Here we go with another Free Book Friday give away. For all you who really enjoy digging into the original languages of the Bible here are two (2) great resources.

The Complete Word Study Old Testament

The Complete Word Study New Testament

Remember, you can retweet this  and be entered to win. The random drawing will be held Saturday morning and announced here.

LifePoint Church recently released a music project called “Illuminate, Children of Light“. I encourage you to purchase the CD for yourself and then get another on for a friend.

Micah Huebner, one of the worship leaders at LifePoint Church, explains the backstory for the song “I See The Poor” in the following video. Thanks to all the folks who made the project a reality and to those who are purchasing the CD. Half of all the proceeds from the sell of the Illuminate CD are going to send mission teams around the world. Purchase more CDs right now…all of you.

‘I See the Poor’ Song Story from LifePoint Church on Vimeo.

This weeks winner of Free Book Friday is Cat Pruitt. Congrats on picking up two John Piper devotionals, A Godward Life vol. 1 & 2.

I started the Free Book Friday giveaway last week as a way of giving my library away before my family leaves for Belgium. I heard from several of you about how much you are hoping to win. Here is another opportunity to get new reading material.

This weeks Free Book Friday giveaways are by John Piper.

A Godward Life vol. 1

A Godward Life vol. 2

Remember, just click the retweet button at the top of this post. The winner will be drawn randomly and then posted on the blog tomorrow.

Brussels is listed as #11 on The Global Cities Index 2010.

from the article:

So what makes a Global City? Not size alone, that’s for sure; many of the world’s largest megalopolises, such as Karachi (60), Lagos (59), and Kolkata (63), barely make the list. Instead, the index aims to measure how much sway a city has over what happens beyond its own borders — its influence on and integration with global markets, culture, and innovation. To create this year’s rankings, we analyzed 65 cities with more than 1 million people across every region of the globe, using definitive sources to tally everything from a city’s business activity, human capital, and information exchange to its cultural experience and political engagement. Data ranged from how many Fortune Global 500 company headquarters were in a city to the size of its capital markets and the flow of goods through its airports and ports, as well as factors such as the number of embassies, think tanks, political organizations, and museums. Taken together, a city’s performance on this slate of indicators tells us how worldly — or provincial — it really is.

I have been studying a while about God’s movement in Scripture and how He sought out a person or people who were to be called by His name for His purposes. Following His call God would send them out to accomplish His work.

Abram was one of the first in scripture that God sought and then sent out.

Jerry Rankin states, “The global missions movement is scarcely a hundred  years old, but the task of evangelizing the nations was in God’s heart before the foundation of the world; it was expressed in God’s call to Abraham before it was set into motion in the first Christian century.”1  God chose through Abram to execute His mission plan for a people who would join Him in seeking to bring a redemptive work to all people. In Genesis 12, God extends His call to Abram to go on a journey with Him. Ron Blue writes, “Although God did not reveal the destination of Abram’s journey, He lavished on His obedient servant some incredible promises.”2

God’s covenant with Abram was to make through him a great nation of people, and through Abram all the nations of the world would be blessed (Gen 12:2-3). The covenant that God made with Abram, later renamed Abraham, is repeated in Genesis 22:18, “and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice,” to remind him that God is looking and calling a people to Himself who will take up His heartbeat and mission.

Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser writes, The fact remains that the goal of the Old Testament was to see both Jews and Gentiles come to a saving knowledge of the Messiah who was to come. Anything less than this goal was a misunderstanding and attenuation of the plan of God. God’s eternal plan was to provide salvation for all people; it was never intended to be reserved for one special group, such as the Jews, even as an initial offer!3 Paul echoes this in the New Testament. In Romans 4:13, he identifies Abraham as the “heir of the world.” “In Galatians 3:8 he argues that the promise in Genesis 12 foreshadows the gospel going to all nations.”4

John Stott writes, “Now we are Abraham’s seed by faith, and the earth’s families will be blessed only if we go to them with the Gospel. That is God’s plain purpose.”5  The Abrahamic covenant was so important to the story of the Old Testament and the mission of God that He repeated it three times to Abraham, once to Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen 26:4), and once to his grandson Jacob (Gen. 28:14).

Who else in Old Testament do you see God seeking and then sending?

1 John Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith, and Justice Anderson, ed 31 s., Missiology: An Introduction to
the Foundations, History, and Strategies of World Missions (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers,
1998), 30.

2 Ron Blue, Evangelism and Missions: Strategies for Outreach in the 21st Century (Nashville:
Word Publishing, 2001), 21.

3 Walter Kaiser, Missions in the Old Testament: 33 Israel as a Light to the Nations (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 10.

4 A. Scott Moreau, Gary R. Corwin, and Gary B. McGee, Introducing World Missions: A
Biblical, Historical, and Practical Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 31.

5 Ralph D Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A
Reader (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981), 18.

This video is so funny to me because it reminds me of a friend.

If you haven’t seen this before take time to watch, it is only 1 minute. If you have seen King Curtis, relax, watch again and laugh one more time.

Chrissy Wilson!

She won the MacArthur Commentaries for Free Book Friday. Congratulations.

Everyone make sure and check back next Friday to see what book (s) will be up for grabs.

If you have read my blog for any length of time you know that my family is moving to Belgium to plant a church with four (4) other families from LifePoint Church. As a result, I must decrease the size of my library. It is not feasible to move the books to another land due to the cost of freighting the excess weight. So…I have decided to have a drawing each Friday for a different book (s) that I will give to the lucky winner.

All you have to do is click on the retweet button at the top of the post and your retweet will be counted automatically thus entering you for the free books. We will have a random drawing of those who retweet the post for the winner and the book will be shipped to you. Hope you enjoy and benefit from the books that are given away.

Here are the first ones…

MacArthur NT Commentary Revelation 1-11

MacArthur NT Commentary Revelation 12-22

Register and let others know about the offer.

Yesterday, I introduced you to Michael Carpenter and Matthew’s Table. Here is the completion of our interview.

What role does Java Joe’s play in your ministry?

Most churches these days have some kind of café. Anywhere from a coffee pot in the fellowship hall to full blown coffee shops. We are not a coffee shop in a church. Our church is a coffee shop and our coffee shop is our church. In effect, Java Joe’s serves as a missional space. Alan Hirsch says that a missional space involves the creation of a third place where Christians and not-yet Christians can interact meaningfully with each other.

Church planting rests in the engagement of people in a meaningful dialogue around Jesus and spirituality in organic ways (i.e., evangelism). Java Joe’s, therefore, is a natural space for people to organically engage in discussions of meaning, spirituality, etc.  In a way, people are allowed to “belong” to our church community by becoming a regular at Java Joe’s before they believe. By “belonging” I am simply referring to giving all people, wherever they are in their life’s journey, the opportunity to find love and community so that they can encounter the transformative power of Jesus and become like him.

What has been the biggest lesson you have learned through the birth of the Matthew’s Table?

First and foremost, SLOW DOWN. We were so eager to get things moving that in a lot of ways we took on too much before we had the structure in place to facilitate discipleship and we ended up loosing some people in the process. We want our structure to be more open source rather than complex and rigid – sort of like a stake supporting a tomato plant. What I mean is, even an organic tomato plant needs the support of a stake or the fruit laying on the ground would rot. Therefore, even this organic expression of a New Testament church needs “stakes.” But, we do not want the structure to be so rigid that we are not creating space for leaders to emerge.

Secondly, church planting is HARD. I think it is easy to get all these delusions of grandeur about planting a new church, but church planting is a constant source of frustration, disappointment, and letdown. Yet at the same time it is the most rewarding thing I have ever pursued in my life.

What are you reading that is challenging you the most?

First is Michael Green’s, Evangelism in the Early Church. In this book, he seeks to appraise some the aspects of evangelism in antiquity in light of recent study. He accomplishes this by looking at evangelism theologically. Without much effort one discovers that most theologians are not concerned with evangelism and most evangelists do not concern themselves with theology. So Green sticks closely to a theological study of evangelism to help the reader understand afresh the gospel the early Christians preached, the methods they employed, the character they displayed, and the extent to which they were prepared to think their message through in light of contemporary thought patterns so that the church today may be recalled to her primary task.

Second, is David Platt’s, Radical. I am currently teaching through this book on Sundays and we are reading it together as a church. Platt’s book messes with our American assumptions about who Jesus is, what he accomplished, what he expects of his followers, and what he has sent us to do.

How did you decide to launch the Protégé Program?

I borrowed the idea from Erwin McManus and Mosaic Church in LA because for us, it wasn’t and couldn’t be about just starting one church that got bigger and bigger- it had to be a church that would plant churches that would continue to plant churches, that would continue to plant churches. And to do that we needed someway to train and send leaders of these churches. The Protégé Program is what fills this need.

We currently have one protégé serving with us – Casey Turner. Casey will be finishing up her degree in Christian Ministries at Belmont and is doing a line of one-on-one study with me on the missional nature of the church. She is currently serving as a barista at Java Joe’s where she is responsible for not only serving coffee, but building redemptive relationships with our customer base. Also, Casey will be engaging students at Cumberland University with the goal of starting a Bible study on campus this fall.

How can people get involved in Matthew’s Table and Java Joe’s?

First and foremost prayer. We need those spiritual warriors who will commit to pray for us daily. Secondly, we could use some committed followers of Jesus who could come in, embrace our vision, and serve as marketplace missionaries in our city. Third, we need financial support. While, the TBC and Nashville Association have been generous in funding our efforts, none of our pastors, including myself, receive a salary and that can make things difficult for us and anyone else who may want to join us. Furthermore, my the house we had been living in has been sold out from under us, so we had to move about 6 weeks ago and start paying rent which always takes some “creative” efforts to make each month. Lastly, a personal request. I am in desperate need of some dental work, but I have no insurance. So if someone reading this is a dentist or knows a dentist who would do some pro bono work it would be greatly appreciated.