Denise is going with me and we’re both very excited about revisiting what must be the most unique festival anywhere. I’m especially excited to see Derek Webb is playing. I’ll be taking in Soong-Chan Rah’s seminar and as many other good teachers as I can fit in. If you’re an IM reader, I’ll be wearing a Reds cap or Louisville Bats cap. Say hello!

I’ll be able to check mail and the blog when we’re at the motel. Maybe I’ll get in a tweet or two. We’ll return later in the weekend.

Reader Chris has written me a couple of notes on my overall views of youth ministry. I owe him an answer, but I’d like to open up a couple of posts on the general idea of where we are going in youth ministry. I’ve been involved primarily with teenagers for 30 of my 34 years of church ministry. For more than a decade, I did lots of church consultation and I had successful youth ministries in two large churches. I made it to a lot of large youth events down through the years and heard most of the best speakers on the youth ministry circuit.

There was a time I was really sure how to “do” youth ministry. Today….a lot of my thinking has changed. Here’s a few thoughts. More coming.

1. I’m concerned about the idea of “Biblical models” in general. By that I mean that we seem to be saying there is a Biblical component we can place in a larger machine and make the outcome Biblical. In fact, if the entire system isn’t “Biblical,” we have problems. I did what I thought was “Biblical” youth ministry in churches that contradicted most of the values of Jesus on a regular basis, but I was quite sure I was doing a “Biblical” youth ministry. I’m now of the view that the entire paradigm has to be questioned, from fundamentals to details.

2. It all rolls on how you view the church and how you see the overall church carrying out the mission of Jesus. Young people are not a subset of the church’s mission that just happen to be handed over to twenty year olds and people with guitars. Whatever the church is doing needs to be relevant to young people: worship, pastoral care, teaching, mission, evangelism, stewardship. The scary thing for a lot of youth workers is the possibility that they might have to give up their cool outreaches and trips in order to be more like the church/follower Jesus wants. We’ve been told that we can use any tool to make church interesting, so youth workers like myself were allowed to run a program of fun, trips, food, sports, recreation, etc. in order to keep young people hanging around for whatever the church was doing. We now know that those young people simply insisted that the church become like their youth group and, ta da- there is today’s evangelicalism. Oh…and there’s a bunch of our kids, never coming back to church again because they eqaute it with juvenile, shallow entertainment.

3. So I think we are talking church from start to finish, and then addressing various groups only as it is missionally and practically warranted. The Biblical “model” is a series of relationships in which we are formed and participate: God, family, church, community. Youth ministry is a subset of all four, but can’t create a fifth place where everything comes packaged for youth. And that is the issue so many older youth guys like myself feel. Back in the day, we packaged Jesus. He doesn’t fit in the package, but we made him fit. The Procrustean bed, so to speak. The results are now on display in evangelicalism. My entire family has abandoned evangelicalism for the Anglican/Catholic church. What are they looking for? What evangelicalism doesn’t have but keeps selling like it does. We are the original spiritual snake oil salesmen. So much of that started with well-intentioned youth ministry.

4. I realize that many youth workers will never be in a church that will ever do anything intentionally or reformationally. The program is already in a package and you are just supposed to get the kids there. It’s not a situation where you need to waste your time going to the pastor and elders and asking the whole church to change into something Jesus would recognize. So you have to do the best with what you have, and all I can say about that is you may need to make enormous changes in your own ideas of what you want to do. The shift from getting 120 kids to a concert to getting 12 kids to pray every morning is huge, and most churches won’t put up with it. So as I said, you have to do the best with what you have. Impact kids so they want more of Jesus. Make that your mission.

5. The “Family Led Youth Ministry” idea has some possibilities, but I am not impressed with those I’ve heard who advocate it. Show me this model, in a church producing risk-taking, independent minded disciples and not dependent, controlled, tied to parents, afraid of the world inhabitants of a ghetto mentality, and I’ll be more impressed. As of now, I cannot sign on to the “our youth program = our homeschool program” as the answer. I realize what the standard responses will be, but I do not believe home schooling can work for the majority of families. I’m happy for those that find it works, but I work with a lot of dysfunctional families and there are millions of people who do not need to be homeschooling their kids. I believe the church MUST serve all varieties of family constructions and choices, and not just affirm and encourage one.

Let me be clear that families- where there are Christian families- are obviously crucial. But Jesus isn’t creating a community of families. He’s recreating the family around him.

More in a little while on what we actually do in youth ministry: Formation for Discipleship or Apocalyptic Uselessness?

I appreciate Mark Driscoll and Acts 29. Southeastern has no formal relationship with either, but I am thankful for many aspects of both ministries. I think there is much that our students can learn from them. Mark and I have become good friends, but I do not agree with everything Mark says or does. In particular, I disagree with some of the language he has used in the pulpit in the past (though not in several years!) and I am uncomfortable with his position on beverage alcohol. I do appreciate his courage to tackle the difficult book The Song of Solomon and to address sexual issues with the adults in his congregation who have serious and important questions needing answers. Many of you know I have had a similar ministry through Marriage and Family conferences for years. I also wrote a book on the Song entitled God on Sex. Now it is the case I have chosen to address these issues in a different manner than has Mark, and at certain points I think he might have addressed some sensitive sexual issues in a more careful manner. But, I believe we can learn from those with whom we differ, and on the whole I believe Mark has much to teach us about missional living, theology-driven ministry, and culturally relevant expositional preaching. I also think our students, and Southern Baptists in general, are mature enough to treat Mark Driscoll (and every Christian leader) with appropriate discernment.

I want to remind our readers that good seminaries continually expose their students to diverse opinions, including the opinions of those with whom we disagree. There are few textbooks, guest lecturers, and even chapel speakers with whom I am in 100% agreement! Several times in the last decade the SBC annual meeting has been addressed by speakers who differ with Southern Baptists, including Condoleeza Rice (a Presbyterian who describes her views on abortion as “mildly pro-choice”), James Dobson (a Nazarene who is egalitarian and consistently Arminian) and Bill Bright (another Presbyterian). Individual Southern Baptists also learn from others every time they read a book by Augustine, C. S. Lewis or John Stott and every time they listen to a sermon by John MacArthur or Chuck Swindoll. It is a healthy thing to interact with and appreciate fellow Christians with whom we have theological differences and even strong disagreements on secondary and tertiary matters.

Let me invite any of our readers who have concerns about Mark or Acts 29 to do three things. First, make sure your criticisms are up-to-date rather than rehashing issues that were settled several years ago. Second, acquaint yourself with the doctrinal convictions of both Mars Hill Church and Acts 29. Finally, please note that all of the Driscoll addresses are available online at our website. I would encourage you to listen to them as well as an interview David Nelson conducted with Mark last spring. I think you will be blessed and encouraged by what you hear. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to email me or call my office. I would be happy to talk with you, listen to your heart, and hopefully put your concerns to rest.

The relevance to the debate between Frank Turk and myself is rather obvious. As in all things here at IM, think for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

I’m with Akin.

If Akin’s approval of Driscoll means he should resign as well, then you’ll have to find another blogger to defend that one. I’ve got a book about Jesus to research/write.

First of all, let me thank Frank for the opportunity to have a good discussion about the issue of pastoral accountability in the internet age (a very important topic) and for having such a constructive and positive dialog. Though I expect to be denounced to the lower reaches of the pit by a couple of commenters at his place, Frank’s been a first class conversation partner, and has said nice things about another post of mine to boot.

I have very little to say in response to Frank’s SECOND POST, available now at his blog, but I will say a bit.

Frank’s conception of a “global pulpit” or “addressing the global church” is a slippery, ultimately subjective concept that primarily seems to be meaningful in the minds of a small group of theo-bloggers. I think that a room full of non-internet using Christians, even conservative ones, would need considerable help working with Frank’s idea that the orthodoxy of the “global church” is presided over by an unelected jury of successful pastors such as John Macarthur and C.J. Mahaney.

In fact, as meaningful as the ministry of Piper, Macarthur et al are to me and many of us, I’d step to the microphone and have to stand in a long line to say that none of those men exercise any authority over me other than as brothers in Christ from whom I may receive a rebuke.

As many of you may know, in April of 2006, I was fisked for three days by James White at Alpha and Omega Ministries. (I am a big fan of Dr. White and benefit greatly from his ministry. I am not in any way disrespecting him with this illustration. For apologetics, he is the best.)

I was never contacted by Mr. White. I was never informed by his elder board or his ministry board that I was out of line with my influence on the “global church.” I had never mentioned Mr. White or contacted him. Yet Mr. White held me up before his audience for several days, working through a post I had written on the differences I had with some versions of being a “reformed Baptist.” It was a thoroughly public scouring.

Mr. White’s well known chat room crew apparently passed on my post as treading destructively on the subject of reformed orthodoxy, and someone must have said I was a rising liberal, emerging voice disguised as a Calvinist, who needed his wings clipped. Mr. White performed surgery on me, in public on his blog, for three days. I didn’t like it BUT IT WAS HIS PERFECT RIGHT TO DO SO.

In considering this incident of public rebuke from a brother- and that is what it was and that is what I evaluate it as- Mr. White was not dealing with me as a church member under his care. He has no covenanted authority over me to which I have ever agreed to submit. His place as an elder in a church and his position of respect and popularity still create NO FORMAL RELATIONSHIP to which I must respond.

What I must do is ask “Is God speaking to me through this rebuke?” If I judge that God is speaking to me, then- and this is important- I am not to go to Mr. White for further instructions on how to repent and what repentance is adequate. I am to go to those leaders to whom I am accountable.

Or- and this also is crucial- we might ask why Mr. White didn’t seek out my elders- I have three levels of authority over me- and inform them that I was disagreeing with the reformed faith. Of course, those to whom I am accountable would likely have heard all those rebukes with puzzlement because their theological commitments are different than Mr. White’s.

Now—I agree that my blogging put me on a larger stage, and I agree that once on that stage, others on that stage may rebuke, react or correct.

I agree that I must consider this as the possible work of the Spirit.

But there exists NO WORKABLE AUTHORITY STRUCTURE that involves Frank Turk or any other internet critic that can place these Driscoll issues out of the realm of rebuke and into the realm of specific accountable repentance, i.e. we know when he’s repented, how and if it was sufficient.

The only way we will know that Driscoll has repented is, apparently, when Frank says so, and as much as I trust and affirm Frank, I’m simply not ready to sign on to giving individuals- pastors, bloggers, etc- that kind of jury duty.

Frank has a standard of repentance in his mind that he derives from scripture and experience. I’m sure it’s wonderful. But I have not agreed to it, and unless Frank has contacted the Mars Hill elders, I don’t think anyone else has agreed to it.

Who has the last word on Driscoll? The blogger in the UK who says Driscoll is a Jesus rejecting apostate who teaches Jesus was a pervert? The people on the floor of the SBC who haven’t listened to or read a word of Driscoll? The mob with torches in Missouri who clearly loath Driscoll as a danger to the church? The major pastor who indicted Driscoll in 4 posts on his blog? Some assortment of bloggers and pastors?

If it’s the global church here, do we need to call a church council, or will the theo-blogosphere just have to do? Will we all get an email, telling us when Driscoll is all right?

I will say this again: Anyone can critique, rebuke or protest. When angry feminists protested at his church, he invited them in and listened. Blog away, Frank and Co. It’s MD’s responsibility to listen to you. But when it comes to what does adequate repentance look like, your opinions are going to be just that- Opinions. Only his elders can hold him formally accountable.

I made a list of factors that I saw as significant in bringing the SBC to its current situation. I am just going to list them without extensive commentary. If you aren’t Southern Baptist, feel free to ask a question, and I’ll try to give you a brief answer. If you are Southern Baptist, I’d like to hear your responses.

These are listed in broad chronological form. “Broad” meaning that I’m not good with dates and don’t have a good memory.

1. The rise of a second generation of conservatives in the newly “retaken” SBC.

2. The first “official” perception of a generational divide in the SBC by then Lifeway President Jimmy Draper.

3. The effect of the wired revolution in the SBC: grass roots embracing of the wired world by the younger leaders. Confusion/Rejection of the implications/uses of the wired revolution by the old line SBC.

4. The grass roots experience of the generational divide in local churches, particularly regarding worship and programing.

5. Impact of networked leadership church models outside the official denomination on the younger SBC: Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels, Bill Hybels, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll.

6. Election of Frank Page as SBC President. First SBC President outside of and clearly critical of the ruling club.

7. Controversial standards adopted at the IMB: Baptism and Tongues. Grass roots reaction, especially among younger SBC leaders.

8. Resolution on integrity in reporting church membership statistics: a major crirtique of the megachurch model in the SBC and its perceived credibility for leadership.

9. Two years of declining baptisms.

10. Predictions of a declining SBC future: Frank Page and Ed Stetzer

11. The rise of new church planting over older church revitalization as a choice for younger leaders.

12. Baptist Identity movement vs. Gospel centered/Kingdom networked movement. Issue: How do we relate to non-SBCers? Can we learn from their approaches? Can we work together with other Great Commission Christians?

13. Rejection of the culture war emphasis of the official SBC by younger leaders.

14. The current missionary funding crisis and “freeze” in missionary appointments. Perception of the denominational bureaucracy as a problem, not an asset.

15. The development of the Great Commission Resurgence approach by Danny Akin: embracing diversity in the SBC, rejecting the “Great Denomination” model.

16. Johnny Hunt’s support of GCR/younger SBCers and their agenda

17. Official labeling of Calvinists as the enemy by Morris Chapman.

18. Adoption of the GCR study commission at the 09 SBC.

Read Tim Brister’s post, Where Extraordinary Grace and Celestial Joy Meet.

I’ve been around Tom Ascol on occasion for more than 20 years. If you know much about the (dreaded) Founder’s movement, then you know everything I am about to say here, and everything that Timmy says in this post on an incident of restoration at Grace Baptist, Cape Coral, Florida, last night.

If Tom Ascol were Michael Spencer, or just about anyone else, the Founder’s movement, and the good fruit that has come from it (and you have no idea, folks. Really) would have almost certainly never come about. Grace Church would be on pastor five and the big issue would be whether to turn the music up to 11.

Tom is smart and articulate and ten other things, but he’s a pretty average guy in a lot of others. With all due respect to Tom, he’s what we call where I work “a plodder.” He’s not slow, he’s just not in a hurry. He does what’s right today, and twenty years later he’s still doing what’s right. He’s not out to grab hold of the next new thing or be credited for jaw-dropping innovation. He’s content to do the faithful thing that others have given up on, to show you that it can be done. When you’ve given up, quit, burned out and otherwise become of little use, Tom is still there, doing what he was doing when you started, keeping his hand to the plow and not looking back.

So last night, Grace Baptist received back a member they had disciplined 14 years ago. Read Timmy’s wonderful account. When you read that story, the heart of it is this: who did this drunk know- KNOW- he could call and who did that drunk KNOW would still be there, the same man with the same Gospel, more than a decade later? I’ll help you: it wasn’t the pastor on the billboard.

At most churches, if that desperate man had called the pastor of the church that he’d been baptized at, they would have had 4 pastors since, and the new guy would be too busy working on the problem of how to get a motorcycle into the service to stop and counsel that most famous of time wasters, a “repentant” alcoholic/addict. It would have wound up on a 21 year-old intern’s “to do” list between “be seen at Panera Bread. Twitter about it” and “buy new man purse.”

Tom stuck with his church through times when, as a Calvinistic pastor, the only things you heard about your church were criticisms from state and national voices about how you and your church were an insult to the concept of evangelism and missions. Tom never fired back in anger, he just came to work, nurtured Founders and Grace church, evangelized, started stunning ethnic work, sent missionaries overseas and kept at the task of preaching and pastoring. I notice that Tom is home a lot more than most of the names in the reformed resurgence. I assume that’s on purpose, and typical of Tom Ascol.

In the meantime, he kept his family, raised his kids, lived through enough hurricanes that you’d wonder what God was mad about, and then experienced- literally- a personal lightning strike that should have killed the rest of us. Tom wouldn’t die because he had things to do tomorrow. (I would have stopped ever preaching the book of Job after that, Tom.)

I’ll make a risky statement: I’ll bet Tom’s wanted to quit a few times, and didn’t. I’ll wager he’s had opportunities to leave the local church pastorate and do other things, but hasn’t. (Most people would make Founders full time, just to be impressive.) I’d be almost certain Tom has had opportunities at larger churches. But he’s stayed, to see it all through and to see it through to the good stuff, like what Timmy describes, that only happens in the years most people never see in ministry.

A lot of us are stuck in the evangelical wilderness. We long for a church that takes God seriously, and therefore takes this life seriously. We long for a pastor that is so dependably predictable that you know when you sit down you are going to hear about Jesus and the Gospel again. We long for a pastor that isn’t preaching the culture war, the denominational message-of-the-month, the latest church growth card trick. We want a man of God who could lead the church to put you out and still love you enough that 14 years later you’d call him and he’d bring you back.

But those guys and their churches are very rare. In my world, they are too far away to drive. Two hours to a good church doesn’t work for me. (I know you’re over there, Bill.) But for too many people with twenty churches five miles away, this pastor is still not there.

So take a moment and read about one faithful non-superstar servant who has, in the Kingdom, his denomination, his church and the life of one drunk, made a significant difference by “plodding” the Gospel in one place, in one calling, as long as God gives him opportunity. And despite the lightning strikes.

Thank you, Tom, for being one of those pastors I can always think about and remember that what scripture says about church and the men called to serve it isn’t describing the impossible in this world of ours. It’s just describing the rare and the seldom attempted.

Here’s Frank’s take on the matter. Expect uproarious applause. Trust me that Frank is serious about this. We wouldn’t even be friends if he hadn’t publicly called on me to resign the ministry several years ago.

So here’s my take. Expect Dan Phillips to denounce me as an apostate and Truth Unites and Divides to be banned from the comment thread.

The passage that seems to have the most bearing on what we are discussing is I Timothy 5: 19 Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 20 As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. 21 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. 22 Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure.

1. I wouldn’t argue that Driscoll’s language has not occasionally been sinful. I would say, however, that it falls into a category of behavior that is more a matter of a maturity issue than a blatant sin issue. It is foolish speech, not malicious speech. In Driscoll’s context, this kind of speech doesn’t create the kind of response it would in a church where most of us. That doesn’t justify it by any means, but it may explain why Driscoll tends to sin as he does with words that he ought to temper, while preachers in my town should stop putting American flags in the worship space and having “God and Country Sunday.” In other words, with certain kinds of character issues, context inevitably gets involved in how we perceive and apply what the Bible says.

2. That isn’t, however, an excuse. Driscoll has certainly been made aware that his language/humor was controversial and distracting from the Gospel. Who made him aware of this? I can’t be sure, but I’m of the impression that, at the least, the “Together for the Gospel” crew, especially John Piper, have frequently taken him to task for this. (By the way, when I post about Driscoll, angry feminists and other women have the most critical and condemning words for him because of what he says about complementarianism. Many of them feel he needs to repent, resign or go to jail.)

3. In Driscoll’s books and in his presentations on the use of words, it’s not hard to see that he doesn’t interpret the overall problem the same as John Macarthur et al do, i.e. Driscoll is unfit for ministry. Driscoll seems to feel it is 1) perhaps offensive and/or excessive to some, but not seriously damaging to the Gospel and 2) part of the way he has learned to communicate with the specific audience he sees as target: younger, “hip,” aware of the place of comedy, etc.

4. Those who have corrected Driscoll have probably pointed out that 1) this isn’t Christlike, 2) it does bring negative attention and 3) Mark has a responsibility to grow under the admonitions of other, more mature brothers who are his mentors. Who judges if he has complied with those correctives?

5. His elder board at Mars Hill. Were I to be an elder in Mark’s church, I would be more concerned with Mark’s teachability and perception of what it means to be accountable for continuing character flaws, even if they are “second level” and not disqualifying. I’d have some specifics I’d want him to be working on. I wouldn’t be as concerned with “public apologies,” which, in this case, have the scent of neo-reformed team sports about them.

6. I believe the passage in I Timothy is placing the correction of an elder with other elders, and that is where it should be with Mark. His elders are responsible for how they specify repentance in this situation. It is entirely possible that they have done so, and Driscoll’s recent sermons on humility have been part of how he has taken responsibility. I don’t know how his elders judge the infraction or his repentance, but I believe they are the “all” before whom Driscoll is primarily accountable.

7. I think that the correction and rebuke offered Driscoll by men like Macarthur, Frank Turk, Phil Johnson and some (not all) others, has been appropriate because Driscoll is a public figure, but they are not the elders to whom he is accountable. Again, it is Driscoll’s elders who are responsible for how he, as their pastor, responds to public rebuke. (I can imagine being rebuked by a visitor hearing me preach something controversial in our chapel, and I can imagine that person saying I should apologize for something I said. But it is my pastor, my school President and the board of trustees who evaluate and decide what the issue is and how I should respond.)

8. Overall, I’m more curious about the Mar’s Hill elders than I am Driscoll. I think he has said a lot of what he needs to say and I think he’s made satisfactory efforts at growth. Why he hasn’t been held more accountable, or made more accountable or required to be more specific is a question for his elders. Everyone else is simply expressing an opinion about what they don’t like, which can run the gamut from Bible translation to wardrobe to humor. Let the elders decide the seriousness of the offense and the specificity of the repentance.

9. Frank points out a recent column by John Piper as an example of what Driscoll has not done: be public and specific. There are two things to be noticed here. First, Piper is using the “apology” as a clarifying illustration in a column on what media he views and abstains from. He expressed what his conscience dictated was important in an apology, but it wasn’t in the context of public repentance as much as public writing. I don’t think Piper confesses all his flashes of temper publicly to his church or all his readers, nor should he. Secondly, ironically, Piper has apparently not told Driscoll to make a public apology, but has continued to counsel him privately, if their public accounts of their relationship are accurate. Both Piper and Driscoll have described their relationship in terms that I assume would include “I told him to apologize publicly and he won’t.” I think Piper sees this as a matter between Driscoll and his elders (that’s my guess btw) even though he sees the value of rebuke by non-Mars Hill elders.

10. I’d like Mark Driscoll to do a lot of things differently, and acknowledging some of the boneheaded things he’s said in public would be one of them, but then I’d like John Macarthur to apologize for a lot of things he’s written about charismatics and I’d like 20 other public ministers to apologize for things they’ve said and done. In my view, scripture gives us the right to speak, but formal accountability is between Driscoll and his elders. If they fail, then they should be called out by the critics as well.

The central insight I’m going to be bringing in my Sunday morning sermon tomorrow at the local Baptist church is an optional reading of Hebrews 12:1. Specifically, I want to suggest this: the “weight” that holds us back in the “race” is not always a “sin” as specifically defined by scripture.

Someone could legitimately say that “weight” and “sin” are a parallelism, and I would agree, but the parallelism may be because of the effect of hindering our ongoing life as a follower of Jesus.

There is no doubt that we are called to lay aside, i.e. repent of, sin. I would contend that we are admonished, with just as much authority, to lay aside whatever may hinder us that is not a matter of repenting of sin, but of giving up what is not necessary, what distracts us and what makes it difficult to carry out the calling and mission of the church.

It is interesting that we will give our preachers permission to preach against sin, but do they have permission to preach about the “weight” we insist on carrying?

The traditions? The methodologies? The cultural assumptions? The expected and accepted calendar? The attitudes toward personal evangelism? The attitudes towards money, comfort and personal investment?

The role of family? The expectations of significant others? The pattern of denominational methodology? The role of the church itself? The role of its leaders?

It strikes me as incredibly relevant to the current situation that we not just ask, if the mission hindered by gossip, but that we ask if the mission is hindered by exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it.

This occurred to me at Advance ‘09 when a speaker who shall remain nameless, but who likes to eat chicken wings, suggested that some churches needed to cancel Sunday School. The air temporarily vanished from the room. The speaker looked impishly provocative and I immediately got the point: he wasn’t suggesting you abandon Bible study or small groups, but what if the fact that your entire small group program is a dress up affair in a church building on Sunday morning is ONE of the reasons you aren’t doing the basics of your church’s mission?

What if your WAY of doing church is a weight. Not a sin.

What if your way of living the Christian life is too comfortable, too predictable, too safe and too “in the niche” of a tradition that answers all your questions?

What if your schedule is so full of things that aren’t sinful that you can’t do anything new this week for the Kingdom? What if your life at church is so full you already know everything you are ever going to do for Jesus? What if your life is so full of your current friends you could never make a new one?

What if you are investing so much in what is good that you can’t sacrifice or joyfully give away money for the Kingdom?

What if your good life, good morals, good witness are the reason you don’t have a life of discipleship filled with risk, impact and Kingdom adventures?

What if your problem isn’t the sin that clings so closely, but the weights you are so easily and comfortably carrying around in order to be a “good Christian?”

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