Here’s the deal; between work, life, & ministries, we have to put The Modern Post on hold indefinitely.

But, you can still keep up with us individually.

Ralph is a graphic designer, and is training to be a pastor and on the Uganda team at Rockharbor Church.

Dustin is a singer by trade, as well as leads worship and the college group at his church.

Nick is on the Media & Communications team at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is also a deacon and leads a community group.

We hope our posts have pointed you to Jesus. We look forward to picking this up again when the time is right.

Gratefully,

TMP

When you see the word “preacher” below, feel free to plug in your role(s) - are you a husband responsible for leading his family, a parent responsible for teaching your children, a baseball coach, a community group or Bible study leader, a high school teacher, or a Christian who wants to read their Bible better?

“A preacher should be a logician and a rhetorician, that is, he must be able to teach, and to admonish; when he preaches touching an article, he must, first distinguish it. Secondly, he must define, describe, and show what it is. Thirdly, he must produces sentences out of the Scriptures, therewith to prove and strengthen it. Fourthly, he must, with examples, explain and declare it. Fifthly, he must adorn it with similitudes; and, lastly, he must admonish and rouse up the lazy, earnestly reprove all the disobedient, all false doctrine, and the authors thereof; yet, not out of malice and envy, but only to God’s honor, and the profit and saving health of the people.”

-Martin Luther, Table Talk, pg. 264

There is an important but rarely-highlighted aspect of what we do at Mars Hill Church; worship music. Most people are familiar with Mark Driscoll’s heavy, engaging, and theological preaching but what they don’t usually get to see from outside our walls is how the preaching is complemented with worship music that reflects those same aspects. Since working here, I’ve loved observing how the bands write songs and arrange sets for Sundays that are theologically unified, stylistically diverse, musically excellent, and God-centered.

The video above is “Jesus Paid It All” from our Good Friday service.

(posted by Nick)

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In the last few years many people within the faith have critiqued Christianity - more in particular evangelicalism - for being more about ‘what they are against than what they are for’. There is some truth in that. It is always dangerous when a political party, social activism, or a cause becomes more important than the Gospel.

But at the same time, we do have to draw some lines in the sand. It’s not enough to be for ‘love’ without defining what we mean by that. It’s not enough to be for ‘community’ without defining what we mean by that. Sadly, in some cases it’s not enough to be for Jesus without defining what we mean by that. I came across these thoughts from Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones’ What is an Evangelical, written in the middle of the last century.

One of the first signs that a man is ceasing to be truly evangelical is that he ceases to be concerned about negatives, and keeps saying, We must always be positive. I will give you a striking example of this in a man whose name is familiar to most of you, and some of whose books you have read. This is what he has written recently: `Whether a person is an evangelical is to be settled by reference to how he stands with respect to six points’, which he then enumerates. His definition is by reference only to what a person is for rather than to what he is against. He goes on: `What a man is, or is not, against may show him to be a muddled or negligent or inconsistent evangelical, but you may not deny his right to call himself an evangelical while he maintains these principles as the basis of his Christian position.’

Now that is the kind of statement which I would strongly contend against. I believe it is quite wrong. The argument which says that you must always be positive, that you must not define the man in terms of what he is against, as well as what he is for, misses the subtlety of the danger.

What do you think; is it enough to positively state what we are for?

(posted by NDMB)

Why You Can’t Be The Gospel is another clip from the interview I did with Dr. Michael Horton for The Resurgence. The original post and series are over at The Resurgence.

Matt Chandler on making the Gospel explicit, not assumed. Please excuse the hyper-color background that Southeastern Seminary chose.

(via Justin Taylor)

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Want a tip on how to read your Bible well? View it through this lens.

Leading a small group? Try to lead people to see their Bibles like this.

Looking for a good church? Find a pastor who can say and do this and a people who want to.

It’s all about Jesus.

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Luke 24

(posted by NDMB)

It’s great to be reminded of how much is packed into two verses you might otherwise glaze over. How often do we do any of these?

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”—1 Corinthians 15:1-2

• preach it
• hear it preached
• deliver it
• receive it
• believe it
• be saved by it
• remember it
• remind others of it
• stand in it
• hold fast to it

Thanks to Justin Taylor for posting this.

(Posted by NDMB)

Click the title to see the full article.

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel. The basic concepts of the gospel — sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife — are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to ‘think like a missionary’—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic ‘mental furniture’ to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

—J. Cambell White

(via John Piper)