Free to Serve

The 9 Marks Workshop is Almost Here

Next Monday and Tuesday my friends from 9 Marks will be here in Atlanta teaching a 9 Marks workshop at Mount Vernon. 

9 Marks is a ministry that focuses on providing resources about the church mainly for pastors and church leaders. It started in DC, but I've run into so many people in Atlanta who know about the ministry and who appreciate it. 

The 9 Marks are pretty straightforward. Healthy churches are marked by 1) expositional preaching; 2) biblical theology; 3) a biblical understanding of the gospel; 4) a biblical understanding of conversion; 5) a biblical understanding of evangelism; 6) biblical church membership; 7) biblical church discipline; 8) biblical discipleship; and 9) biblical church leadership.

There are, of course, other things that must matter to a local church: missions, celebrating baptism and communion, prayer, etc. But these marks got singled out because they tend to be marks missing in so many churches today. 

I'm looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and thinking together about the church of the living God! Please pray for our time together.

Call to Service

Nate Palmer in his little book, Servanthood as Worship: The Privilege of Life in a Local Church makes a case for viewing service to others in the body of Christ as an indispensible part of the Christian life. It is demanding, rewarding, and God-glorifying. It is, as the title suggests, part of our worship of the living God. Palmer writes:

Often I prefer my own kingdom--the one where I am the object of worship and I get to define servanthood (usually as me serving me and others serving me). We always serve who we see as the king of our kingdom. That's why servanthood and worship are essentially the same thing.

Bu biblical service requires that we prefer others over ourselves, that we sacrifice willingly, giving time and energy that could have been used for personal benefit to benefit others. Biblical service calls us to direct our focus outward. In this we imitate Christ, who served others to the point of death. As I will emphasize throughout this book, serving God as a grateful response to the gospel is the calling of every Christian.

May God give us the grace we need to "direct our focus outward."