For many years I have personally benefitted from the ministry of C.J. Mahaney. I remember several sermons that have shaped my life, including ones on the following subjects: people God killed, the cross, humility, and suffering from the book of Job. I have had the privilege of meeting him on a couple of occasions. Both in private and in public he has always struck me as being a man who is passionately in love with Jesus, eternally grateful to God for saving him, intensely aware of the grace of God in taking him from a life of sin and placing him into a public ministry that in his words is “better than he deserves.” I am also well aware that, despite certain key differences, Sovereign Grace is the group most often compared to Newfrontiers, especially by Americans. C. J. has always been extremely zealous to follow God personally, and sets himself exacting standards. So it is with sadness that I have to share the following announcement C. J. made on his blog today:

“Over the last few years some former pastors and leaders in Sovereign Grace have made charges against me and informed me about offenses they have with me as well as other leaders in Sovereign Grace. These charges are serious and they have been very grieving to read. These charges are not related to any immorality or financial impropriety, but this doesn’t minimize their serious nature, which include various expressions of pride, unentreatability, deceit, sinful judgment, and hypocrisy. . .

So here is what I am going to do. I’ve asked to take a leave of absence in order to give time to considering these charges, examine my heart, and receive the appropriate help from others. With the guidance of the SGM board, I would also hope to pursue reconciliation with former pastors of Sovereign Grace during this leave. I have stepped off the board and I will not be the President of Sovereign Grace Ministries during this period of examination and evaluation. . .

My friends, I would greatly appreciate your prayers as I continue to walk through this process. Please pray that God would give me the gift of sight where I have been blinded by my sin and others have been adversely affected by my sin. Pray that I will be convicted and experience godly sorrow resulting in reconciliation where necessary and adjustments to my heart and leadership. Thank you for praying in this way for me . . .

I have met with some and by God’s grace there has been reconciliation with men like Larry Tomczak (I wish I had recognized and repented of my sin against him years ago). This brings great joy to my soul. In other cases, appeals for mediation have thus far been declined, but I’m hopeful this process will facilitate further reconciliation. But beyond this, there are still issues that need to be addressed and fixed in our family of churches. . .” Read the rest of C.J.s statement

In response to all this, I would encourage us all:

1. To pray for CJ, and for all past and present members of the Sovereign Grace Family of churches at this difficult time.

2. Not to speculate unhelpfully about these matters online or offline. There is a word for that, gossip, and the Bible has some pretty specific things to say about those who gossip.

3. To be freshly aware of the frailty of all of us, and humbly recognize that we cannot point fingers of accusation towards others without recognising that we all stand in need of God’s grace. I thank God that he takes frail humans like you and I and uses them to bring glory to his name. Our faith is in him, not our human flesh.

May God take this situation and use it for his glory and for the good of those who love him.

Watch on Vimeo (works on iPhone or iPad)

This video says it all. And as a direct result, I bought myself an iPad on a business trip to the Newark area this week!

The blogger in me is fighting what I know I really should be doing! I MUST basically shut down on blogging and allow some pre-planned posts to take over on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I really will do this, but not until tomorrow! As I have repeatedly told you, I do need the extra time to focus on my book, and I want to free up my blog editor’s time to be able to read and comment on some of my early book drafts, too. So this really is the last post before the big lock-down.

I’d like to mention a parenting course that is coming up in England soon. I would love to have been able to go to this, as it is being run by my friends at the Sovereign Grace Church in Bristol, UK. But it’s right on top of my book deadline, so I know I just won’t be able to make it.

I will end with a video about the speaker, but the Tedd Tripp Parenting Conference itself will be held on Saturday March 21st, and it is running in Bristol. Follow the link to book-in, or find out more information.

In case the title of this post completely mystifys you and you have not heard of this group of Christians, I have written previously about them in “What is a Reformed Charismatic?”

The phrase “1,000 reformed charismatic churches” has been going around in my head on and off for awhile now. Because several different applications of that number are running through my mind, I thought I’d share each of them with you here.

The first thought I had was simply this: although often considered to be a small minority, the number of reformed charismatics is increasing. I therefore wondered if there are now 1,000 reformed charismatic churches around the world? I suspect there must be. According to my interview with Terry Virgo, Newfrontiers is now nearing 600 churches, so surely there must be at least 1,000 if you add to that Sovereign Grace Ministries, Acts 29, and of course, other individual churches and networks, some of which, no doubt, I have not yet even heard about. (Incidentally, I’d particularly like to hear about any of you out there who go to a reformed charismatic church that isn’t part of one of the three groups I just mentioned—drop me an e-mail at adrian.warnock@gmail.com.)

We probably can agree that there must be at least 1,000 reformed charismatic churches in the world. But are there 1,000 reformed charismatic churches in any individual country in the world? I doubt it very much. I am certain we don’t have 1,000 such churches here in there UK. I would be very surprised indeed if there were that number in the USA.

But why do I mention 1,000 reformed charismatic churches when it comes to an individual country like the USA or the UK? In the UK, Newfrontiers now has 220 churches, which because we have 60 million people, works out to one church per 270,000 people. So, along with other groups, we have made some small impact, although surely there is still much work for us to do, even in the UK. But here is where it gets interesting. A church for every 270,000 people in the USA would work out to aproximately 1,000 churches. So I guess we have still further to go in America. I suspect, however, that there are many reformed charismatic churches in the USA which are not part of any network with which I’m familiar.

But the number 1,000 is featured in other ways as well. The Acts 29 Network’s audacious goal is to plant 1,000 churches themselves over twenty years. I fully expect them to reach that goal given their current rate of growth. Also, a number of years ago a prophetic word led Newfrontiers in the UK to dare to believe God for 1,000 churches in our own nation. Within Newfrontiers meetings we often hear the challenging goal for church planting and growing large churches — “1,000 churches and churches of 1,000 people.”

Do we need lots of reformed charismatic churches? I believe we do. Firstly, we need reformed charismatic churches to show Christians that there really is a third option between arid intellectualism and brainless experiential showmanship. It’s not that the caricatures we tend to make of both cessationists and charismatics are entirely accurate; it’s just that churches that are unashamedly both reformed and charismatic can give confidence to others to make that plunge, or at least ensure they do not meet the caricature defining their end of the spectrum. I believe that it is a good thing to have different churches in any given town that can provoke each other and learn from one another.

But I also believe that reformed charismatic churches are often uniquely placed to become genuinely missional churches that can reach out and grow largely by salvation. We live in a culture that has, for the most part, turned its back on traditional church. Why shouldn’t we offer the world a church whose methods, music, style, and experience are totally up-to-date, but where the message remains old-fashioned and traditional in the sense of being solidly biblical?

One man with a vision to plant churches that will affect thousands of people is John Lanferman. He speaks of having on his laptop a list of the top 100 cities of the USA where 87 per cent of the people live. The cry of his heart is that 100 reproducing missional reformed charismatic churches be planted by Newfrontiers USA in those cities. Here’s what he said about it in an interview with me. I had asked him what a missional church was:

“A church that understands that it exists for the express purpose of carrying the gospel to the next door neighbor, to the person in the next block, to the person in the next city, state, and nation, and they exist for the purpose of being carriers of the gospel. So they are involved, not only in proclamation, but they are involved in changing the whole culture of a community. They would be people who would be involved in cross-cultural evangelism. They would be people who would be involved in changing the social justice—be involved in that ministry to the poor—so they have a desire to see the whole community that they are involved with, the towns they are involved with, changed and made into a kingdom community. It’s people who understand, “We do not exist for ourselves, but we exist for them.” So the way we spend our money, the way we staff our churches, the way our churches feel, the way they operate, have that outward appeal. And it’s a God-centered approach to humanity rather than an inward, “What about me and my needs?” It’s a man-centered approach . . . If we can get outstanding churches in each of these 100 large cities, and out from that, begin to reproduce ourselves—because I’m fanatical on reproducing churches. We must not just plant churches, but we [want to] see churches that view themselves as reproducing churches multiply themselves, raise up leaders, give themselves away, spread out in the communities and the nations beyond.”

— John Lanferman

Here is a list of those 100 cities. With the new sense of urgency in our movement following the Brighton conference, you could be finding a reformed charismatic church starting near you sooner than you think if you live in one of them. I would be only too happy to pass e-mails on to the relevant people if YOU live in one of these cities and would like to play a part in seeing this vision come to fruition. Attending one of our USA conferences would be a good first step.
Please join me in mentioning each of these cities before the Lord in prayer as you finish reading this post. May each of them soon have a reformed charismatic church. Actually, most of them will need more than one church given their size. This table shows three columns—the city, its state, and the population. In the last column, I will also gradually add links to Newfrontiers churches and church plants in these cities:

Source:
Wikipedia—List of United States Cities by Population

Today I visited Metro Life Church in Orlando, which is part of Sovereign Grace Ministries. This is the home church of blogger, Jesse Phillips, and is led by Danny Jones, Senior Pastor, who is a part of SGM’s apostolic team.

The venue was very nice, and as the worship began I felt very comfortable, having been warmly welcomed. The worship time was upbeat, and the modern songs were carefully chosen for their rich theological content. There were several prophetic words—given mostly in the first person rather than reported in the “I feel God may be saying” style. There was a time of prayer ministry following one of these. Individualized prayers were offered and hands were laid on a number who responded to a call to acknowledge they were battling against fear in their lives.

Benny Phillips, Executive Pastor at Metro Life and father of Jesse, preached on Mark 4:26-29 on the way in which the gospel works progressively, slowly, but unstoppably. Benny explained that the Word of God is a seed that is doing the work. It can take years, but will produce fruit. Sometimes in our lives a period of harvest comes suddenly, but will be the result of years of faithfulness to God’s Word.

He highlighted the fact that God’s methods are different than ours, and that his glorious future victory has implications for the here and now. He shared the following quote, which explains this well.

“The kingdom which is to come . . . has, in fact, entered into the world in advance in a hidden form to work secretly within and among men.”

— George E. Ladd

He applied this to both our own personal lives and to the spread of the gospel evangelistically. He then drove home two questions: “What kind of soil are you?” and “Is the seed in you?” He argued that if the answers to both questions are correct, there is a guarantee that fruit will indeed be produced. The Word of God will permeate and have its effect. God’s intent is our salvation and our sanctification. We have to be patient like the farmer who sows the seed and waits for it to do its work. It is God’s miraculous work to build a kingdom into our own heart.

“The Lord is not slow to fullfill his purpose as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

No. 15 on the list of most-read posts on this blog appeared on August 22, 2007, and announced a major gift from Sovereign Grace Ministries to the global Church. Their vast collection of audio messages are now available online for free. If you have not already taken time to explore this treasure trove, shame on you! In order to encourage you to check out this fantastic collection, the post is reprinted here in its entirety:

Carolyn McCulley just alerted us to the fact that the entire collection of Sovereign Grace Ministries mp3 messages have been made completely free to download. Carolyn was too modest to mention that her own talks are included, as well as a number of other ladies. Get browsing, and if you have an iPod, you might need to consider getting a bigger one! This is a phenomenal resource, as you can see by the following list of speakers with messages available:

Randy Alcorn, Mark Altrogge, Christine Bass, Ken Boer, Robin Boisvert, Gary Bowers, Mike Bradshaw, Mike Bullmore, John Butler, Craig Cabaniss, Solomon Campbell, Kristin Chesemore, Nancy Chouinard, Mickey Connolly, Steve Cook, Vikki Cook, Brent Detwiler, Jenny Detwiler, Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Bob Donohue, Jim Donohue, Andy Farmer, Rick Gamache, Pete Greasley, Wayne Grudem, Joshua Harris, Dave Harvey, Kimm Harvey, Eric Hughes, Danny Jones, Bob Kauflin, Bill Kittrell Grant Layman, John Loftness, Marty Machowski, Carolyn Mahaney, C. J. Mahaney, Janelle Mahaney-Bradshaw, John MacArthur, Kenneth Maresco, Carolyn McCulley, Mark Mitchell, Albert Mohler, Mark Mullery, Aron Osborne, Jon Payne, John Piper, David Powlison, Mark Prater, Jeff Purswell, Michael Ramsden, Charlotte Richardson, Trey Richardson, Ken Sande, Phil Sasser, Pat Sczebel, Janis Shank, Steve Shank, Chris Silard, Eric Simmons, R. C. Sproul, Carl Taylor, Justin Taylor, Stuart Townend, Eric Turbedsky, Todd Twining, Terry Virgo, Bruce Ware, Darryl Wenger, Nicole Whitacre, Dave Wilcox

UPDATE
In January 2008, the following post was identified as the 15th all-time most popular post with readers of this blog. The 16th most-read post asked my readers to share a list of their favorite well-known living preachers.

In the post below I announced a major gift from Sovereign Grace Ministries to the global Church. Their vast collection of audio messages are now available online and are completely free to dowload. If you haven’t already taken time to explore this treasure trove, shame on you!

***************

Carolyn McCulley just alerted us to the fact that the entire collection of Sovereign Grace Ministries mp3 messages have been made completely free to download. Carolyn was too modest to mention that her own talks are included, as well as a number of other ladies. Get browsing, and if you have an iPod, you might need to consider getting a bigger one! This is a phenomenal resource, as you can see by the following list of speakers with messages available:

Randy Alcorn, Mark Altrogge, Christine Bass, Ken Boer, Robin Boisvert, Gary Bowers, Mike Bradshaw, Mike Bullmore, John Butler, Craig Cabaniss, Solomon Campbell, Kristin Chesemore, Nancy Chouinard, Mickey Connolly, Steve Cook, Vikki Cook, Brent Detwiler, Jenny Detwiler, Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Bob Donohue, Jim Donohue, Andy Farmer, Rick Gamache, Pete Greasley, Wayne Grudem, Joshua Harris, Dave Harvey, Kimm Harvey, Eric Hughes, Danny Jones, Bob Kauflin, Bill Kittrell Grant Layman, John Loftness, Marty Machowski, Carolyn Mahaney, C. J. Mahaney, Janelle Mahaney-Bradshaw, John MacArthur, Kenneth Maresco, Carolyn McCulley, Mark Mitchell, Albert Mohler, Mark Mullery, Aron Osborne, Jon Payne, John Piper, David Powlison, Mark Prater, Jeff Purswell, Michael Ramsden, Charlotte Richardson, Trey Richardson, Ken Sande, Phil Sasser, Pat Sczebel, Janis Shank, Steve Shank, Chris Silard, Eric Simmons, R. C. Sproul, Carl Taylor, Justin Taylor, Stuart Townend, Eric Turbedsky, Todd Twining, Terry Virgo, Bruce Ware, Darryl Wenger, Nicole Whitacre, Dave Wilcox

Tim Challies has served us all so well this year with his live-blogging of many of the major US reformed conferences. He has come to the end of a long spring season of live-blogging and posted reflections and comparisons of the various conferences. Here is a list of the conferences he has blogged the past few years, and it’s impressive:

Desiring God Conference 2005
Desiring God Conference 2006
Ligonier Conference 2007
New Attitude 2007
Resolved 2007
Shepherd’s Conference 2006
Shepherd’s Conference 2007
The Basics Conference 2007
Together for the Gospel 2006
Twin Lakes Conference
WorshipGod06 Conference

I will share some quotes from Tim and coverage from others of the most recent of these conferences — New Attitude — in a moment, but before I do, I want to highlight two more conferences — one that occurred, but which Tim didn’t attend, and the other that I am delighted to be attending in just a few weeks.

GOSPEL COALITION
What happened at this conference? The Gospel Coalition foundation document has been circulated online (I found my copy linked from Justin Taylor). Justin also posted some great live blogging notes he took on each of the sessions, but the audio has not yet been posted. The program looks awesome – Piper on The Triumph of the Gospel, Carson on Defining the Coalition, Sandy Wilson on Christ and Culture, Lorrits on Passing on the Gospel, and Tim Keller on Gospel Centered Ministry.

Together On A Mission (TOAM 07)

I will be live blogging this newfrontiers conference taking place in Brighton from 10th to 13th July. If you can get the time off then make sure you get your booking in there whilst there is still some space. If you are planning to be there let me know and perhaps we can meet up!

————

Now back to New Attitude. The requests for free audio downloads fried the Sovereign Grace store, so they have now made them available to download without registration.

Here are some quotes from Challies coverage of the conference

“Piper said that God’s saving love is His commitment to do everything that must be done, no matter the cost, to make Himself the everlasting and all-satisfying treasure of sinners. The link with this message is that when we see what had to be done so that God could make Himself the treasure of fallen sinners, this determines what kind of obedience pleases or displeases God. If you see what He did at Calvary, you will know two kinds of obedience that God cannot abide and two kinds of corresponding obedience that He loves and delights in. What God did through Christ to make Christians treasures Him governs the kind of obedience that pleases and displeases Him.

Here are the two kinds of obedience God hates. The first kind of obedience that God abominates because of the work He did in Christ to make Himself the treasure of sinners is obedience offered to Him as grounds of our justification. If you take your obedience to the Word of God and commend it to God as the basis of why He should count you as righteous He hates that obedience because it usurps the place of His Son’s obedience. If you come up with obedience that nullifies the death of His Son He will not accept it.

The second kind of obedience God hates is obedience that conceives of itself as payback for God’s grace. The reason He cannot abide this obedience is because what Christ did in order to make God our everlasting treasure was to provide a rock solid ground and guarantee of all future grace including the grace that includes our obedience.” John Piper

“..when I go to conferences I often challenge whoever accompanies me to guess how long it will take before we sing “In Christ Alone.” We usually guess by sessions (i.e. “I guess it will be in the third worship session” or “I guess it will be in the fifth worship session.”). It took us until the fifth worship session at this conference, but that has now given this song the distinction of being the only one that has been sung at each of the six conferences I’ve attended this year.” Tim Challies

“My heart typically wants to define the pleasure without examining my motives. We need to put the general issues aside and look at motive. We need to ask ourselves the “why” questions because the key to gray matters is asking about motives. Your motive is critical to discernment. You often require the help of others to see motives. If you’re submitted to God and are in a local church, you have these types of people who can test your wisdom and your discernment.” Eric Simmons

There is much more where that came from, but I will leave you to find it for yourselves!

Having visited this church on Sunday, I can see why C.J. frequently describes his home church as “the dearest place on earth.” Somehow I suspect if I, too, had been a part of this church for decades, then I would feel the same way. It was a real joy just to be able to pose as “guests” on a fairly typical Sunday morning, and even get to observe some baptisms.

I know some of you will want to know what the church was like. Well, it is hard to put into words. What I can say is that their commitment to the Bible and pursuing the active presence of God was clearly reflected in the service. Their bookshop is probably the best quality Christian bookstore in the world — their careful selection of books means every resource in there seems like it is guaranteed to feed your soul. Their facility is beautifully designed and well cared for.

I want to pass on a big thank you to all the people from Covenant Life Church who have been so kind to me. This is a church which is characterised by incredible humility, gentleness, generosity, and warmth. I did have the advantage of knowing a few of these folk before, of course (in some cases purely online) — but every single person who shook my hand at the church welcomed me in an amazing way. It was great to be among the family of God.

I believe that the global Church has much to learn from these people. I certainly learnt a lot myself this weekend, and the memories will remain with me for years to come.