32 Inches!!!

striper...

i <3 singing beach...

(in addition to other things and people)

Thoughts on Preaching Class

I had my first preaching class today. As I was saying in my last post, I am very excited to see what the Lord will show me in this class. Dr. Gibson has been here for some time and he directs the preacher training program here at Gordon Conwell. Highlights and thoughts from class:

• I'm one of the students with the most preaching experience there. This does not mean I preach well or better than anybody else in the class. It's just surprising that most of my classmates have had fewer preaching opportunities, aside from those who are much older than me.

• Explaining what expositional preaching is not, Dr. Gibson preached a 6 minute "sermon", deadpan, on "Old Mother Hubbard", expounding on each word in the poem: Old, mother, hubbard, went, cupboard. My favorite moment: "Indeed, we all love to go to the cupboard, don't we? We love going to it because it's just there!" I felt sorry for the international students who might not have known what was going on.

• This is not just Dr. Gibson, but also many other preaching profs as well: there is the sense here that the preacher is the intermediary between God's word and his people. The exact words that wereused is that the pastor is a"bridge between two worlds." I have a high view of the importance of preaching and the role of the preacher, but I don't think I agree with this idea. It seems to imply that lay-people have no chance of understanding God's word without a special in-between guy who interprets the Bible. It suggests we are the messangers, we are the ones with God's authority, we are at the center of God's communication to his people-- it's all resting on us... What happened to the priesthood of all believers? Doesn't the Holy Spirit minister in lay people as well as ordained? Jesus was the final intermediary between God and Man. We don't need to set up another. Preachers are not bridges, nor priests, nor special prophets. We're called to be shepherds, to lead God's people to the green pastures of his living Word. They can read that word themselves without us. Our work on Sundays and Fridays and other preaching days should result in a greater hunger for God's word and God's people growing in reading and obeying that word on their own. What do you think is the preacher's role in relation to God's word and his people?

It has been a restful week: not much work yet and no sermon this Friday.

Moving Back In

Year Two of seminary begins tomorrow. I'll be moving into my room tonight and getting ready for my first class Hebrew, which starts tomorrow. Energy-wise, I am ready-- as I relearned this summer, three weeks of rest is more than enough. But I've forgotten a lot of my Greek and studying seems like a foreign concept after an action-packed summer. There is a mental shift I need to make to get back into student-mode.

It is exciting to get back into structure and purpose. There are many things I miss about Project Destiny, but one of them is waking up every day to see the same people, following a predictable routine, with every minute of the day directed purposefully toward ministering the Gospel. I'm looking forward to applying that same kind of focus once again to my studies.

This semester, I'll be taking my first preaching class! I'm not sure exactly how long I've been preaching God's word-- perhaps only three years, but it feels longer. Nevertheless, I've never taken a real class in preaching; and aside from some tips from a few pastors, I've mostly just picked up techniques from listening to others. I'm eager for God to use Dr. Gibson and the class to shape the way I preach.

Finally, I will mention a fellow seminary blogger whom some of you will know: the venerable Doctor Chu has joined me, along with a few other guys I know from my home church, BCEC. Calvin's blog is http://calvin-at-seminary.blogspot.com/. I hope you will hop on over to his site and pray for him; but please continue to read my blog and pray for me! It's like McDonald's and Chick-Fil-A: you don't have to choose one over the other.

Please drop me a note if there is some way I can be praying for you as you pray for me.

PD Final Update

Dear Friends—

Project Destiny ended a little less than a month ago. I’ve gotten plenty of opportunities to rest up between then and now, even with helping program a youth retreat and planning our Fall teaching series scattered in there. It was a bonus to be able to go to Cape Cod for biking, bird-watching, and camping in August. I’m just about ready to head back to school and I’ll soon be spending time reviewing Greek and getting used to thinking academically again.

I’m really grateful for having had another opportunity to direct PD again. Last year, as I may have told you, was a tough summer that God used to teach me a lot about leading and caring for people. This year, I got to apply some of those lessons to a new team. Once again, this year, God showed me that I am not the shepherd that He wants me to be yet—I am more task oriented than I thought and love people less than I imagine. But He is leading me in that direction and shaping me in that way. By his grace, we fielded an outstanding team that learned to depend on the Lord through the daily ups and downs of ministry life together.

One of the things I like most about directing PD is having a team that might not usually work together. That was the case this year as our young and diverse team came together from Newton, Chinatown, suburbs, the city, out of state, out of country, and many different walks of life. One of the first devotionals of the summer was the passage in 1 Corinthians, which speaks of care for one another as a defining characteristic of Christ’s Body. The first day of training, I must say, was a little quiet. People didn’t intermingle very much. And during free times, instead of playing, everyone would just work on their lesson plans! I began to wonder if this team would ever gel to the point of opening up to one another. But over the course of the next few weeks, as we spent more time together, God knit the team closer together. At our overnight retreat, we had an extraordinary time sharing about how God had shown grace, an evening punctuated by spontaneous singing! The very next week, we saw personalities come out in an uplifting time of candlepin bowling on one of the team nights.

As camp started the team dealt with the day-to-day challenges of working together. We encountered our own expectations and shortcomings as well as God’s faithfulness and provision. Throughout camp, I sprinkled in several devotionals about the resources that the gospel gives us to love one another. I taught on patience vs. grace, how our seeing our own sinfulness enables us to love, and how we only begin to truly love people when we deal with their sin. What a huge privilege it was to lead this team from the point of not knowing each other to the point of almost knowing each other too well! It was amazing to see how God’s Word is always fruitful and applicable to every situation and that his Holy Spirit in us helps us to respond to that Word, giving us insight and changing us to better glorify and proclaim Jesus as savior and lord.

As far as campers go, we had 50 students this year. 37 of them decided to come to Summer Teen Conference, our church’s regular youth group retreat. Up to 10 kids said they wanted to receive Jesus as their savior—praise God! While I’m grateful for those numbers, I know it is the work of the Holy Spirit to hold and sustain those campers and that not all planted seeds will yield a lasting crop. More encouraging to me is the numbers of PD kids who expressed interest in attending regular youth group, where they can continually hear God’s Word preached and where they can be cared for by adult counselors. In years past, I remember having huge farewells and lots of hugs at the end of camp because we were unsure of when we’d see each other again. This year, there were fewer of those. I like to think it’s because more of them know they’ll probably see each other at youth group. It takes a long time to make a disciple—I know it usually doesn’t happen in one summer. So praise God for the campers that continue coming to church regularly, who make up about 40% of our regular Friday night ministries!

As September comes, I’ll be back at regular youth work. It seems I’m getting deeper and deeper into the planning of the Friday Night ministry. I remember when I began youth work—I was a three-month call-up to my friend’s Dorchester church to help set up a worship band of teenagers. Now God has put me in a church with resources to do large-scale urban ministry—He has given me much of the responsibility for teaching and shepherding 80 youths, as well as directing the summer entry-point for the majority of the newcomers. It’s crazy, scary, and humbling at the same time. Please pray for me as I depend on the Lord to show me how to balance my time between ministry, seminary, relationships, and possibly work in the Fall.

I hope to be back at this for PD 2010. Lord wiling, we’ll begin planning for the next summer in October or November. I’ll try to keep y’all updated via my sadly mismanaged blog: bostonministry.blogspot.com

Thanks for all your prayers and support! Please feel free to catch me to ask me about anything . You’ve been a huge blessing to me this summer in providing for my needs and praying for me. Thanks again!

Peace,

Steve

Images: 1) Cape Cod Biking 2) Some counselors at my house in Quincy celebrating my 28th Birthday 3) Two counselors hard at work