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Adoption Story from Redeemer Family

Kansas City Star on The Parsons Adoption

I love the friends God has brought into my life. I met Jeremy & Ashley Parsons over four years ago when we were in the early stages of gathering a core group for Redeemer . They are amazing people, great friends, grace-filled leaders, and people who have leaned on the kindness of God through much change, transition, and turmoil.

Thrilling for me to see the Star run a story on their adoption. Eager to see God move more people in our church family in this way — and eager to celebrate with them when He provides.

iPhoneography: August Members' Meeting @ Redeemer

As You Think About Haiti Relief...

Last Sunday at Redeemer we gave our entire offering to support the relief efforts of The Global Orphan Project in Haiti. By God's grace, our people responded with staggering generosity and gave $22,600 toward relief efforts. 

We also started to talk as a church about taking the long view with Haiti-- realizing that restoration there involves decades, not merely one time financial gifts. As such, we are presently working to make our people aware of immediate opportunities to travel to Haiti while we strategize how we might take teams of our own. You can follow this dialogue here.

As requests for information continue to pour in, I'm humbled by the passion of our people and their willingness to respond. I was also reminded of the following section from one of my favorite books:

Religious social activism not rooted in love for God is driven by love for idols. It pretends to come from concern for others or for God's kingdom, but actually it is motivated by the worship of humanity or disguised forms of self-glorification (Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life 31).

My prayer for our people as we grieve, pray, and mobilize in response to this tragedy and others is that we will remain relentlessly God-centered in our efforts.

A Church for the City

This Sunday at Redeemer Fellowship we will look at our final core value: CITY. Our text is Jeremiah 29.4-7. The city is not only something I'm deeply passionate about, but this text is also part of my journey that gave me a theological framework for church planting in the urban core.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the first Sunday of Advent than by talking about how the "peace of the city" is found ultimately in the Prince of Peace.

I've included two videos below that are helpful in communicating the kinds of things we mean when we talk about our commitment to the city. The first is part of the vision campaign of The Austin Stone Community Church and includes interviews with David Taylor, Darrin Patrick, and Daniel Montgomery. I've linked the second video here several times before. It is almost twenty minutes long, and beautifully articulates the vision of City Church San Francisco to be "a church for the city." I have also benefitted tremendously from their essay entitled "God's Love for Cities."

A Church for the City (Reprise) from The Austin Stone on Vimeo

A Church for the City from steven starfas on Vimeo

RECOMMENDED READING

Ray Bakke, A Theology As Big As the City

Ray Bakke, The Urban Christian: Effective Ministry in Today's Urban World

Harvie Conn, The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse and Changing World

Harvie Conn & Manuel Ortiz, Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, & the People of God

Robert Lupton, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor

Humans & Cabbages

We look at our fifth core value this Sunday at Redeemer, BEAUTY, and I can't wait!

"A cabbage needs no companions to be a perfect cabbage, but men desperately require all sorts of other people if they are to achieve their aims in life: parents, sibilings, friends, teachers, writers, musicians. Maturing, fulfilling, and happy relationships are replete with experiences of the beautiful, and no life is complete without them."

Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet, 19

Ephesians 6.5-9 & Human Trafficking

Yesterday at Redeemer Fellowship we looked at Paul's instructions on how to apply the gospel in the midst of intolerable circumstances and oppressive social orders (Ephesians 6:5-9).

I wanted to link a few of the references I mentioned in my sermon.

• Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
• Rodney Stark, For The Glory Of God
• Also, though I didn't mention the book, Murray Harris offers a wealth of information regarding slavery. His book, Slave of Christ, is a comprehensive survey of slavery as a background to a biblical theology of devotion to Christ. I read the book in 2001 and have returned to it several times since.

Also, I mentioned as we closed that your small groups would be a great place to advance the discussion and talk about how we apply the truth of gospel to the current realities of human trafficking as well as how we can take action as a church.

IJM - Reality of Human Trafficking from International Justice Mission on Vimeo.

I recommend everyone read Angelise Anderson's BreakPoint article: Modern Day Slavery: A Task Bigger Than Wilberforce's. Also, check out International Justice Mission, and visit their "Take Action" page. IJM's founder, Gary Haugen, has authored several profoundly helpful books: Good News About Injustice, Terrify No More and Just Courage (read about Haugen here).

Three other organizations I would reccomend checking out are:

Call + Response

Shared Hope International

Children of the Night

Technorati Tags: human+trafficking, IJM, slavery

A Husband's Responsibilities and How to Change

For those that were at Redeemer Fellowship today, here is the link to the CJ Mahaney conference message I referenced: A Husband's Responsibilities and How to Change.

Would love to see every man in our church listen to this and process it with other men. And, like I said-- I would love even more to see married men listen to this with their wives.

May God build a community of strong, biblical men in Kansas City.

Follow Up To Ephesians 4.25-5.2

Two weeks ago at Redeemer, we looked at Ephesians 4.25-5.2. I realize that Kris gave us all a ton to ponder and wrestle with in his sermon from Eph. 5.3-14, but since I continue to get calls and emails about people dealing with conflict and issues related to language 'truth telling', I thought I would post two resources I have found to be helpful in my own life related to language and conflict. Hit the jump to check them if you're interested.

See all our Ephesians Resources

Sermons on Ephesians

As we are working through Paul's letter to the Ephesians at Redeemer, I've been compiling a list of Ephesians Resources that I have found helpful in my own study. Here are the best sermons I've found:

PRINTED
John Calvin, Sermons on Ephesians
Martin Lloyd Jones, Ephesians (8 Volume paperback)

MP3 AUDIO
Sinclair Ferguson (these were preached at Park Cities Presbyterian and are some of the best sermons I've ever heard preached. These have definitely shaped my own preaching of Paul's letter)

Ligon Duncan (these are the most in-depth exegetical sermons I've found)

Ephesians Sermons Preached at The Journey

Ephesians Sermons at Bethlehem Baptist (These are a wide range of sermons by a wide range of people over the wide range of a twenty year time span)

Walkable Neighborhoods

Since 2005, we have been a one car family. And, given that Katie uses our car the majority of the time, the walkability of the neighborhood we live in is pretty important to me. Actually, walkability is important to me for social and theological reasons-- so my concern would be the same whether we had four cars or none (why walking matters).

Walkscore.com has ranked the walkability of 2500+ US neighborhoods. View the top 10 here. The site also lists 138 Walkers' Paradises, of which our neighborhood comes in just below the 100 mark-- here.

Though over 60% of Kansas Citians live in car-dependent neighborhoods, we are fortunate to live on the dividing lines of the five most walkable neighborhoods in the city!

The moral of the story? Move to Midtown. Walk to Church