I’ve been listening to the audio of sessions from Acts 29 Network’s 2009 Bootcamp: Ambition. While not everyone will find these talks of interest, I think they are challenging and stimulating for those of us in ministry and church leadership.

Ministry for the Long Haul & Ambition (Matt Chandler)

Decoding Your City & Ambition (Kevin Cawley)

Discipleship & Ambition (Bob Thune)

Preaching as Expository Exorcism (Russell Moore)

Leadership & Ambition (Darrin Patrick)

The Church & Ambition (Steve Timmis)

Church Planting & Ambition (Ed Stetzer)

The Gospel & Ambition (Dave Harvey)

My thanks to the folks at Sojourn Community Church, who have made all the above sessions available to be listened to online and/or downloaded. Click: Ambition Conference.

Acts 29 is a missional church planting network of Reformed Evangelicals.  Each year they hold Boot Camps to train and re-energize like minded church planters and church leaders.  Many of these, and other, talks are available on the Resource section of thier web page.

Tonight I talked about the idols we have in our lives. Many of us take Jesus off the throne of our lives and place something else in His place. We make something else ultimate, hoping that person or thing will fulfill all our needs and dreams.

This can be a spouse, money, kids, a job, a hobby, sports team. The thing about idols is that they are often not sinful, they are good things. But they are things that we make our god.

How do you discern your idol? Darrin Patrick has a great list that I shared tonight about discerning our idols:

• What do you worry about the most?
• What if I failed or lost would it make me not want to live?
• What do I do to cope or feel better?
• What do I think most easily about?
• What preoccupies me?
• What do I daydream about?
• What makes me feel the most self worth?
• What do I want to be known for?
• What prayer unanswered would seriously make me think about turning away from God?
• What is my hope for the future?
• What are the clear paths of disobedience in my life?

If you were thinking to yourself, “I wouldn’t mind a sledgehammer to the head” then I can recommend Darrin Patrick’s unpacking of 1 John 2:2-14 here.

Don’t complain to me if you don’t like the pain…

Last year I had the opportunity to lead sessions at the Exponential Conference. I am so honored that I have been invited to help out again in 2010.

This amazing conference is the most attended church planting conference in the world.

Check out the information below then… JOIN US THERE!

• The Exponential Conference speakers are some of the finest communicators in the country! Exponential has assembled a lineup for 2010 that is as good as any conference has ever had. Opening with Louie Giglio, closing with Francis Chan, including well-known and proven motivators like Ken Blanchard, Mark Batterson, Darrin Patrick, Matt Chandler, Dave Gibbons, Brenda Salter-McNeil, Ed Stetzer, Efrem Smith, Dino Rizzo, Shane Claiborne, Dave Ferguson, Scott Thomas, Billy Hornsby, Greg Surratt, Alan Hirsch, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, Larry Osborne, Chris Hodge and MANY MORE! Hello….
• There’s something about church planters gathering. The energy that comes from thousands of leaders who eat, sleep, and breath sharing the Gospel with people and creating new communities of faith, new ministries, new outreach strategies, movements, campuses, networks, on and on. This group of people are the most influential agents of change in our country. To be part of this crowd is to be part of the Kingdom of God in a powerful way.
• The best ideas, the strongest practices, and the most forward-thinking dreams are shared at Exponential. This is not a “our way is the only way” conference. Quite often the diverse ideas and varied cultures that make up Exponential might seem to be even contradictory! But the open handed approach that has made Exponential the strong voice for church multiplication it is make it a “must attend” event.

At the Mercy Quarterly held at the Luminary, hosted by Mission:STL and Metro Baptist Church Planting, Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey shared some thoughts on ministry leadership out of Acts 6:1-7

Here’s the text:

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. 2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

7 And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Here’s a brief sketch of Darrin’s talk:

From this text, he sought to answer two questions:

1. How did v.7 stop happening?

2. How do we get back to that?

Response to 1: historically speaking, Darrin touched upon several hindrances to what was happening in v.7 there:

A. Theological heresy

B. Control via politics

C. Churched culture

D. Neglect of the corporate dimension of salvation

E. Consumerism

Response to 2: How do we contend with these hindrances?

-Church structure is always a reaction to need. Needing to reverse submission–should always be the Spirit then the structure.

-(from v.2) Calling church to mission. The twelve gathered the “full number of disciples” to organize for effective ministry. Maintain a high view of the priesthood of the believer–both clergy & lay on mission–not simply the clergy.

-(from v.3) Empower diaconal ministry. Check your pride and desire for power and control. Your need to be needed (center of everything mentality) will prevent you from empowering others. Notice the “qualifications” of the deacons — “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.”

-(from v.4) Prioritizing the pulpit ministry & PRAYER…the ministry of the Word. Casting vision through the text expounded upon for the whole congregation. “If it is a mist in the pulpit, it’s a fog in the pew.” Need clarity in our preaching

Today is The NINES Conference, a free online conference that is taking place all day today!

Just go here to watch over 70 presenters speaking sharing for 9 minutes each (sorry, didn’t have enough room for all 70 below).

Here’s the approximate schedule for the day. All times are Central. (Don’t worry, all of the talks will be available for free download after the conference, so you don’t have to miss any!)

9AM   — Troy Gramling, Mark Beeson, Anne Jackson, Dave Ferguson, Scott Hodge

10AM — Perry Noble, Stacy Spencer

11AM — Dino Rizzo, Nancy Beach, Steven Furtick, Reggie McNeal

12PM — Craig Groeschel, Leonard Sweet, Greg Surratt, Jon Tyson

1PM   — Margaret Feinberg, Larry Osborne, Matt Carter, Pete Wilson

2PM   — Neil Cole, Reggie Joiner, JD Greear

3PM   — Mark Batterson, Dan Kimball, Mark DeYmaz

4PM   — Jud Wilhite, Brian McLaren, Bob Roberts, Rick McKinley, John Ortberg

5PM   — Alan Hirsch, John Bishop, Toby Slough, Ed Stetzer

6PM   — Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, Brad Powell

7PM   — Darrin Whitehead, Brian Bloye

8PM   — Eric Bryant, Nancy Ortberg, Rick Warren

-jordan

Over at ReThinkMission.org, Jonathan McIntosh has been interviewing Darrin Patrick in a 3-part series on missional preaching. In part 3 posted yesterday, Darrin answers the question of how to preach to men. I found this insightful and dead-on for the most part.

RM: Talk to me about preaching to men. How do you do it?
DP: I think the direct piece is huge. If you look at what speaks to men, if you look at what guys are in to – depending on their political persuasion, if they’re politic guys, they’re watching Keith Olbermann on the left, they’re watching Bill O’Reilly on the right, they’re listening to Rush Limbaugh on the right, they’re listening to Bill Maher. On the sports side, they’re watching Jim Rome; the polls show that’s what they like. What is the common thread with all those guys? Direct, kind of sarcastic, not afraid to offend, politically incorrect. I think there has to be an element of that in your preaching. You can say, “You’re just trying to go with the cultural current.” Well, those things are biblical. The prophets are sarcastic, Jesus was sarcastic, Paul was sarcastic; obviously they were all direct. Obviously they were all politically incorrect; they died martyrs’ deaths.

A self-deprecating use of humor is helpful, to get guys not to take themselves so seriously. To counter some of the macho pride issues, self-deprecating humor seems to help that. If they can laugh at me, they can laugh at themselves. If they can see that I’m not taking myself that seriously but I’m God’s word seriously, maybe they’ll do the same.

You can read the whole interview, starting with part 1, over at rethinkmission.org.

Russell Powell reports here on last weeks MT&D Intensive at “the Cathedral”.

Seems the topic of conversation was “silver bullets” or more to the point, the fact that they don’t exist for Christian Ministry.

Yep, will agree with that. I’ve certainly seen my fair share of techniques and such over the years, particularly in the vein of seeker-sensitive stuff a-la Willow Creek and Saddleback.

The current “it’s-not a-silver-bullet” target was the (so-called) Reformed Charismatics (i.e. Driscoll, Piper, Mahaney, Patrick et al). This didn’t suprise me. What I found odd was that the bulk of commentary was focused on cessationist vs continuist viewpoints.

Have our leaders somehow missed the point with this recent “Reformed Charismatic” wave? I have listed to a lot of sermons and read a number of books from this camp and I can say that very, very little pertains to issues around miraculous gifts. Almost none in fact unless the topic is mentioned in Scripture and said Pastor is preaching from that passage. These guys just don’t define themselves around this issue. They are all about preaching the word and contextualising the gospel.

The Continuist vs Cessationist issue is a Red Herring…time to move on.

• Good night
• Really different feel tonight
• We started tonight a little differently than normal, started off a little slower and more subdued
• Definitely fit the feel of the night and topic, but felt weird as I started preaching
• Right now, I’m listening to the Kings of Convenience, definitely a good end to the night
• I think the topic tonight:  balance, margin, discouragement, stress and burnout are such huge things that we need wrap our hands around them
• It really is a faith issue
• Whenever we push through, live stressed, worry, we are telling God, “You aren’t big enough to handle this”
• Here is a great quote I shared tonight from Dan Allender & Tremper Longman
• If you missed tonight, you can listen to it here
• Got to have dinner with a newer family at our church, always love meeting the people God is sending to Revolution
• We announced an upcoming series I Want a New Marriage
• Check out the site and spread the word to as many people as possible!
• We mentioned our partnership class tonight, go here for more information and to sign up
• Jennifer and the Planet Rev. team did an awesome job with getting everything done for their fall kick off tonight
• If tonight struck a chord with you or if you want more resources on what we talked about tonight, check out Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee, The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero
• All are fantastic books that have helped Katie and I understand margin and balance, understand how our emtions fit into our relationship with God and to find rest
• Here is a great talk by Darrin Patrick called “The Life & Death of the Missional Leader.” Great look at how to handle depression, stress and burnout as a leader.
• Here are some scary stats concerning pastors and burnout
• We have our small group tomorrow night, we’re looking at what the Bible has to say about divorce, should be an interesting discussion
• The book we are discussing has been a great study to Katie and I personally, really eye opening
• Our group was able to serve our city last week, always a great thing to do in the context of community
• Ava wrote her name this week, very cool milestone for her
• Gavin turned 2 this past week
• I posted some recent pics of the kids here
• Crazy to think our kids are that old
• Loved writing Gavin’s letter, one of my favorite things to do as a dad
• This past Thursday was one of my favorite days of the year, the Steelers first game (doesn’t matter if it is the preseason, football is football)
• This is an awesome thought, what if this was true for Revolution?
• Thursday I start my lead pastor coaching network, really exciting about this personally, as well as what it will do for Revolution
• I think God is going to do some huge things through it!
• You don’t want to miss next, we’ll be ending our series with a bang:  How would you live if you found out today was your last day?

• Love this series
• Great night tonight
• Got to preach on why we exist as a church
• I could talk about that every week
• If you missed tonight, you can listen to it here
• Tonight was the longest message I’ve ever preached at Revolution
• Just shy of an hour
• Hopefully God will use us to the kind of church that does anything to reach our city
• Let’s fill the chairs!
• Shawn Pack and his band from 22nd St. Baptist Church were with us tonight to lead worship
• They did a great job
• Love the partnerships we are building with other churches
• You do not want to miss next week
• We’re talking about how to handle depression and anxiety
• Gavin turns 2 on Monday, hard to believe he is 2 already
• Our website I Want a New Marriage went live this week
• Check it out
• In case you missed my notes from the Leadership Summit this past week, you can find them all here
• My head is still spinning
• If you want to go next year, let me know, we want to take as many volunteers from Revolution as possible
• Finished a great book this past week, Leadership Gold, definitely worth a read if you are a leader
• Starting to do my homework for the Nelson Searcy Lead Pastor coaching network I’m in that starts next week, really excited about what this will do for me personally and for Revolution Church
• Tomorrow, we have our small group mission project
• We’re cleaning up the trash and weeds on Pantano Rd. near where we meet
• If you want to join us, come at 8:30 am tomorrow
• Reading a phenomenal book right now Focus: The Top 10 Things People Want and Need from You and Your Church
• Really eye opening
• Got to go on a date night this week without any of our kids, awesome
• The longer we are married, the more important a weekly date night becomes
• Came across a great talk by Darrin Patrick this called “The Kind of Leader God Uses”
• Ava spelled her name this week, crazy that she is old enough to do that
• I’m tired
• So it’s bed

Darrin Patrick of TheResurgence interviews Ed Stetzer on what he sees as the positive and negative trends occurring currently in Evangelicalism. Stetzer has some great insights as usual. Check it out here.

If you have Driscoll overload, then I can recommend Darrin Patrick of the Journey in St Louis…he is excellent.

In a recent sermon on 1 Peter, Patrick describes the “Missional Tension”, walking the line between cultural capitulation on one hand and cultural avoidance on the other. He says that Christians should constantly be living with a degree of tension and discomfort if they are doing this well.

Well worth a listen…

Darrin Patrick taught that team is over-rated if you don’t have the proper motivation, if your gifts are not confirmed, if you are not qualified as an elder.  Team is Under0-rated.  You need to assess your team, test your team and keep your team.  This message was great for church planters who are building there launch team.  Many pearls of wisdom.

Here are my notes.

Sunday is our Super Bowl as Christians – as clear of an opportunity for us to be on mission in community because of the gospel as we have all year. This is a season in why our life of worship is injected with new life as we come close to the cross and experience the reality of resurrection.

A few things to help you the rest of the week as we move towards Good Friday and Easter:

1. Be in the Scriptures. I’m reading all four gospels this week – the extended time has already been good for my soul. Read until your heart melts at the mercy and justice of God.
2. Stay in town. This is not the weekend for family reunions. Be on mission and invite someone or a group of someones into the life of our community (more on that in a minute). You can visit your parents some other time – you’ve got work to do!
3. Read this and watch that and pray for the Spirit to open your eyes to the opportunities already around you. The video by Darrin Patrick is something you absolutely must watch.
4. Show up early and plan on staying late for our Good Friday gathering – 7:00 at Faith Presbyterian Church. We need to come near the cross and take in the horrific reality that we killed Jesus. You will need time to prepare before and time to process afterwards. If your parents insist on you coming home for Easter (and that’s their call), then be part of this before you head home.
5. Pray for people around you who don’t know Jesus and invite them to come with you to our Easter gathering. We’re going to make a fuss about Jesus and call people to new life in Christ. It’s going to be unbelievable! 10am at WCA. Be there!

The first 1:30 ruined me…

Here is the first audio session from the recent Austin Stone Missional Community Conference. Darrin Patrick gave a solid message on cultivating a gospel-centered community.

Just finished Eddie Gibbs book LeadershipNext. I read it for my next D.Min. class as well as an upcoming series I’m doing on the book of Nehemiah.

Overall it was a good book. A little slow at times and it definitely read as a doctorate level look at leadership too often in my opinion. While this is Gibbs area of expertise, so this makes sense, it made it hard to read at moments. 

While it was slow, there were definitely some worthwhile things to take away. One of the things I thought was right on was when he compared churches to fleas and elephants. That new ideas are coming from fleas, fleas can reproduce faster, elephants are slower. But that you need both of them to sustain a movement because fleas and elephants need each other. This image for me was incredibly helpful.

One of the other things I appreciated about the book was chapter 9 “Facing the cost of leadership.” The longer I am in leadership, the more I realize the price that leaders and their families pay. I no longer look at church planting and leading through rose colored glasses. As Darrin Patrick says, “Planting a church will kill you.” Leadership and pastoring is not for everyone, it is painful, it does hurt, the highs are incredibly high and the lows are incredibly low. The reality is that to be a leader that leads a church that reaches this culture, you will need to undergo a lot of change, and change is painful and not fun, or everyone would do it.

Here are a couple of other things that stood out:

• We can more readily identify the characteristics of leadership by their absence.
• “A Christian leader is a person with a God-given capacity and the God-given responsibility to influence a specific group of God’s people toward God’s purpose for the group.” (J. Robert Clinton)
• Leadership emerges as power is shared rather than as authority is exerted.
• People want direction, trust and hope from leaders.
• In the midst of chaos, leaders provide vision that rises beyond the present circumstances that threaten to overwhelm and capsize the movement. Such vision provides a sense of purpose, resilience and exuberance. In order for the church to remain on even keel, keep its bows to the waves and stay on course, it will have to “keep the main thing the main thing.”
• What does it take to lead an organization where people forget their job and do what needs doing?
• The problem with empowerment is that it suggests that this is something leaders magically give or do for others. But people already have tremendous power. It is not a matter of giving it to them, but of freeing them to use the power and skills they already have. It is a matter of expanding their opportunities to use themselves in service of a common and meaningful purpose.

Not a bad book, but if you have read other leadership books, I would skip the first 4 chapters. The last half of the book is great, the first part felt like somewhat of a retread.

The Austin Stone and Acts 29 are hosting a Missional Community Leadership Conference on Feb 6-7 at Great Hills Baptist. This is the kind of conference that is long overdue and will deliver on Gospel, Community, and Mission for the practitioner.

Main Speakers:
Matt Carter: Leading your Community to spiritual health
Darrin Patrick: Leading your Community to gospel repentance
Alan Hirsch: Leading your Community to missional discipleship

Breakouts:

There are too many to list, but include topics like Missional Leadership, City-wide Networking, Discipleship, Communication & Conflict.

More Info here. Register there.

Starting tomorrow, the Acts 29 Network will be sponsoring a church planter’s boot camp at The Village Church.  Between boot camps where I was assessed and now as an assessor, I’ve attended a total of six of these events.  While that’s a lot of boot camps, I find myself always learning something new each time.

In addition, I can’t help but be refreshed and encouraged by the many young men answering the call to plant a church.  Some will be assessed and “green-lit” while others will be told to wait.  No matter which category a man finds himself in, I’m always amazed by the willingness of young men to risk secure jobs and safety to explore a potential call on their life.  I’m also amazed at how many of these men actually trust other men to speak truth and authority into their life regarding their call.

If you’re in the DFW area, it’s too late to pre-register…but take a chance to register at the door.  It’s going to be a great time and worth your dollars.  Main speakers are Scott Thomas, Matt Chandler, Darrin Patrick, JR Vassar, Mark Driscoll, Jonathan Dodson and Matt Carter.  On a CityView Church note, I’m super-excited that our Worship Pastor–Adam Crawford–will be leading the morning worship each day.  In addition to doing assessments, I’ll be co-leading a breakout with Jonathan Dodson.  For those already attending, see you there!

Day 2 of the Acts 29 Bootcamp / Lead Conference far exceeded any expectations that I had.  This was by far one of the most helpful and productive days I’ve experienced of late.  Darrin Patrick started things off and sort of set the tone for the day with a message on “Gospel Centered Repentance.”  In it he talked about having a Godly sense of reluctance and living a life of repentance.  One of the phrases he used that was seared into my mind was, “Dependence (on God) is the soil in which Godly character grows and nurtures.”  The tone he set for the day was one of authenticity and off-the-cuffedness: open-about-our-brokenness, open-about-our-realness, open-about-our-sinfulness, and open-about-our-need-for-Jesus.  This isn’t your normal conference “tone.”  You’ll want to check out this message when the audio (video?) becomes available.

Eric Mason preached next on the topic of “Hybrid Leaders” and the importance of doing cross-cultural leadership in a multi-cultural context.  Next up was Dr. Chapell who gave an amazing talk on “Christ-Centered Preaching.”  I can now see why I need to read his book and why everyone I have ever met has told me that it is the book to read on preaching.  Dr. Chapell’s message was extremely helpful – especially on the topic of grace – and I’d highly recommend checking it out.

Following Dr. Chapell’s message was a Q/A session with Eric Mason, Darrin Patrick, and Dr. Chapell.  In this session they took up questions regarding style of preaching, people who have influenced their specific preaching, the influence of John Piper and Tim Keller in preaching, humor in preaching, preaching to men, preparation for preaching, team/wife’s involvement in preaching, and their own unique approach and prep for preaching (manuscript vs. outline, etc).

Over lunch, I learned about a company called Clover which specializes in helping church planters get a website up and running.  They demo’d their stuff and it was impressive: slick and easy to use.  The price was also impressive ($1000 plus $20/mo for unlimited hosting).

The last session of the day was a bootcamp session led by Daniel Montgomery from Sojourn Church in Louisville.  This was Part II of the “Gospel DNA” series and focused on leading the mission as a (normal, regular) Christian, being a faithful pastor, and leading as a theologian.  This was probably one of the most helpful conference messages I’ve heard and what made it so unique was that he pulled three other church planters up front with him.  He would then talk about one of these focus topics, and then throw questions over to these three guys (who were extremely open and honest) so we could see how some of this was being played out (successfully, or not) in their own lives and churches.  Really, really good stuff that was open and authentic and real.  Highly recommended.

The day wound down with a dinner in which I met my assessor team.  Scott Thomas talked about Acts 29 in general and sort of gave us a grid for understanding the assessment process a little bit better.  One thing he mentioned was that out of all of the church planting organizations in the world, he believes Acts 29 is unique in the fact that they use real (and recent) church planters to do the assessments.  I appreciate that a lot.  I want to hear a guy who is in the throws of knowing how hard it is (or is perhaps just coming out of those throws) tell me how hard it is going to be.  I want these guys to look over my relationship with God, my marriage, my family, my theology, my life and my entire application and tell me if they think I’ve got what it takes.  I also want to hear them identify my weaknesses and help me to see where I need to grow.  I’m really looking forward to the assessment on Thursday.  For being the fore-running church planting organization in the world, there is a lot of humility and honesty going on in Acts 29 and that is much, much appreciated.  There are about 20 guys going through the assessment process this week here in St. Louis.  According to Scott, typically 50% of those that go through it actually make it to becoming an approved Acts 29 church plant.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the best things about this conference has been meeting different people and hearing what God is doing in their lives.  Today I met several of the guys from Coram Deo that came along with Bob Thune.  I also met a guy named Caleb and his wife from Springfield, MO who are heading to NY.  I met Seth and Amy Shelton – from Battlefield, MO who are looking to plant a church in Springfield, MO.  During one of the breaks, I caught up with Steev Inge from Mystery Church down in Joplin.  I’ll be preaching down there over Thanksgiving and it was nice to put a face and a personality with the email conversations he and I have been having.  Finally, I met my assessors over the dinner I mentioned above: Bob Thune, Sam Byers, Hunter Beaumont, and Cole Brown.  Meg and I will be sitting down with the four of these guys (and Cole’s wife, I believe) for a couple of hours on Thursday afternoon for the formal assessment portion of the week.  If you’re interested, you can find out more about Bob’s church (Omaha) here, Sam’s church (Hannibal, MO) here, Hunter’s church (Denver) here, and Cole’s church (Portland, OR) here.

Yesterday was a really good and challenging day.  It really caused me to slow myself down a bit and just reflect on what God is up to.  It caused me to repent and to trust God more fully as well.  When I got home last night, Meg and I had a really good conversation just sort of unpacking some of all of this (she was able to watch a couple of the sessions via the live stream over the web).  We’re both excited, fearful, humble, and yet confident about what God is up to in our lives.

Today will be another full day of conference messages and meeting new people.  I’ll be down at The Journey from roughly 9am to 6pm.  If you’re interested, be sure to check out the live stream from the conference today via the Planting Channel.  I’ll also link all of the audio once it is up on the Acts 29 website so you can download it at your leisure.

Also: even if you don’t plan to stream the sessions, go over to the Planting Channel’s site via the link above and check out the photos from the conference in the bottom right-hand portion of the screen.

Wednesday, October 22
9:15 AM – 10:00 AM: Randy Nabors on “City Leaders”
1:45 PM – 2:30 PM: Matt Carter on “Broken Leaders”
4:45 PM – 5:30 PM: Jonathan McIntosh on “Missional Leaders”

Tonight we had our first of three sessions on deacon training. I was moved by the number of quality of potential deacons sitting in our house. God has been so kind to Austin City Life! In preparation for training our deacons, I did the following:

• Studied the deacon passages of Scripture
• Read Alexander Strauch’s Ministers of Mercy and re-read Mark Driscoll’s A Book You’ll Actually on Church Leadership.
• Re-read Darrin Patrick’s notes on developing-elders-deacons-members.
• Read Bob Thune’s paper, Deacons: A Theological Study
• Read Tim Keller’s section on Leadership Development in the Redeemer Church Planting Manual
• Oh, I found this deacon outline after the training, which is quite good. I agree with most of it.

Then I wrote and mailed a letter of invitation to potential deacons, gave them a copy of Driscoll’s booklet, and developed a teaching outline for our three session Deacon Training. In all of this I borrowed heavily from Bob Thune and David Fairchild. Thanks guys! Here’s the list of topics we are covering each month:

October 5, 2008 – 1^st training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: A Theology of Deacons

Assignment: One Page Reflection Paper on 1 Tim 3:8-13

November 2, 2008 – 2^nd training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: The Practice of Deacons

Assignment: One Page “Dream” Ministry Description

December 7, 2008 – 3^rd training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: Holding to the Mystery of Faith

Next Assignment: One Page Summary of the Gospel

December 8-14, 2008 – Interviews and Installation