May 2009

Soul-Winning Made Easy

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/25/09
  • 64

Some time ago a friend sent me a little gift she knew I would enjoy. It is a small book, published in 1959 titled Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method). It was written by C.S. Lovett who founded Baldwin Park Baptist Church (which, strangely enough, was later renamed Personal Christianity Chapel).

This book is a guide to personal evangelism and it is one that is a classic example of technique-based evangelism. Now obviously I appreciate the man’s desire to share the good news of the gospel and to train others to do the same. But what he offers is a method and one that needs to be followed with near religious fervor. He insists that anyone who would seek to evangelize must have a plan since “Every successful operation needs a plan. … One does not dare build a house without building-plans; the walls might not meet. Why, even a trip to the market requires a planned list to insure that items are not forgotten.”

Keep Reading →

A La Carte (5/25)

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/25/09
  • 4
Why Memorial Day Is Worth Remembering
Rev.Kev. tells us why Memorial Day is worth remembering.
The Climate-Industrial Complex
WSJ: “Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets. The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War.”
Documentary Probes Canadian Evangelism
I know Americans are accustomed to this kind of thing, but this is quite rare for Canada: a documentary that looks to Canadian evangelicalism. Unfortunately, it looks like he looked in most of the wrong places. “Evangelicals believe they have a duty to spread the gospel,” says Newman. “In the U.S., the evangelical strain has been fused with the fundamentalist strain; that isn’t true here. The evangelical movement links into many different strains in Canada. We’re a more secular country.”
De’tat’ched Attitude
Here’s an interesting repercussion of the economic downturn. “Dermatologists across the city are reporting a boom in tattoo laser removals, as body-art fanatics fretting over their professional image rush to erase their inky mistakes. ‘People can’t afford to handicap themselves be cause of a tattoo in a tight job market,’ said Dr. Jeffrey Rand, founder of the Tattoo Removal Center in Midtown. “We’re seeing a huge surge right now in people getting rid of their tattoos.”
Basics Conference Audio/Video
Audio and video of the recent Basics Conference is now available for free online. It includes both keynotes and breakouts.
India’s Massive General Election
This fascinating photo essay shares images from India’s recent general election. “An estimated 714 million voters (from a population of 1.2 billion) were eligible to cast their vote in one of five separate phases at over 800,000 polling stations, starting on April 16th. Logistically difficult, massive in scale, and opposed by various rebel groups, separatists and protestors, the elections still managed to be held with minimal disruption, with an average voter turnout of greater than 56%.”
Snuggie Review
Consumerist offers a light-hearted review of the infomerical / pop culture phenomenon the Snuggie (the blanket with sleeves).
Deal of the Day: The Cross Centered Life
Registered customers of Monergism Books will receive a 50% discount on C.J. Mahaney’s The Cross Centered Life. In order to receive discount please use coupon code “crosscentered” at checkout. Limit 1 per customer. This week only.

A Man There Is, A Real Man

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/24/09
  • 12

There are a couple of songs we sing in church for which I’ve seen only the barest information. In our bulletin we generally record at least the author, composition date and name of the tune. For these songs we’ve got nothing (except, in one case,the author’s name). I thought I’d put them up here today to see if anyone out there can point me in the direction of more substantial information about them.

The first is titled, “A Man There Is, a Real Man” and it’s written by Joseph Hart (who also wrote such hymns as “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy” and “Come, Holy Spirit, Come.” Beyond the title and the tune, we don’t really know anything about this hymn. Google and NetHymnal, between them, turn up little that is useful. Does anyone else sing it? Does anyone have any useful information about it (the collection it appeared in, the date it was composed, the name of the tune, etc, etc).

It is a great hymn as you can see by the words. I am especially fond of the fifth stanza: “Come, then, repenting sinner, come / Approach with humble faith / Owe what thou wilt the total sum / Is canceled by His death!” Here it is:

A Man There Is, a Real Man

A Man there is, a real Man,
With wounds still gaping wide,
From which rich streams of blood once ran,
In hands, and feet, and side.

2 ‘Tis no wild fancy of our brains,
No metaphor we speak;
The same dear Man in heaven now reigns,
That suffered for our sake.

3 This wondrous Man of whom we tell,
Is true Almighty God;
He bought our souls from death and hell;
The price, His own heart’s blood.

4 That human heart He still retains,
Though throned in highest bliss;
And feels each tempted member’s pains;
For our affliction’s His.

5 Come, then, repenting sinner, come;
Approach with humble faith;
Owe what thou wilt, the total sum
Is canceled by His death!

6 His blood can cleanse the blackest soul,
And wash our guilt away;
He will present us sound and whole
In that tremendous day.


This second song is one we have not sung for a while, actually, but we’d still like to know more about it. I’m quite sure it comes out of my pastors’ Masters College days and, indeed, when I mentioned the song in the past, several other Masters alumni said they remember it as well. One person suggested it was penned by Don Kistler, though I’ve never seen that confirmed. So once again, if anyone can tell me who wrote this song and the music for it, that would be great. It’s not a bad little song (though I’d love to see someone reimagine the line about “I’ll be the glove for your hand to fill…”).

Here are the words:

Teach Me To Live What You Say

Teach Me to Live What You Say
Teach me to live what You say,
Make me a child who’ll obey;
Holy in all that I do,
May I bring glory to You.

My life is all Yours to shape as You will
I’ll be the glove for Your hand to fill;
I want to be pleasing, to You may it be,
That You might be glorified somehow in me.

To be more like Jesus with each passing day;
More like the Master in every way,
A servant who’s yielded his heart to the One,
Who gives life and says to His servant, “Well done!”

Books I Didn't Review

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/23/09
  • 5

Here is another roundup of a few books I have received but have chosen not to review. Also, this week I’ll list some of the books I’ve received—ones for which I’ve not yet made a decision either way.

Encouragement: How Words Change Lives by Gordon Cheng. This little book, published by Matthias Media, seeks to teach biblical wisdom on encouragement. I stumbled across it after searching for books on encouragement and realizing that this is one of only a very few in the field. Though I read it through, I have decided not to write a full review (since it is available through so few booksellers). “According to Gordon Cheng, encouragement is not only central to our church life, it belongs to one of the most powerful themes in the whole of Scripture: the power of God’s word to change lives. That powerful word not only changes us as we hear and respond to it; but through us it changes others too.” It’s a practical book and told with a really nice amount of humor—enough to add a fun element to the book but not so much that it becomes obnoxious.

A Family Guide to the Bible by Christin Ditchfield. From the publisher: “All Christian parents want their children to gain a better understanding of God’s Word, but many of them are still searching to completely understand the Bible themselves. How can they confidently share what they believe with their families? A Family Guide to the Bible takes readers on a fun and exciting tour through all sixty-six books of the Bible and offers parents, grandparents, and teachers a better understanding of the Scriptures so they can help the children in their lives know what is in the Bible, where to find it, and how it all fits together. As Christians become more familiar with God’s Word, they will gain greater confidence as they share what they believe with their family and friends, help answer questions concerning the Bible, and encourage others to grow deeper in their walks of faith.”

Books Received

Here are some of the books that showed up this week:

The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs in the New Spiritual Openness by Albert Mohler.

Punic Wars & Culture Wars: Christian Essays on History and Teaching by Ben House.

50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from the Spiritual Giants of the Faith by Warren Wiersbe.

Do You Want a Friend? by Noel Piper.

Courage to Flee: Living a Moral Life in an Immoral World by Jeffery Klick.

Corinthian Elders by Jack Fortenberry.

The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture? by Voddie Baucham.

The Divorce Dilemma: God’s Last Word on Lasting Commitment by John MacArthur.

I received a few DVDs as well:

A Question of Mercy

The Late Great Planet Church: The Rise of Dispensationalism

13 Letters (This is actually a combination CD/DVD/Study kit.

Free Stuff Fridays

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/22/09
  • 7

Free Stuff Fridays

It’s Friday and that means I’ve got another Free Stuff Fridays for you. This week’s sponsor is Ligonier Ministries which I’m sure you know primarily as the teaching ministry of R.C. Sproul. Everyone knows that Dr. Sproul has written many, many books over his career (60 titles and counting). What you may not know is that he was written several books targeted at children. And today we are giving out all four of the ones he has written. They are:

  • The Prince’s Poison Cup - In this work, Sproul focuses on the atonement to show that Jesus had to endure the curse of sin in order to redeem His people from their spiritual death.
  • The Lightlings - Sproul weaves an allegorical tale that captures the essence of the biblical story of redemption in a manner that will fascinate and delight children. A race of tiny beings known as lightlings are a picture of humanity as they pass through all the stages of the biblical drama - creation, fall, and redemption.
  • The Priest with Dirty Clothes - This book tells the story of a mud-covered priest who can only find cleansing from the Great Prince who offers “new clothes for the heart.”
  • The King Without A Shadow - A book for children highlighting through a simple story of a boy and his dog, the holiness of God.

Four winners will receive each of these four books.

Sproul Books

Rules: You may only enter the draw once. Simply fill out your name and email address to enter the draw. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at 10 AM.


An Inflated Predator Panic

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/22/09
  • 61

This is a topic I’ve written about before, but one that has been on my mind again lately. I’ll be interested in your feedback on it.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. ‘Being male,’ he explains, ‘I am guilty until proven innocent.’” As awful as it sounds, I sympathize with this guy. As terrible as it might be to see a young child lost and alone, as a man in this society I feel like accusing eyes would be upon me if I was I to walk up to that child and offer my help. My instinct would probably be to look for an authority figure—a police officer or mall security guard—or a harmless-looking stranger, perhaps an elderly woman or a pregnant mom. These people could help the child without making others assume that they have evil ulterior motives.

Jeff Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal has written a couple of compelling articles dealing with our society’s view of men as predators. They are well worth reading (Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? and Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators). He asks, “Are we teaching children that men are out to hurt them? The answer, on many fronts, is yes. Child advocate John Walsh advises parents to never hire a male babysitter. Airlines are seating unaccompanied minors with female passengers rather than male passengers. Soccer leagues are telling male coaches not to touch players.” An ad campaign for Virginia’s Department of Health features a picture of a man’s hand holding a child’s hand with these words plastered over it: “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together.” The message seems clear. “The implication is that if you see a man holding a girl’s hand, he’s probably a predator,” according to Marc Rudov who runs a father’s rights site.

Clearly there are going to be consequences to making society (and children in particular) fearful of men. “Fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.” Children are beginning to be distrustful of men and society in general is becoming increasingly distrustful of men. Men, meanwhile, bear the weight of feeling like they are always on the edge of being accused of some deviant behavior. “The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables.” “While we don’t want sexual predators to harm our kids, we do want our kids to develop healthy relationships with adults, both men and women. Instilling a fear of men is a profound disservice to everyone.”

Here are a few examples of how this is working itself out according to the testimonies of men who responded to Zaslow’s articles:

In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. “I felt like crying at the end of the evening,” he says.

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed “suspicious.”

In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son’s day-care center called him in to reprimand him for “inappropriately touching the children.” “I was shocked,” he says. “Whatever did she mean?” She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man’s lap.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand I don’t want to feel (and don’t want my children to feel) that all men are perverts who are untrustworthy simply by virtue of being men. At the same time, I have too often seen the harm done to children through predatory men. Though it may be the case that only the smallest percentage of men are predators, the fact remains that the vast majority of predators are men. Early on in our marriage my wife and I established a couple of ground rules pertaining to our children (such as not allowing men or boys to babysit our children and being exceedingly cautious about sleep-overs). To use these seemed like common sense rules and not ones born out of a great fear of all men. They are rules that we do not tell the children so as not to make them overly fearful toward men. We are cautious towards relationships between our children and other men, but rejoice when godly or otherwise concerned adults show a genuine interest in them.

I would be interested in hearing from the people who read this site to hear how you cope with these situations.

  1. Would you leave your children with male babysitters?
  2. Would you allow your teenage boy to babysit other children?
  3. Are you immediately hesitant or nervous when a man shows friendly interest in your children?
  4. For the men: if you saw a child standing alone and crying in the mall, would you stop to help the child? If so, would you do so with confidence or with some level of fear?

A La Carte (5/22)

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/22/09
  • 8
Dan Brown’s America
An interesting Op-Ed from the NY Times. “It isn’t just that he knows how to keep the pages turning. That’s what it takes to sell a million novels. But if you want to sell a 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.”
An Interview with Max McLean
JT interviews Max McLean, focusing on his new one-man show which is simply a presentation of the Gospel of Mark.
God Made This Man Rich
Canada’s The Globe and Mail pens an article about William Young. “Young thinks a big part of the novel’s appeal derives from it not being explicitly Christian. There’s little or no Scripture in it. The novel, to Young’s mind, ‘has given to people a language to have a conversation about God, evil, suffering and healing. … a language they didn’t have before because all the language before has been very religious, loaded with religious land mines and everything else.’”
A Divine and Supernatural Light
This blog is dedicated to the life, works and legacy of Jonathan Edwards. Sounds like a good bookmark for those who love Edwards…

reFocus Conference (V)

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/21/09
  • 12

On this, the final day of the reFocus Conference here at Moody Bible Institute, we heard first from Henry Blackaby who is the Founder and President Emeritus of Blackaby Ministries International in Atlanta, GA.

More on that in a moment. In the day’s middle session Crawford Loritts brought a sermon on the necessity of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of a pastor. Basing his sermon in Galatians 5:16-25, Pastor Loritts, with real urgency, called upon the men to turn from the plans, programs, and perspectives which have captured the minds and hearts of so much of the evangelical church, and to “walk by the Spirit”. He used an excursion to Ephesians 5:18 to drive home the point that being filled with the Spirit was not a suggestion, but a command, which needs to be controlling and continuous. While his sermon was solid in exposition—meaty with teaching on the connotations of the Greek words in his text, Loritts’ delivery was kind, authoritative, and impassioned, provoking both exuberant ” A-men’s and hushed stillness, from a group of men not naturally given to this!

The conference wraps up this evening with an address from John MacArthur. Unfortunately, my flight schedule was such that I was not able to stay for this. I am rather disappointed, but it just plain can’t be helped!

And now back to Blackaby.

He began his time with a call to understand worship as being more than music. He especially wants pastors to emphasize reading Scripture in worship and also to reclaim the pastoral prayer in which the pastor, with the rest of the congregation, gathers up a person in prayer before the Father. These two traditional aspects of the worship service have been lost in many churches and I was glad to hear his call to reclaim them.

The purpose of Blackaby’s message today, I believe, was a call to pastors to listen to God to see if he would be raising them up to use them to call this nation to repentance. He said things such as this: “If you are not clearly, unmistakably hearing from God, it is your heart that is the problem. When you test your heart, honestly and carefully, see if you are hearing regularly, constantly from God.” He looked to Luke 12:54-56 and Ezekiel 22:30-31 to challenge the men here to see America as a nation that is under judgment. He said that God is looking for men here to stand for the land. America is under the remedial judgment of God and the Lord is watching to see if the leaders of God’s people recognize the activity of God especially as he moves in judgment. Every time, biblically, God was about to judge a people, he raised up a prophet and let the prophet know what was on his heart. What was on God’s heart was always either life or death with no in-between. It is important that those of us who have been called and appointed by God to hear a word from God that he intends his people to know, that we hear and quickly go to the people of God and let them know what is on the heart of God so they can adjust their lives back to God. God is looking for men to be spiritual watchmen on the walls of the nation, to be prophetic intercessors to the nation.

This was the purpose of the message. However, the dominant portion of the message (in terms of time) was Blackaby relating stories of the success of his book Experiencing God and all the lives it has changed. I believe he did this to show how God uses faithfulness on the part of pastors (like himself) to impact the world.

So let me stop here for a moment. This is what I am struggling with when it comes to this particular conference. On Tuesday the three keynote speakers were Voddie Baucham, Flip Flippen and John Piper. The message proclaimed by Baucham and Piper was radically different, opposite even, to the message shared by Flippen. Today we begin our day with Henry Blackaby and end the day with John MacArthur. And again, these men would be polar opposites when it comes to an issue as critical as authority, of sola scriptura. This is not to say that Blackaby had nothing valuable, nothing biblical, to say. Rather, it is simply to say that there seems to be a disconnect here and we have speakers coming from radically different theological perspectives; and I’m not sure how to reconcile this. Is this just a question of appreciating each of these speakers for what they do well? Is it a question of seeking to provide speakers here that will appeal to people from different traditions? Or do some people just not even see that there appears to be a huge contradiction here? I am confused about this. I just don’t quite know what to think about it.

At any rate, reFocus has wrapped up for this year. Talking to pastors as I did often over the past few days, I can see that this has been a time of real rest and refreshment for them. I trust they will head back to “real life” now recharged and hopefully refocused.

reFocus Conference (IV)

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/21/09
  • 5

Day three of the reFocus conference began with a talk from Ken Davis. Ken is a humorist—a comedian, really. I don’t quite know what to say about this session. He drew out a couple of messages he wanted to communicate to the pastors here and did it with a whole lot of laughter. My best efforts at blogging this comedy sketch fell flat (as I’m sure you understand). He did a great job of mixing the poignant and the hilarious. So we’ll just leave it there except to say that I appreciated his definition of humor: Humor is a gentle way to acknowledge human frailty.

Immediately after this session ended, I hurried down three flights of stairs, across campus and up three flights of stairs to deliver a breakout address. It went quite well, I think, and there was some productive discussion afterward. Unfortunately this discussion stretched on long enough that I was not able to make it to the general session that followed. It was a roundtable of sorts, I believe. But alas, I missed it. The mid-afternoon session, also a roundtable was canceled for some reason. And so that brought me to the evening.

The evening session began with a time of worship and then Chip Ingram took to the stage. Chip is President and Teaching Pastor of Living on the Edge. This session was rather interesting to me as he was speaking on a subject that overlapped significantly with the one I had spoken of in my breakout session. In fact, he turned to the same passage of Scripture, Romans 12, to prove the same thing and to challenge pastors in some of the same ways.

He started with a brief devotional and then turned to his subject for the evening: Refocusing Your Focus. If the talk had a subtitle, it would be this: What if “the problem” Is not “THE PROBLEM”?

What he shared in the evening was what he says is a whole new ministry dynamic; a whole new way of seeing ministry. His prayer is that through the brief time together, God would give each of these pastors a dynamic, paradigm-shifting refocus on all of life but especially on ministry. This was no small goal!

He gave a lot of statistics about the church—about pastors and why they leave the pastorate, about Christians and why so few of them actually resemble Christians. Looking at these issues about four years ago, he had come to some conclusions and had rolled out a program of sorts that would address them.

The problem is…
Pastors have been given a job for which it is very difficult to measure how they are doing. There is an epidemic problem of quality control within the church and the shepherds are the ones who are responsible.

The result is…
We’ve become slaves to running programs, keeping church activities rolling and feeling very frustrated with limited spiritual life-change.

His ministry commissioned a Barna study to figure out how big a problem this is. The overall conclusion was that pastors had no way of explaining what a healthy, mature Christian is. So the pastors themselves did not know their task!

…Most Christians equate spiritual maturity with following the rules.
…Most churchgoers are not clear what their church expects in terms of spiritual maturity
…Most pastors struggle with explaining or defining spiritual maturity
…Most pastors struggle with feeling the relevance of and articulating a specific set of objectives for spirituality, often favoring activities over attitudes

The answer is…
He offered a three-part answer.

Focus - Get clear on your calling (see Colossians 1:28-29).

Metrics - Get clear on measuring spiritual maturity. Here he introduced what he called an R12 Christian. He drew these marks of spiritual maturity from Romans 12 and did so at some length. I’ll provide only a brief outline. If you’d like to learn more you can do so at livingontheedge.org. From Romans 12 he found these five marks of a mature Christian: Such a Christian is Surrendered to God; Separate from the World; Sober in Self-Assessment; Serving in Love; Supernaturally Responding to Evil.

Power - Making God’s work in you the priority over God’s work through you.

It seemed to me that he ran out of time by the end, so hurried through the last few points. Overall, I appreciated his talk. I think he is right that a huge percentage of what passes for Christianity in America is really just empty and unbiblical. And so he is calling these churches to understand the pastor’s role as leading Christians from infancy to maturity. This is excellent! I think, though, that this is an insight that has not escaped those churches that all along have been focusing on the preaching of the Word as the primary task of the pastor and of the church. Churches that have become distracted by endless programs have definitely lost sight of the most important thing. So I guess I’d say Ingram’s call to emphasize making disciples (not just converts) is important but also obvious; it is what a remnant of evangelical churches have been saying all along! For those pastors that have lost sight of this task that God has given them, I hope this message stands as a wake-up call that drives them to Scripture to see how God would have them lead and shepherd their flock.

A La Carte (5/21)

  • Tim Challies
  • 05/21/09
  • 10
Christians Suffer in the Delivery Room
Chris Brauns offers a reflection on suffering. “Would you not agree that there is a fundamental difference between pain in the cancer ward and agony in the delivery room? One is suffering that brings life; the other is that of death.”
Compassion Today
The current edition of Compassion Today has a feature article I wrote reflecting on my time with Compassion in Dominican Republic. It offers a bit of a round-up of my thoughts a few months after returning home.
Great Right North
I found this an interesting article: “Reports last week that the recession is draining Social Security and Medicare funds were just one more reminder that the United States needs to fix its finances. For inspiration, why not look to Canada? Long derided by American conservatives as “socialist” and praised by the left for its generous government spending, Canada is casting off those stereotypes. Over the past few years, while U.S. politicians presided over huge increases in spending and debt, the Canadian government tightened its belt, slashed tax rates and balanced budgets.”
John Calvin Bobblehead
You know you want one…
The High Cost of Poverty
This article from the Washington Post does a great job of showing that you have to be rich to be poor. “Put it another way: The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don’t often explain.”
Facebook: Connecting Us in Life and Death
What happens to your Facebook account when you die? And if Facebook is so great a part of people’s lives, how does it factor into their deaths? Here is an article that answers some of the questions.
Deal of the Day: New Park Street Pulpit
You can save 80% on Spurgeon’s New Park Street Pulpit 3-Volume set. “A dynamic collection of classic sermons from the Prince of Preachers! Written in 1854 just five years after his conversion, these memorable messages reflect Spurgeon’s considerable gifts: word pictures, pointed applications, concern for people, and a heart for God. Preachers will value these early messages as excellent models, and laypeople will enjoy them as devotional reading. Three hardcovers.”