Facebook. In so many areas of life it’s no longer an if, no longer an option. With 500 million users it is quickly becoming a near-essential tool for families, for businesses and yes, even for churches.

The good news is that Facebook has a lot to commend it; there many things it does very well and thus there are many ways in which Facebook can assist pastors and other ministry leaders. The bad news is that there are also (and inevitably) ways in which it can hinder ministry if not used well. Today I want to look at Facebook as a ministry tool and suggest a few ways in which it can help and hinder. Because of practical limitations I cannot tell you how to go about setting up an account, but at least I can give some suggestions on what to do once you’ve already joined and started to be active.

One of Facebook’s great benefits for you, as a ministry leader, is that it lets you be where your people are. If you are like most pastors, you will find that your church members are not only members of Facebook, but that they are active members. This is where people socialize, where they entertain themselves and where (occassionally) they discuss serious issues. This is not to say that you need to be on Facebook in order to effectively minister to your people, but it does give you one more way of interacting with them, and one that can be very effective. Facebook is at its heart a social media, one used to coordinate communication and this is where you will find that it assists ministry. However, there are a few areas in which you will need to be cautious.

Use Facebook to Supplement Real-World Ministry

As you consider using Facebook in your ministry, or as you consider how you are already using it, spend a few minutes thinking about what Facebook has replaced. It is generally true of new technologies that they do not just add something to life, but that they also replace something that is already there. In the case of Facebook, it may well be that it is replacing real-world face to face ministry. Facebook builds social connections and in some ways enhances them; but it can just as easily diminish them as it replaces offline life with online. There is always the temptation to take the easy route (Post “Happy Birthday” on someone’s wall instead of calling him; Send an email instead of meeting him for lunch). Be sure that you are not allowing Facebook to be an easy way of getting around difficult ministry. And make sure you are not using it to disincarnate yourself, to remove your physical presence from people’s lives.

So as you use Facebook, be careful to use it in a supplementary way, a way that supplements your real flesh and blood contact with the people you are seeking to serve. Use it to share event information, to get people remembering last week’s sermons and thinking toward next week’s, to get people singing the songs you sing and praying for what needs to be prayed for. Use it to share photographs of great events and to encourage people to make contact with one another. The ways it can supplement ministry are nearly endless. But all the while use it to push yourself toward, not away from, face to face contact.

Learn, But Don’t Be a Stalker

There are parts of the shepherding ministry that are active and parts that are passive. This is to say that in many cases you will inadvertently encounter information relevant to your ministry—things you need to act on. You may be told by a mutual contact that there is an important date coming up in another person’s life or that someone has committed a grevious sin. You did not go looking for the information; rather, it came to you. There are other times that you will be more proactive in seeking out information. You may approach a person and ask how he has been doing recovering from a surgery or you may ask him how he has done in the battle against a particular sin.

I read a great quote earlier this week on Timmy Brister’s blog and thought it was worth sharing. It comes from D.A. Carson (in his book The Cross and Christian Ministry). What struck me about these words was just how many of these ways of destroying a church I’ve witnessed either up-close or from afar. As soon as we remove the cross from the center of all the church is and does, something will inevitably rush in to replace it.

Last week I began an interview series I am calling “Meet the Ministries.” This is an opportunity for us to meet some of the Christian ministries available to serve us. The first interview featured Grace to You. This week I’m glad to share an interview with Matt Perman, Director of Strategy for Desiring God.

How and when did Desiring God begin?
Desiring God as an organization began in 1994. An elderly couple had been in charge of the weekly sermon tape ministry since John Piper began preaching in 1980. But in 1994, they suddenly decided to retire. So John Piper went to his ministry assistant at the time, Jon Bloom, and said “I’d like you to take over the tape ministry.”

As Jon Bloom gave this some thought, it stood out to him that more and more people were contacting the church requesting John Piper’s books, sermon tapes, articles, and other resources. These requests were all being handled by different staff members.

So after a few days of praying and pondering these things, he went to John Piper and suggested that they create a coordinated, proactive strategy for using resources to spread the vision of God that so many of us have come to love through John’s preaching and writing.

John Piper said, “That’s a great idea! We could call it Desiring God Ministries.” The name of the ministry comes from John’s foundational 1986 book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, which basically articulates the core concepts that we are about.

Jon Bloom became the first person on staff and things continued to develop from there. Jon remains the executive director today. He is the best at telling this story, and was recently interviewed by Tim Smith of Mars Hill church in Seattle on how DG started.

Why does DG exist? What are its chief goals and key emphases?
Desiring God exists to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. That’s our mission and reason for being.

We believe that God is supreme in everything. Further, his supremacy is most clearly seen not simply when we know truth about him, but when we also delight in Him. The things of God are very great; but this greatness is not reflected if we remain neutral about God or carry on as if nothing is different.

For example, if I bring my wife flowers on our anniversary and say “no big deal, Heidi, it’s my duty,” she is not honored. But she is honored if I say to her, “I love being married and I’m so glad it’s our anniversary.”

Likewise, when we rejoice in and treasure God - rather than remain neutral or devoid of any emotional response - He is honored. He is shown to be great (which is the purpose of life, by the way) and worthy of praise.

Here’s how we put it: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

It follows from this that joy is not simply icing on the cake. Rather, we ought to seek joy. We ought to seek joy. This is what the Scriptures command (Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:21; Philippians 4:4; Psalm 97:12) and model (Philippians 3:8; Psalm 43:4; Hebrews 12:2). Yet so often the idea has crept into the church that somehow it is bad to want to be happy. That desiring to be happy is sinful.

But the problem with the human race is not that we want to be happy. The problem is that we seek happiness in the wrong things-in things outside of God (see, for example, Jeremiah 2:13). And the great irony here is that this results in less satisfaction.

It results in less satisfaction because those things ultimately cannot satisfy. The idea is often out there that the most exciting life and the greatest happiness comes from following the values of the world—either for outright sin or domesticated comfort—and that if you become a Christian you must give up the desire to be happy and perhaps even settle for a boring life.

But this is exactly backwards. The greatest satisfaction is in God, not outside of God. When we aim for the joy that the world offers, we are settling for less, not more. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “The problem is not that our desires are too strong , but too weak.” Then he continues: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the sand because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

So Desiring God is here to say: The desire to be happy is good, not sinful. That is not your problem. But stop seeking your satisfaction in temporary, fleeting pleasures that have no value. Seek real and ultimate satisfaction. Pursue your joy in God, who is supreme in all things and the only lasting source of joy.

One last thing here: This message is not contrary to the also very biblical emphasis that a life of radical service for God and others often involves suffering, and that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Instead, this truth is precisely what enables us to bear up under suffering.

We are able to endure suffering and in fact “rejoice in our suffering” (Romans 5:3) because our joy and hope are in God, not the world. So even when everything goes wrong, we can be like the saints in Hebrews who joyfully endured their trials because they knew that they “had a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34) or like Moses who “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26).

The message of Christian hedonism is not a chipper happiness, but a deep-seated joy in God that therefore enables us to engage in radical deeds of love and to truly grieve over the brokenness in the world. We are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

How can DG serve the readers of this web site?
I love this question because it gets at a few more of our dominant emphases as a ministry.

We have made all 29 years of John Piper’s sermons, conference messages, articles, and even books (except when a publisher wouldn’t let us) available on our website for free and without registration.

We did this because it is one of the most effective ways that we know how to fulfill our mission to spread a passion for the supremacy of God by helping people fan the flame of their joy in God.

So I would say to your readers: Our website is at your service. Everything is there and everything is free because our aim is not to make money, but to help you find your joy in God.

So read, listen, and watch the resources whenever, wherever, and however you want to help fuel your joy in God. If you are interested in some specific ones that you might want to start with, here are a few that I would recommend:

• If you are interested in a book, you might enjoy Desiring God or Don’t Waste Your Life. Again, you can read both of these online for free, along with many others.
• If you are interested in a sermon or conference message, I would recommend Passion for the Supremacy of God part 1 and part 2 or A Passion for the Supremacy of Christ—Where He is Not Named. Each of these messages can be either read or listened to.
• If you are interested in an article, I might recommend Rebuilding Some Basics at Bethlehem: Christian Hedonism or Thoughts on Why Everything Exists.
• If you are interested in a biography, I might recommend reading or listening to Piper’s biography on the life of William Wilberforce.
• If you are interested in browsing all of our resources by topic or Scripture, or browse through all of the sermons by date, you can do that as well.

You may also be interested in subscribing to our blog. And if there is a product that you want to buy but which you don’t have the funds for, please make use of our whatever-you-can-afford policy.

Why do you post everything online for free?
When you asked about how Desiring God could serve the readers of this site, I pointed to our website. So it makes sense for me to talk a little bit more about why we post everything for free and how this relates to our view of serving.

The call to be God-centered entails a call to serve others before yourself. The two greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40). Jesus said that he came “not to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). And Paul said “let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 4:4) and pointed to Jesus as an example (4:5ff).

It can be easy to think that this applies only to us as individuals—that individuals should put others first, but organizations are different. They should focus on survival.

But that’s not how we think. We want to follow the example of Christ organizationally as well as individually. We want the grace and mercy of Christ to be reflected as fully as possibly in what we say and in what we do.

So Desiring God is here first of all to serve. Survival is not our first priority. We do not exist to exist. We exist to be of use to others in the building up of their faith. And so we will do this even at cost to ourselves.

This is why one of our core principles that we don’t want money to be a hindrance to people. To help keep money from being an obstacle, we’ve had a “whatever-you-can-afford” policy from the start, and that’s why when we got to the point where we were able to post all of John Piper’s sermon audio online, we posted it all for free.

We don’t believe that this is the only way to do things. But for us, this is the best way that we know how to demonstrate the gospel in what we do, in addition to what we say.

A corollary of these things is that we aim to reduce all obstacles—that is, all friction—to spreading, not just the monetary ones. By doing this, more people can access the resources and spread them more effectively.

Consequently, our vision when it comes to the internet is that we post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

Each of these four things goes to the issue of removing all possible friction that might slow down or hinder the process of spreading. If you don’t put everything online, but only some things, there are helpful resources that people won’t be able to access at all. If you make people have to pay to access material online, you introduce friction into the process and slow down spreading.

And if you wall up your content behind a registration gate, you similarly introduce friction into the process and many people will just move on to something else rather than deal with the hassle of registration.

Another source of friction that is not as obvious, however, is a hard-to-use website. If a website is hard to use, people will have a much more difficult time finding the resources that will be most useful to them. They will waste time and energy trying to figure out how to use the site rather than being able to focus completely on the content itself.

So when we undertook our major website redesign a few years ago, we made usability the core, governing philosophy of the redesign. We re-architected the site from the ground up on the basis of principles of usability so that the site would hopefully be as easy to use as possible and, consequently, introduce as little friction as possible into the process of accessing resources.

Our aim behind all of these things is to remove all friction to accessing our content because we believe that is the right thing to do, we believe it best reflects the gospel for us, and we believe it best serves people.

Who are the key leaders within the ministry?
Other than John Piper and the board of directors that oversees the ministry, some of the key leaders in the ministry are: Jon Bloom, executive director; John Knight, director of development; Terry Kurschner , director of finance; Matt Perman, director of strategy; Scott Anderson, director for networks & partnerships; Lukas Naugle, director of resource productions; and Eric Johnson, director of marketing and internet.

How many employees does DG have?
We have 38 employees plus about 50 regular volunteers.

What is DG’s annual budget? How is the ministry financed and how do you ensure financial integrity?
Our annual budget is currently $5.5 million. About half of our budget is financed through donations. The rest of our budget is financed through resource sales, conferences, and the bookstore that we run at conferences and at the church. Also, John Piper donates all of his book royalties to the ministry and takes no salary from Desiring God.

In regard to the donation side of things: Our donations largely come from what we call “an army of small donors” rather than a few large donors.

Some of these donors have chosen to be a part of what we call the “Philippian Fellowship.” Basically, this is a group of about 2,100 friends of the ministry who have committed to faithful pray and/or give financially to the ministry. Members of the Philippian Fellowship receive weekly prayer requests and other information as well.

The ministry of Desiring God would not be possible without our donors. When I say that our aim is to serve, not be served, I don’t mean that we have the misguided notion that we can do this by ourselves. I mean that we are not in this for what we can get out of it. And that our desire in all that we do is to see people benefit, not increase donations. But we do need donations in order to continue. Those who share the vision of what we do are critical partners in the ministry. And I think that one of the things that they value about Desiring God is that we are not about money.

We ensure financial integrity through several means. The independent consulting audit firm, Larson Allen, currently advises us on internal controls and conducts our annual audit. We are members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. And our director of finance, Terry Kurschner, is a man of incredible integrity and detail whom we are blessed to have over our finances.

How do you expect DG will be different in ten years? Twenty years?
It is really hard to say on this, because we couldn’t have even seen where we would be today back ten years prior. And the pace of change in the external environment has only increased. So we have a few principles that guide us in the way we go about discovering the future which I will share.

First, our mission and values govern everything that we do. Along with our affirmation of faith, they constitute our “core.” The core provides the constant that you need to successfully navigate change and to develop in a way that is effective and remains in alignment with your DNA.

Having a core is critical to remaining adaptable and flexible. In fact, as Jim Collins has argued, the fundamental dynamic of any organization that is effective over time is the concept of preserve the core and stimulate progress—and to create mechanisms that weave this dynamic into the fabric of the organization.

This principle doesn’t tell us how things will change, but gives us something more important: an understanding of how to move forward into a future that is radically changing for all types of organizations. Critical to DG in all stages will always be our mission to spread.

Second, DG develops more like a story than a blueprint. We didn’t know or plan—indeed, couldn’t have known or planned—what things would be like today when we started 15 years ago. So our approach is not to blueprint out a future that we cannot control anyway. The result would be a lot of frustration, dead ends, and wasted time.

Instead, one of the key ways to progress in the midst of ambiguity is through incremental progress. That is, through a few tangible mechanisms that drive progress while acknowledging that we are very limited in what we can know about the needs and context of the future environment.

One of those mechanisms—which arose naturally at DG from the very start—is the principle of “try a lot of stuff and keep what works.” You don’t know what will always be best in advance, so you try a lot of things. The things that work, you keep and build on. And by that means, the organization develops and advances incrementally according to what it is good at and what is needed.

This is one of the fundamental ways to “build on strengths,” which Peter Drucker rightly said all organizations must do. And it allows you to adapt intelligently to the future, without having to think you can predict it.

Third, and closely related to this, are the talents and strengths of our people. We believe that people are most effective for an organization when you put them in positions where they can play to their strengths.

Your strengths are what you are good at, what you love doing, and which align with the goals of the organization. As people focus on their strengths, new capabilities and initiatives develop, and these are the lines along which Desiring God has largely grown over the last 15 years.

Fourth, the concept of evolutionary progress, like a story, is best complemented by a twin principle of discontinuous and intentional progress. A good example here is that of setting a big, clear, compelling, and even audaciously large goal that focus the organization on accomplishing a certain major task over the long-term. Jim Collins calls these “BHAGs” in his very helpful book Built to Last.

Having a big goal like this aligns the organization and creates unity and collaboration, and a sense of excitement. It also gives concrete intentionality to the future of the organization.

At the same time, like the concept of evolutionary progress, BHAGs reflect the fact the future cannot be largely known or controlled by us. A BHAG does not attempt to script out or blueprint your future in detail.

Rather, a BHAG defines the broad strokes, and evolutionary progress fills in the rest of the details. In this way, you combine intentionality with flexibility, charting a course without defining everything in advance, and thus remaining adaptable to an uncertain future environment.

I think that this also best reflects the fact that God is sovereign over the future, not us, while also upholding the fact that we are indeed to be intentional and make plans (Proverbs 16:9).

I don’t want to belabor this point, but Collins has a great statement in Built to Last on how Jack Welch utilized this combination of intentionality with organic growth at GE:

Instead of directing a business according to a detailed … strategic plan, Welch believed in setting only a few clear, overarching goals. Then, on an ad hoc basis, his people were free to seize any opportunities they saw to further those goals. This crystallized in his mind after reading Johannes von Moltke, a nineteenth century Prussian general influenced by the renowned military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, who argued that detailed plans usually fail, because circumstances inevitably change.

I think that is very helpful, and biblical.

We came to an understanding of our 5- to 10- year BHAG a few years ago, which we’ve expressed in a one-page document that we call our “vision statement.” Here’s our current BHAG:

We want to see millions of people around the world more accurately understand the Bible and increase in their love for Jesus Christ by reading, listening to, and watching our resources at the times and locations that are most helpful to them, and eagerly sharing these resources with others.

In pursuit of this vision we will, joyfully and by God’s grace, develop an integrated global distribution network that makes our resources accessible at any time, at the lowest strategic cost, in the most effective formats, to the most effective spreaders.

We can do better at communicating this constantly among the staff here, and I’m working at mechanisms for doing that right now as we speak.

But wherever we end up in ten or twenty years, it will likely be somewhere along the lines of the aim we have expressed in this BHAG, plus whatever comes about as a result of the evolutionary progression of the Desiring God story and allowing our staff to work within their strengths.

And all of the progress, growth, and development that happens will be in alignment with, not contrary to, our core. We will preserve the core and stimulate progress.

How does DG work with other Christian ministries?
We want to see every sound ministry be as effective as possible. We see ourselves as one small piece of a much larger picture of what God is doing. And we want to see the entirety of God’s kingdom flourish and advance. So we are eager to do whatever we can to serve the wider picture of God’s work in the world.

To get to specifics here, there are a few things. First, it really stands out to me that there is at present a truly remarkable spirit of camaraderie among gospel-centered ministries. Part of this is reflected in the extent to which we are all able to learn from one another and mutually encourage one another. This is largely informal, but it is very significant and, I think, very beneficial.

Second, one of the most significant ways in which we work with other Christian ministries comes through John Piper’s speaking. He invites other pastors, theologians, and ministry leaders to speak at our conferences, and he is often invited to speak at theirs. We have especially significant interaction with the T4G and Gospel Coalition affiliated ministries.

Third, we seek to partner strategically with churches. Our regional conferences, which we hold in various parts of the country once or twice a year, are an example of this. They provide an opportunity to partner with a church or network of churches to carry out the conference and equip people in the church and wider area with resources.

We also partner with churches for large-scale give-aways. Every year, for example, we do a case lot special in which we make a certain book available for about a dollar per book. Churches can purchase these books in case quantities at that rate for the purpose of distributing large numbers of books.

Fourth, we partner with churches and ministries as the opportunity arises for collaborative projects that are strategic for the mission and promoting resources. This is sort of a new area that is developing.

Fifth, our growing international outreach division is entirely based upon the premise of partnerships. Our international outreach director, Bill Walsh, looked at the task of helping equip pastors and leaders in the developing world with much-needed resources, and said “if we take a top-down, centralized approach to this task, we will be able to do almost nothing.”

A centralized approach where we, for example, set up offices in different countries and seek to distribute resources would never scale. So the approach we are taking to international outreach is to identify partnerships globally of ministries and churches and individuals that we can equip to do the work of spreading internationally. This is a core philosophy of our international approach.

The last point to make here is that partnerships with other ministries and churches is more and more becoming a major priority for us. It is something that we are pursuing with increasing intentionality and which we see developing in an even more significant way over the next few months and years.

What are some of the ways DG has seen evidence of God’s hand of blessing?
Now this is a tough question, Tim, because the last thing that I want to do is say “hey everyone, look at how God is using us!” We realize that we are quite small, that the office supply budget of a company like Apple is probably larger than our entire annual budget, and that we are imperfect and flawed. But, I see your point and will try to say a few things.

First off, we are grateful for anything and everything that the Lord is doing through our very imperfect efforts. Any good that does come through the ministry of Desiring God is simply grace.

Second, we are amazed at the remarkable people that God has brought on staff at Desiring God. This is a very substantial blessing that may not be the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks how God has blessed the work of the ministry, but it is absolutely critical. We do not take for granted that without the quality and spirituality of the people that we have, we could not do what we do.

Third, he has blessed us with an incredible team of supporters-people who hold the rope for us in prayer or financial giving or both. People are praying for us. And our financial support has been better than expected through these challenging economic times.

Fourth, we see evidence of God’s blessing in the resource spreading that has been happening. The growth over the last four years or so has been especially surprising. At present on our website, we receive about 1 million visits per month and 3 million page views per month. There are about 18 million audio and video streams and downloads per year and 225,000 online product orders per year. There are about 23,000 subscribers on the blog.

Off-line, John Piper has authored more than 40 books, with over 6 million books sold in the United States. There are 226 translated books into 26 languages other than English.

We know that numbers do not automatically equate with the blessing of God, and that numbers are not the most important component of God’s blessing. But that does give a picture of the spreading that God has brought about so far, and for which we are very grateful.

Last of all, and most significant, are the testimonies that people send us. That’s how we really know if we are having an impact. We are blessed and amazed at the stories that come our way from people each day.

Speaking personally, how has working closely with John Piper impacted you as a person?
In more ways than I can count. First of all, John Piper has taught me more about God than anyone else. He has profoundly affected my worldview, which in turn affects everything else.

Second, I learned from John Piper that we should “expect great things from God; attempt great things for God” (William Carey). His emphasis that risk is right and that we should dream dreams for the kingdom rather than coast through life is a constant spur to action for me.

Third, I spoke earlier about how one of the convictions we have is that we are here first to serve, not be served. And that this has ramifications in all sorts of ways and had an impact even on the way we thought about the website when it came time to do the major redesign. This mindset is one of the biggest things I’ve learned from John Piper, and I don’t even think he knows that he models this.

Over the years, often in casual conversation, I started noticing a recurring emphasis. When we’d talk about the website, for example, he would talk about making it easy to use for people - long before I had done any research or reading on the subject, or even knew that there was a body of literature on that (and I don’t think he knew that at the time, either). He would talk about how the importance of anticipating people’s needs and being generally thoughtful. How we shouldn’t wait for there to be a problem to see what we should address; we should think ahead about what people will need and make it right to begin with.

As I mentioned, I don’t think he was trying to teach anything in these comments; he was just describing the way he thought about things. But it would come up in a noticeably frequent way when we would talk about things like the website and such.

I kind of “caught” from this the general principle that trying to anticipate people’s needs and be thoughtful about them is an implication of Christian service and love. If we love God and therefore love others, we will seek to do good for them and serve them - and we will seek to be proactive in doing so.

This has influenced the way I thought about everything—the website (make it usable), our resources (make them free), management (think of serving your employees and the world first, not surviving), the Christian life in general (we are to be consistently and remarkably doing proactive works of good for others and the world), and more.

Everything boils down to: Christians are here to do good for others, to the glory of God. We aren’t here to build up our own comforts, but to expend ourselves in radical deeds of love. This is because God is good, God seeks our welfare, and God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him - and therefore we can risk and let go of comforts here because God is our satisfaction and strength, not the things of this world.

John Piper teaches this explicitly and there are some incredible sermons on these things, but it is the impact of working with John personally that most forcefully and significantly taught me this mindset and gave me this desire. I certainly have a long way to go, but this is how I think and what I aspire to be as much as God will enable.

How can the readers of this web site serve and support DG?
Thanks for asking, Tim. While the most important thing to us is simply that people come to see God for who he is, we absolutely need and cherish the involvement of everyone that feels called to be a part of what we are doing.

There are three main things the readers of this site can do to serve and support DG: Pray, pass the word, and give. In that order.

So if you can only do one thing, pray. If you can do two things, also pass the word. If you can do three things, consider giving and maybe becoming a part of our Philippian Fellowship.

Here’s how you can pray: Pray for John Piper’s speaking and writing; pray for the website and that God would use it to build up his people in joy and faith; pray for wisdom and effectiveness for our growing international outreach department; pray for our staff; pray that we would be faithful to God’s word; pray for our continued efforts in spreading that as many as possible would see the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

If you want to spread the word, here are some resources that you might be most interested in pointing people to:

• Our website or blog
• The message “Let Your Passion be Single,” which is Christian hedonism unpacked in a single message.
• The message “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain.”
• The article “The Goal of God’s Love May Not be What You Think.”
• The sermon “Sustained by Sovereign Grace - Forever”, especially for those who are going through difficult times.
• The book Desiring God or Don’t Waste Your Life.

My morning reading today took me to the fourth chapter of Ephesians. This is a chapter that deals primarily with the topic of unity within the body of Christ. Through the first three chapters of the book Paul has been laying the theological framework for the life of good works he describes in the final three chapters. The first topic he discusses in this regard is unity. He encourages believers to live together in humility and patience, bearing with one another and maintaining the unity of the Spirit. The word “one” appears seven times in only three verses, emphasizing the oneness the Lord expects of his family. Having discussed the importance of unity, Paul goes on to show how this unity will be formed and maintained.

Unity is a common theme in the New Testament, isn’t it?. Paul spoke of it in 1 Corinthians 1:10 where we read, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.” Among Jesus’ final words to His apostles was a beautiful, powerful prayer for unity which is recorded for us in John 17. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17: 20-23). Peter and other biblical writers discuss the subject as well. Unity is clearly an important component to the Christian life.

Perhaps the most clear example of this type of unity is shown to us in the book of Acts. We read in Acts 5, “Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem. And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women…” (Acts 5:12-14). This unity was based on unity of doctrine, and that asserted itself in practice. In the previous chapter Luke writes, “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:32-35).

Of course there are two types of unity. There is the unity from one Christian to another and there is unity from one group of professing Christians to another. While it seems clear that the biblical writers were speaking primarily of interpersonal relationships their words are surely valid as well to larger relationships between groups. Baptist and Presbyterian denominations can learn as much from Paul’s words in their relationships to each other as can two individual members of a local church who are experiencing conflict in their relationship.

Sadly in our day it seems that unity, and especially unity from one group of professed Christians to another, often comes at the cost of theology. In his masterpiece Evangelicalism Divided Iain Murray says “The ecumenical call [in the mid-20th century] was not for truth and salt; it was supremely for oneness: the greater the unity of ‘the Church’, it was confidently asserted, the stronger would be the impression made upon the world; and to attain that end churches should be inclusive and tolerant. But it has never been by putting unity first that the church has changed the world. At no point in church history has the mere unity of numbers ever made a transforming spiritual impression upon others. On the contrary, it was the very period known as ‘the dark ages’ that the Papacy could claim her greatest unity in western Europe.”

The ecumenical movement of our day continues to downplay theology. Of course none of the major players in the movement would admit this, but if we are to have unity with the Roman Catholic Church we must be willing to let go of those pesky little solas that so often get in the way. If we are to have unity with Mormons we must be willing to allow some leeway on the divinity of Jesus. And so on. But the unity that Christ prays for us to attain and that Paul exhorts us to model is not a unity based on forsaking doctrinal differences so that we can meet at the lowest common denominator. It is not a unity based on mixing “churches” with one another. The unity Christ pleaded for on our behalf is a unity of people who know and trust Christ. It is a unity in the truths of the Scripture, truths despised by the world, but loved and treasured by believers. It is a unity which, as Murray says, “binds his [Christ’s] members together in love” (Evangelicalism Divided, page 291). This truth became particularly clear to me this morning as I read Ephesians 4. In verses eleven to sixteen Paul describes the means of attaining unity. “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

And this morning I realize that the teaching ministry, carried on today by the pastors of local churches, is a ministry of unity. As if the pastoral ministry was not already difficult enough! Pastors are to teach their people sound doctrine which in turn will inspire unity among true believers. The solid foundation of sound doctrine will prevent people from being tossed to and fro and being carried about by every wind of doctrine. It is a lack of doctrine that promotes false unity and a strong, biblical theology that promotes true unity. Our pastors are called to help us “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” It is from Christ that the body is joined, knit together in true unity.

So if we would have unity, we must have theology. We are to share, profess and enjoy unity with other believers, even those who do not share certain “lesser” doctrines. This is not to imply that any doctrine is unimportant, yet some are more important than others. J.C. Ryle wisely observed that believers should “keep the walls of separation as low as possible, and shake hands over them as often as you can.” But there are times when we must reject unity because of the higher importance of truth and sound doctrine. To repeat Murray’s words, “it has never been by putting unity first that the church has changed the world.” Nor will it ever be.

In the past months you may well have heard me mention The Elisha Foundation. This is a foundation I first discovered through my pastor (who is a regular speaker at the Foundation’s annual retreats) and subsequently learned about more when I designed a new website for it. I quickly came to respect what they do and wanted to share with you an interview I conducted with Justin Reimer who founded and still heads up the organization.

What is the Elisha Foundation?

The Elisha Foundation is a non-profit organization created to provide encouragement and resources for families of people with special needs (kids and adults). Our primary vehicle of ministry is through small and intimate Family Retreats geared towards biblical encouragement and disability specific resources. Soon we will be providing monthly respite resources for families in our area as well.

When and why did you begin the Foundation?

My wife, Tamara, and I started the foundation in the Fall of 2005 after years of anticipation. Though the idea started some 10 years ago through a series of Sovereign circumstances preparing us for our calling when our first child, Elisha was born. Just hours after his birth he was diagnosed with Down Syndrome and was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit due to medical complications. During the early hours of this new and blessed addition to our family we were overcome with the moment. God saw fit to make us stewards of such a wondrous and enigmatic blessing as a special needs child. The enormity of this responsibility was only made more sweet by the grace of God. This was a defining moment in our young lives with profound impact on our faith, goals and dreams.

Prior to the birth of our son Tamara and I shared the ambition of one day being missionaries to a foreign country. With the new direction our lives were taking we were left wondering how we could minister to the needs of others. Early on a sweet lady put it plainly to Tamara in this way, “Instead of you going to the mission field, the mission field has been brought to you through Elisha.” So simple yet so profound was that little morsel of wisdom. It helped us to look beyond the circumstances and realize that God had given us a new direction, to minister to those with special needs and their families.

Over the next seven years we lived in six different states and experienced the disability resources and programs that each state offered. Though each offered great things none provided the foundational emphasis on family and definitely not on Christ. Through these travels and experiences our hearts desire was to provide an environment for families with disabled family members where the emphasis is on familial growth in Christ rather than on “dealing with” the disability. A place where faith in Christ is strengthened, love is flourished, passion is reformed and intimacy is encouraged. What greater resource than to build the family on those four fundamentals - faith, love, passion, intimacy in Christ. We experienced great growth in these areas through our own trials and experiences. We have had three more sweet children (and another on the way!) since the birth of Elisha and have been greatly encouraged by their interaction with Eli as well as the opportunity for them to recognize and minister to the needs of others of lesser health or condition.

Most confirming to us in our pursuits with TEF was our most recent Retreat. We had a family there who had a daughter with an extremely rare genetic disorder. So rare that the doctor’s gave her little chance of survival and recommended abortion. She is now 4 years old and although there are great delays in her development she is exceeding anything the doctor’s thought possible. It is a rough road though, be it feedings every 2 hours for the first three years of her life, the growth hormone shots, or the litany of other care she needs. She cannot sit up on her own and when she is ill she suffers from seizures. Along with raising her, her parents have six other children to not just care for, but to raise.

We invited them to the Retreat knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn’t be able to make it due to her situation. It was a stretch for her to be around a large group of people possibly carrying the latest flu strain. But they were able to come although under slight duress. By the end of the Retreat they were overwhelmed by how much they needed that time away as a family. You see it was the first time in three and a half years that they were able to worship together as a family. They had to take turns going to church and no one offered to help them with her so that they could go together. In tears, the dad stated what the whole weekend meant to them and that there were not words enough to describe the benefit to their family. He is now a dear friend of mine and his family has been challenged anew by the Word being taught at the Retreat and by simply being together and having people help them there be unencumbered.

How does the Foundation seek to serve families of people with disabilities?

Of primary importance to TEF is to see that families make much of Christ in their circumstances, not to make much of their circumstances with a side order of Christ - so to speak. It is common place to see a family put so much emphasis on their circumstances (autism, Down syndrome, etc.) that that becomes central to who they are as a family and , in a way, defines who they are. We know and understand the challenges from our own experience but by God’s grace He has compelled us to keep Christ central to our lives, not Down syndrome, and that is what ultimately should define our family - lives centered on Christ no matter what.

God has placed within our stewardship the blessed parent child relationship with a special needs child. We have been and will continue to be challenged and encouraged by this great blessing.

As our faith in Christ has been strengthened through this relationship we have sought to aid the growth of the faith of others in similar situations. Teaching them to love Jesus more deeply, develop a passion for the unique circumstance that God has placed them in and develop a more intimate relationship with Him out of which flows a more intimate relationship with God and family.

When focusing on the vehicle for this objective our minds were immediately set on a retreat. A quiet, beautiful, peaceful, rejuvenating place that would be conducive to allowing people to let down their guard and relax while providing them with pampering not common to them nor even available to them. And to provide focused Bible teaching to edify and build up the Faith.

Who typically attends the Elisha Foundation retreats? Who is permitted to attend?

We specifically chose a broad “label” to target our field of ministry - “special needs”. We have had varying levels of severity of diagnosis’ from Asperger’s to autism, from Down syndrome to Hunter’s syndrome, from extremely rare genetic disorders to malignant teratoma’s and even leukemia. One of the unique aspects of the environment we aim to create for a Retreat is that by having needs from a wide range of spectrums each set of parents is drawing from the diversity of experiences of the other parents.

For example, I have a child with Down syndrome and another parent has a child with Hunter’s syndrome. I can learn a lot from that parent as they may have a very short time on earth with that child and the window of interaction with the child is brief, where I see through a long term window for my child. It reminds me of the brevity of life and to treat each day with more earnestness; whereas, they can learn from our experiences perhaps in how we educate our son or even a level of endurance as we will care for our son until we pass from this life.

To answer your question, anyone who has a “special need” be it a disability, medical condition or other chronic issues is welcome to our Retreats. If they aren’t sure about how they might “fit in” they can call us and talk it over with us. Our future plans include Retreats for those who have lost children and for our wounded military veterans as well. If people are hurting we want to help them see Jesus in it and through it.

Are there any books you have found particularly useful in helping people come to terms with disabilities within their families or their churches?

The most obvious and significant answer is Scripture; however, God has Sovereignly placed the likes of Joni Erickson Tada in the midst of the Body of Christ to encourage support and help people come to His terms with their appointment in life. When God Weeps by Joni is a must read and is a book that we give to every family that comes to a Retreat. She and Steve Estes do a great job of applying the Christ to painful situations with experience and biblical conviction.

What books do you recommend on the subject of suffering?

With today’s technology sermons are a great source of encouragement, keep in mind some of these families can’t always make it to church, etc. Sermons by the likes of Paul Martin, John Piper, John MacArthur among others have been a great encouragement to my family and to others that I have been able to pass them along to. As for books, I guess I gave some of it away already but in addition to the aforementioned book there are a couple of others I would recommend.

The Holy Bible, by God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God by Justin Taylor, John Piper, Mark Talbot, and Stephen F. Saint

A Path Through Suffering by Elisabeth Elliot

The Power of Suffering by John MacArthur

Also, we have found biographies to be very helpful as well. The likes of William Cowper, Fannie Crosby, William Wilberforce, etc.

What can local churches do to better serve families that have a family member with a disability?

This is a good question as it doesn’t start with specialized programs. It starts with the Body of Christ first enfolding that family or person on a practical relational level. This is a challenge as many of us don’t feel comfortable around a person with a disability. Consider this, is a person with “special needs” any less created in the image of God than you or I? Answer, no. With that in mind I would challenge every believer to do something so sweetly simple when you see a needy person or family and you don’t know what you can do to help them. Just ask!

When a family walks in the door and you recognize that perhaps they may have a child with special needs, ask them what you can do to help them worship together with you. “May” is italicized intentionally as not all of us can spot and name a child’s “special need” so even if you have a suspicion offer to help. It is okay to not know or even be uncomfortable with a special needs situation. It may be awkward to you but think of what some families are faced with when they attend church and are told to leave the service because their autistic child yells out involuntarily.

This is an area of great concern as in certain parts of the country the willingness to approach someone in a needy situation is lacking. If a church finds themselves in a position to target a special needs ministry then there are two books I would recommend:

Special Needs Special Ministry by Jim Pierson, Pat Verbal and Louise Tucker Jones

Let All the Children Come to Me by MaLesa Breeding, Dana Hood and Jerry Whitworth

The simplest and, in many ways, the most helpful thing someone can do is to simply offer to be a special needs persons “buddy” on Sundays. Assist in whatever way needed to facilitate that family and that persons Lord’s Day.

How can Christians support the Foundation?

Praying, volunteering and giving. We have sought to have TEF not be exclusively Christian in our servicing these special families. At each of our Retreats we have had non-believers and believers alike in attendance. Pray that we would continue to have opportunities for the Gospel.

Volunteering is a vital part of all that we do. During a Retreat we have 20+ dedicated, full time volunteers. We have been richly blessed by our volunteers as we push them to the point of exhaustion but they see it as an act of worship. We are always looking to add to our book of volunteers. If anyone would like to volunteer please contact us we would love to have your help.

Giving is vital to us as well and is not my favorite subject but it is necessary for doing what we do, this includes not just our monetary needs but books for our Retreats as well. Right now we have no paid staff and schedule Retreats as we have funding.

If a person is interested in learning more about the Foundation and its ministries, how would they do that?

The web site is the easiest way to find out about us but you can contact myself (Justin.Reimer {at} TheElishaFoundation.org) or our newest Board Member, Chris (Chris.Wick {at} TheElishaFoundation.org) directly. My phone number is 541-419-6007.

Here is an excerpt from a Together for the Gospel panel discussion with R.C. Sproul. He and the other men discuss the reality that preachers are often dissatisfied with their sermons. It is an illuminating discussion mixed with hilarious quips.

This morning we received the last of the free books. On our seats were copies of Christ & Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson (just printed!), Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin, The Future of Justification by John Piper and one of the smaller editions of the ESV.

The first session of the morning featured John Piper who really needs no introduction. He sought to answer this question: How does the supremacy of Christ create radical Christian sacrifice?

If Piper’s ministry to young people revolves around the message “Don’t Waste Your Life,” this, his message to pastors, seemed to me to be “Don’t Waste Your Ministry.” It was a call to a radical life; a call to put away the complacency and the safeness that plagues so many Christian lives and ministries. Though directed at pastors it was applicable far beyond. And it was powerful. I’m afraid that my notes really do not at all capture the power of the message but I will put a few thoughts out here regardless. But do wait for the MP3 or video and drink it in.

Piper looked to six passages from the book of Hebrews. He said that we would need to ask and answer correctly, what is the great reward? What is the joy set before us? What is the city to come? He looked to Hebrews 10:32-35, 11:6, 11:24-26, 11:35, 12:2, 13:12-14.

The dream for this message is that every person’s life and ministry would have a radical flavor; a gutsy, radical, wartime flavor that makes average people in the church uncomfortable; a mixture of tenderness and toughness; a pervasive summons to something more, something hazardous, something wonderful. The world is not going to glorify Christ because they see that Christians are wealthy and healthy and prosperous because this is what they already live for. We may use Jesus to get it…they use other means to get it. They are not impressed when Jesus is just a ticket because when the show starts you just throw the ticket away.

The message had much to say about suffering. Suffering for the followers of Christ is a sign that God is their Father. Do not think it strange when you come into various trials as though something unusual were happening to you. The followers of Jesus will necessarily suffer. We need to embrace the suffering as this is the only kind of life that the world will regard as anything radical.

All of this begs the question: What creates such a ministry? What creates radical Christian sacrifice? Here Piper turned to just three of the passages outlined earlier.

He shared one of his deepest, sweetest discoveries of the past two or three years. He discovered from Scripture that Christ and His work are a means to something: justification, forgiveness, propitiation, sanctification, eternal life. But here’s the catch. In Paul and in Hebrews and elsewhere, in the very moment of His supreme “means” work, He at that very moment became and displayed the supreme beauty of the glory of the grace of God which the universe was designed to display for our everlasting enjoyment. Christ in His means work becomes, at that moment, the clearest focus of the end for which we are made. We are made to praise the glory of the grace of God. The glory of God reaches its apex in the display of free grace and free grace reaches its apex in the display of the blood of Christ so sinners could be freed from their love affair with the world. This is why we will spend eternity singing about horrible things—slaughter of the Son of God will be our song forever. We won’t put behind us gross horrible events. The worst event of history will be the center of our song forever and the supreme expression of His glory and the supreme experience of satisfaction forever. In Christ’s means work He becomes our end. All of the pictures of the supremacy of Christ in Hebrews are not only to fit Him for His means work but they are also presented so that in the means work we would see our treasure, our reward. The ticket becomes the treasure.

Every glory of the Savior, every facet of His majesty, is poured into the little word “him” in 13:13. “Let us go to him outside the camp.” Jesus is not standing back and saying, “Go back!” He is saying, “I am out here! You are in there where it is so safe. But I am out here. Come to me…” The sweetest fellowship with your Savior and your treasure that you will ever know is the fellowship of His sufferings. It doesn’t get sweeter. The supremacy of Christ is not just His perfect fitness to bear our sins and not just the supremely valuable reward He will be at the end, but it is also present, personal, precious treasure. “Come to me, I’m out here,” he says. He won’t ask us to go where He won’t be with us. We will know Him in depths and ways in radical Christian sacrifice where we would never have known Him any other place.

Piper’s final exhortation was just this: My desire and prayer for you is that there would be a radical flavor about your life.

If you are a pastor, you should hear this message. If you know a pastor, you should hear this message (and so should he!). If you’re not a pastor, you should still give it a listen. This is a powerful call to radical service for God.

Today is the second to last day of the blog tour for my new book The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. For the past two weeks I’ve been answering questions that have been asked by a variety of bloggers. Though something neither I nor Crossway had tried before, this blog tour has been fun, I think, and I’ve been pleased to receive quite a lot of positive feedback. Today the tour moves to Church Matters, the blog of 9Marks Ministries. They asked the following two questions: Tim, from your perspective as a layperson, what steps would you like to see more pastors taking to grow in discernment? And, Are there specific areas of church life and pastoring in which you find yourself wishing pastors would exercise greater discernment?

Read my answers here

Here is a list of the blog tour stops:

King for a Week is an honor I bestow on blogs that I feel are making a valuable contribution to my faith and the faith of other believers…or sometimes just because I really like them. It is a way of introducing my readers to blogs that they may also find interesting and edifying. Every two weeks (or so. That is theoretical. Practically, I don't get around to updating as often as I should and we’ve been know to have kings for a month or two!) I select a blog, link to it from my site, and add that site's most recent headlines to my right sidebar. While this is really not much, I do feel that it allows me to encourage and support other bloggers while making the readers of this blog aware of other good sites.

This week's King for a Week is Pulpit Magazine, the blog ministry of the Shepherd’s Fellowship. Once an online magazine published six times yearly, Pulpit has now assumed a more typical blog style and sees near-daily updates. John MacArthur serves as Editor-in-Chief and Phil Johnson as General Editor while Nathan Busenitz and Nathan Williams are editors and provide much of the content. Though much of John MacArthur’s contribution is adapted from his books, articles or sermons, he does post the occasional piece of original commentary. The site covers a wide variety of interesting theological topics and is always well worth the read, whether or not you are a “shepherd.” They post some excellent series many of which are drawn from the long, distinguished teaching ministry of Dr. MacArthur.

In the coming days (and/or weeks) you will be able to see the most recent headlines from this blog in the sidebar of my site. I hope you will make your way over to look around.