhood. With great foresight and kingdom commitment, they decided to pass the baton to another group that could continue baptizing and discipling in that location. They wanted to give a jumpstart to a group that could advance against the gates of hell and the darkness in that community.

So I sat in the service last week, and mourned with them as they thought about the last forty-two years, and how there would be no worship gathering that night. I rejoiced with them for the 135 people that had been baptized there in that amount of time, and the $250,000 given through their small congregation. I saw the tears in their eyes, and I saw the courage as well, as they wanted "thy will be done," and "make disciples of all peoples," to come to pass in their community. I saw a pastor courageously stepping out into unknown territory, and by the will and Spirit of God, leading his flock to die for a greater flock that would come and graze in that pasture. They were looking forward to a church more like the community, that could reach the community.

I was proud of them, and I trust that they will be proud when the new congregation is up and winning people to Christ.

Pray for the People of the Yacus Valley

Wow, thoughts about this week overwhelm my tiny little brain. My desperation for His hand and His presence upon us is intense. I will try to do a couple of posts this week for you to be able to pray according to knowledge. I will publish a daily prayer guide for you right before we go.

But for a couple of days, please spend some time meditating and interceding for the people of Jauja, Julcan, and Molinos.

1) Pray for our Peruvian church planters. These young men and ladies are sacrificing their time to help us plant churches in these areas. We will be doing some pastoral training for them preparing them to shoulder the leadership role with these new churches. Pray for their understanding and passion. Pray for Tim who will be doing most of this training.

2) Pray for the believers that are already there now. These are new believers and this week we will be teaching them about baptism and gathering as the church. Pray that many will be ready to receive baptism on Thurs. Pray for homes to open up for meeting places. Pray for their understanding of "the church" to be biblical and different from the Catholic culture. Pray for their growth and commitment. Pray for Me and Aaron as we disciple them.

3) Pray for the hundreds of non-believers that will see and hear the gospel this week. Pray that God will open many hearts and they will repent, take up their cross, sell out for the treasure, and pursue Him fervently. Pray for the gospel to be clearly and powerfully presented. Pray for the children in the camps that they would believe on Him as well. Pray for our camp workers and for Mike and Robbie as they present the gospel each night.

May we be used to storm the strongholds of hell, and may the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering!

Prayer for our March Peru Trip I

Psalm 67:1-3 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face to shine upon us, that Your way may be known on earth, Your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!”

Sorry, it has been so long since I have written a blog post. I have had several ideas of what to write about, but most of them seem to be unhelpful to the body of Christ, and would probably get me in a lot of trouble. And besides, I read a lot of blogs, and many that have lots of text but not lots of important or helpful info. In fact, if a blog is consistently fluff, I usually delete the feed...I digress.

As I was thinking about our March Peru trip the other morning my mind was racing about all the things that we are going to be doing in a week's time there, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed. And you may feel overwhelmed at all the prayer needs that I am about to give you. In fact, as I think about it, I may break this blog up in two parts.

I'll just put the prayer needs that came to my mind the other morning, if I can remember them. Then in a couple of days, I will post Geoff's compilation of prayer needs. But know this: I AM DESPERATE FOR THE HAND OF GOD TO BE UPON US, AND I FEEL THE WEIGHT OF THIS TRIP. AND WE MUST HAVE SOME PRAYER WARRIORS INTERCEDING FOR US!

1. This is a huge trip regarding the planting of the church there in Julcan and Molinos-two villages that have no existing churches. There will be a lot of evangelizing going on in these two villages with those whose hearts have been prepped on our last two trips. Secondly there will be a lot of discipleship with those believers that are be beginning of our core group there. Hopefully we will baptize these individuals who are ready to fully follow Christ before we leave (this is a huge step for them, because it symbolizes the official break between them and the Catholic Church). And thirdly, we will be training our two young pastors there, as they prepare to take the weekly reigns of these two churches. Neither of these young men have any "pastoral" experience, but have been involved in ministry in their home church in Jauja. This will be a big jump for them, but they have been making trips out to our villages regularly discipling the believers there.
2. In addition to this great task, we will also be doing a baseball camp for the children in these two villages in the mornings as a way of helping them. And we have never done a baseball camp before. We might be teaching some English classes for those that would like to learn. And with all this, it is going to be a very busy week. And we will need much stamina to weather a week like this at the altitude. And it seems like we always go a little two hard the first couple of days.
3. Logistically, this trip is going to be very difficult to say the least for a couple of reasons. First, this is the largest team (16) that we have ever taken by ourselves to Peru. We will be renting three mini-vans for travel and trying to keep up with all of them as we ascend the Andes (15,000 ft up over 8 hrs). And we will also have three van drivers, two translators, and a missionary with us. And secondly, we (I) have scheduled us a really difficult day of travel on Friday and Saturday. We are leaving Tifton on Friday night, driving to Orlando, and staying in a hotel near the airport. Our plane leaves at 6 am (so at the airport at 4 am), then we switch planes in Panama City, Panama (never been to Panama before), pray that our baggage makes the connection, and arrive in Lima at about 1:30 pm. Then we are gonna pick up our vans, translators, etc. and begin an 8 hour trek over to Jauja. So if we leave Lima by 3 pm, at best we arrive in Jauja at 11 pm. So we will be going hard from 3:30 am till about midnight. Then I have to get up and preach on Sunday morning. This might appear foolish to some (and maybe it is), but it is a risk that is necessary to take for this short time and the ministry that we must accomplish there. As some of you know, I have a seizure disorder (just another Satanic distraction) that can be triggered by lack of sleep and/or stress. So I need you to really pray for deliverance for me on the first to days. Our return travel is difficult, but not that difficult. So pray for me as I lead, administrate, and preach the gospel, but pray for my health to stand firm, as it is hard on team to have a leader down.

I am so grateful that many of you have supported our work there in the past few years, but this trip may be the most needful of prayer. Please recruit an army of prayer warriors and saints to intercede for us. Please don't allow this request to sit on a table or be forgotten as so many are.

Somebody please make sure and tell Bob and Pat English and Fred and Harriet Osgood! Thanks

Thanks for your faithfulness, may the Lord bless you accordingly!

Leaving for Peru on Sat

In just a couple more days I head out for Peru again. As I explained in a previous post, we are even more committed now than ever to planting churches in the Yacus Valley, and are going to be going back there more regularly. I am taking our Associational Missionary, Craig Nalls, with me on this trip, hopefully in preparation for future trips. And several of you pastors who read this blog, should prepare to go with us in March or July of 2010.

But I want to fill you in on my agenda while I am there next week so that you can pray.

1. As I alluded to, one of my goals on the next several trips is to train others who may take trips down to Peru. So I want to carve out a place for Peru in Craig's heart. That will be my goal for all of you leaders who go with me over the next few trips.
2. The first of my main two goals for going back so soon is to check on our prospects. Miguel has been meeting with a group in Julcan and a group in Molinos. I need to discern whether or not these are true believers, or just seekers. We need to get the church meeting together regularly. I am going to spend some time with them strengthening them in the faith, and casting the vision for a church in Julcan, and Molinos, and Masma, that will help foster the church planting movement that we want to see there.
3. Secondly, I want to spend a lot of time with Miguel and Sergio, our disciple-makers. I want to inflame their passion for Christ and the advancement of His Kingdom there. I want to cast the vision of their crucial role in the planting of churches, and the reaching of the Yacus and Yanamarca Valleys. I want to train them in disciple-making, and leadership development, and church planting strategy; as well as the reality of what constitutes a church, and what it looks like there.
4. Also, I want to meet with the mayors of the towns and work with them about our upcoming trips in March and July. I want to try to discern the needs that we can meet, and figure out all the logistics for coming there again. We want to maintain a good relationship with them.
5. Finally, we are going to get to meet our partner pastor Scott Dollar of A Place Called Hope Church in Lethbridge, Alberta, CAN. He is going to be there this week as well. I have only met him on the phone and through email and Facebook. And although the parameters of our partnership have changed somewhat in the last year or so, together we are still committed to ensuring that churches get planted in the Yacus and Yanamarca Valleys, because our home base while in country is the same town of Jauja. He will be working mostly in Acolla and the area to the north of Jauja, and we will be laboring in Julcan and the area east of Jauja. But we will be helping each other where we can while in country on future mission trips.

So pray:

• for the hand of God upon us and our work, we are desperate for Him
• for our eyes to be open, and hearts to be sensitive to what God is doing there
• for His church to be already there, or first established
• for us to stand firm in His strength against the attacks of the enemy
  
• for safe travel and good health, we leave Sat 14th, return on Fri 20th
  
• for our families at home
  
• for favor in the eyes of the mayors
• for success in vision-casting and training, and God to fire up our disciplers
• for growth in Christ for our groups of believers
• for proper planning for the future
• for lost to be reached for Christ
• and most importantly for God to be glorified in all things

Thanks for your faithfulness to read and pray! Through your help in the trenches of prayer, the muscles of omnipotence will move, and Christ will establish His church as an outpost in the vast darkness that blinds so many in the Peruvian Andes!

Peru Trip Aug 2009 I

Before I could start this post, I had to sit down and think about what to say when, because the trip was awesome! And there is no way that I could put it all down in one post, especially with the pictures. I will try to do one entire post with just lots of pictures so that you can experience the beauty of Peru (although I know that the pictures will not do it justice.)


The trip began in a very strange and confusing way. We had two of our team members drop out at the last minute (one for illness, and one for family). Little did we know that this was only the first manifestation of the spiritual attacks that we would endure on this trip (more to come later). But on our first night in Jauja, we met with Pastor Moises and Miguel (two local leaders in the regional capital, the nearest city to our valleys). And we found out two things: 1) schools were on an extra week of vacation because of swine flu (and our trip was geared toward speaking in several schools and giving out school supplies), 2) that there were at least three other mission groups (including our partner church from Canada) working in Acolla. This just messed up most of our plans! But good thing that we are not working off of our plans, but His! And the fields were definitely white unto harvest!

We also had a conversation with John Wilson (the IMB Journeyman near our area) that really changed our thoughts about our ministry strategy there.

So we asked Pastor Moises where He felt like there were other areas in our area that needed work. And since we already felt like we needed to visit the other district capitals in our valley, that is what we decided to do. So on Sunday afternoon we began our trek to Tunanmarca, Yanamarca, and Pomacancha. AND GOD WAS SILENT. That was a scary time. The scenery was beautiful, and the people were wonderful, but God didn't speak. And we were determined to work where God was working and leading, and not just where we thought it good to work.

Then came Monday. Our deliverance was coming. We went to the towns of Molinos, Julcan, and Masma. This was the area that Pastor Moises had suggested slightly to the east of Jauja with no evangelical churches. We missed the first mayor, but when we got to Julcan, the doors opened wide, and God spoke. God is working there in the mayor's heart. He had been reading the bible for two years wanting to understand it (kinda reminds you of the Ethiopian Enuch, huh?). We asked if we could come to the town and show a gospel movie for everyone. He welcomed us, and told us that he would personally send letters to all the other mayors in his district inviting them and their towns! Then he asked if we could do something for the children! And we told him that we came prepared with a values talk and schools supplies. He was thrilled, and called in the vice mayor to plan the whole thing. John said that he had never seen a mayor do that. And to top it all off, Don found a Peruvian dime (that means God spoke to Don, he was our prayer walker), and Geoff, Kayla, and Margaret had great experiences witnessing in the plaza.

To make a long story shorter, we were able to schedule values talks along with the Hope film showing in all three towns. And all three mayors came (fill you in on the details in a later post).

In my devotion time the night before, I read Joshua 6:1-2, where God told Joshua, after observing the tightness of Jericho, "See, I have given you the city..." And we felt like, even though God had remained silent on Sunday afternoon, there was something that we were not seeing, and would see in the morning. And it certainly came to pass. We feel like God is leading us to work at planting a church in Julcan first. And so, our thoughts and prayers are directed that way as we consider where we go from here.

More to come...

Recent Posts About Church Planting

In recent days, t here have been three really good posts on church planting in the blogosphere. And I just wanted to share them with you. You can find one from Kevin Colon (a CP friend of mine in CO) here. Al Mohler (the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) here. And one from JD Greear (the pastor at The Summit Church in Durham, NC) here. All of these just simply confirm what is biblically evident--that we should be planting churches! All of us, all the time. Healthy churches (more on this later) should seek to multiply themselves! And you know I am a church planter at heart. And those of you who read this blog regularly have seen my post about what God is doing to plant a church here in Tifton. We had a missions committee meeting last night, and everyone is really excited. And I am confident that our church will be able to recognize the hand of God at work and desire to get involved with Him. Keep us in prayer as we seek to build the kingdom here in Tifton. Pray specifically for New River's pursuit of this opportunity; for our association's full support; for other church partners to financially support it; for Benji and Brittany (our planter and his wife); and for the selection of our core group! May God be glorified as He builds His church!

Plans Coming Together!

I love it when you can see the hand of God bringing many things into line to accomplish a vision that He has given you. I love it when a plan comes together. And that is what recent days have brought at New River Baptist Church and Tifton. I feel confident that God impressed upon my heart to begin looking to lead New River to start a new congregation in Tifton. Most of our 29 Baptist Churches here look about the same, and we are losing generation after generation of younger adults, students, and children because of our unwillingness to separate tradition from gospel, and contextualize our presentation of an eternal gospel. So after sharing that vision numerous times, and nearly giving up (O me of little faith), God has been working toward accomplishing His vision for us and a new plant here in Tifton. I want to take a minute and give God glory and share what things are coming together:

1. A church planter that we had spoken with about six months ago has reestablished communication with us. And he has come back with a passion and a sense of clarity about God's calling upon his life to begin a new church in Tifton. He is so excited and convinced that he is making preparations necessary to move his family here and begin this plant in Jan 2010. He will have much support from his home church, GBC, NAMB, and other local churches. God has truly provided a much needed piece of the puzzle
2. Several people at New River have really softened up to the idea of beginning a new congregation in Tifton to the end that we have established a Church Planting Fund here at New River. The initial donation was $4000. And people keep designating money to it each week. And many attitudes that once were hesitant are now becoming open, and even excited about church planting.
3. God is sending visitors to us who are interested in church planting. People who have experience in church plants previously; people who are adequately qualified for leadership; people who are very much like our target generations that we are losing in Tifton; people that are willing to sacrifice for God's cause; and people who are influential in their respective circles.
4. And just this week, we have had a key roadblock to funding from New River for a church plant removed! This one is a minor miracle coming at just the right time. One of our committees which was involved in paving the way for some funding made a decision to pursue the vision, sacrifice for the glory of Christ and for the thousands of Tifton who don't know Christ and won't come to our churches as is. It is not a done deal yet, but a major milestone was achieved.

Pray that God will continue to line everything up for this plant at our church and through other churches that are interested in helping. If you know of any church or individual that would like to have more information or possibly support this plant, please let me know, and I will get them the info that they need to begin seeking God's face on the issue.

May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering and call out His church in Tifton!