FREE The Gospel Coalition Network from The City NOW OPEN

I can exclusively announce that the all-new and FREE Gospel Coalition Network website opened just a few minutes ago. The kind people running it have offered blog readers like you the chance to be first in line to join.
If you already know what this is all about, then feel free to just follow one of the links below depending on which continent you're on, since this genuinely is a global offer. Don't worry, you will have access to the whole community no matter where you live. Then, do feel free to mention this on your own blog, or view my profile and add me to your contacts to follow my updates. You can also join a group to discuss the resurrection and help me choose my book cover!
To join, simply follow the links:
- North America
- South America
- Europe
- Asia
- Africa
- Australia (and the rest of the Pacific)
If you love the old old gospel, then you are very likely to find yourself in agreement with the vision of the Gospel Coalition. Their introduction begins:
"We are a fellowship of evangelical churches deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures. We have become deeply concerned about some movements within traditional evangelicalism that seem to be diminishing the church’s life and leading us away from our historic beliefs and practices. . . These movements have led to the easy abandonment of both biblical truth and the transformed living mandated by our historic faith. We not only hear of these influences, we see their effects. We have committed ourselves to invigorating churches with new hope and compelling joy based on the promises received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. . ."There is also a Confessional Statement and a Theological Vision For Ministry which are both well written documents worthy of careful study. I uphold their principles without reservation. The network allows me and many others like me to publicly declare our agreement with those ideas.
The Gospel Coalition is running their second biannual national conference next week where there will be a live webcast, but they are also rapidly developing into the umbrella organization for those who still hold to the central tenets of the Christian faith, certainly from among the Reformed wing of the church.
The Gospel Coalition Network (TGCN) is a growing fellowship of Christian churches, organizations, and individuals who are committed to a certain kind of ministry—that which is biblically-faithful and gospel-centered. There really is a new unity arising around the gospel. This includes a broad range of pastors, churches, and Christian leaders. I joined the group a little while back.
The group's council members can be seen online. If you want to show your allegiance to Jesus' unchanging gospel as expressed by these people, your agreement with the values the documents portray, and have an opportunity to network with and learn from other like-minded people, then this is the place for you! I understand that in the future a lot of great content will be available exclusively through the network.The technology is, in fact, a FREE version of "The City," which was developed at Mars Hill Church and is designed to be a church community building and administrative tool. Whenever this is spoken about, the thrust behind it is to build real community, not just an online "virtual" community. Thus, in the life of Mars Hill Church it is where people connect to small groups, interact with each other, share prayer requests, share practical needs, and many other things.
In the future, other churches will be able to purchase The City for use in their own congregations as it has been bought by Zondervan and is being further developed. This Gospel Coalition Network will also, therefore, give you a chance to begin to get a feel for what is possible with this tool, and may help you decide whether it is suitable for your church.
If you are on twitter, you can follow the Gospel Coalition Network and The City to keep up with future developments. If you need help, email help@onthecity.org
Labels: 9 Marks, Acts29 Network, Conservative Evangelicalism, Desiring God, Don Carson, Gospel Coalition, John Piper, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll, Neoliberalism, NWA09, Sovereign Grace, T4G

Today I want to highlight one of the sermons in his series on the new birth - 
I know that 98% of you have televisions, and in 1971 the average adult in America watched 23 hours a week. I believe John Stott is right in his new book on preaching when he says that lengthy exposure to television tends to produce physical laziness, intellectual flabbiness, emotional exhaustion, psychological confusion, and moral disorientation. What this means for us preachers (especially me) is that we must improve our ability to communicate effectively and hold attention with no antics, no stringed orchestras, no violence, and no sex. But it does not mean that we can abandon our calling to preach the whole counsel of God. And therefore it should be expected that preaching will sometimes be the most demanding thing you hear all week. I can’t see how it would be otherwise, unless I make easy what the apostles couldn’t."


We will not die apart from God's gracious decree for his children.
But forgiveness and cleansing is not enough. I need to be new. I need to be transformed. I need life. I need a new way of seeing and thinking and valuing. That’s why Ezekiel speaks of a new heart and a new spirit in verse 26 and 27: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
The life of the godly is not an Interstate through Nebraska, but a state road through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee. There are rock slides and precipices and dark mists and bears and slippery curves and hairpin turns that make you go backwards in order to go forwards. But all along this hazardous, twisted road that doesn't let you see very far ahead there are frequent signs that say, "The best is yet to come." And at the bottom right corner written with an unmistakable hand are the words, "As I live, says the Lord!"



When it comes to praying for things, besides what’s in the text, I pray in concentric circles. The most needy person I know is me. Therefore I pray about me first, because if I can’t be fixed, I won’t fix anybody. I won’t bless my wife or children or the Church. So I pray about this soul and my passion for God here, and then I move out to my wife and my children. I pray for them about whatever was in the text. Then I move out to my elders and my staff, and I name all the staff every day and our elders. And then I move out to the church, and move out to the city, and the nations. That’s the way I pray. And that can fill up a lot of time as God brings different things. I use helps. I have lists. I have lists of the names because I can’t even remember the names of 34 elders sometimes, and I have to say those. And then I use things like Operation World to pray for the nations. I keep it on my computer. I keep it in the book beside my old prayer bench at home.
A combination of three things, I would think, is what a pastor would want.
He mentioned to me that he regularly walks away from his events feeling that he’s blown it, which made me feel better, because I don’t think you can ever quite know what God’s doing. At the times that I have felt bleakest about the way I did what I was supposed to do, others have testified to being helped. And the times I felt liberated, free, engaged — Did anything happen in them rather than just in me? So, I’m very suspicious about the way I feel about my preaching. I doubt myself regularly that my assessment of what just happened is accurate. Which helps me and hurts me. It means I never feel very excited about what I’ve just done, and it means I don’t fall out the bottom because I say, “Well, God can do what he wants to do. You know, Balaam’s ass can accomplish what he wants, so he might use that, even though I felt terrible about it. So I’m a lousy judge when it comes to saying, “Was there a presence of God, or was there an anointing, or was there an effect?”
Father, we lean on you for words that would come to our mind that might be helpful or useful to other folks. So, for the sake of your name and for the good of others, we ask that you would cause us not to go down any rabbit trails that would be unhelpful, to waste our time, or spin our wheels. And we ask that you would guard us from error or pride or anything that would be dishonoring to Jesus or harmful to the Church. And so draw us into a conversation that will be edifying, I pray, and an honor to the Lord Jesus. We ask this is his name. Amen.
I don’t know what I’m . . . I don’t know what it is, but I mean, I’m looking around in here during that kind of worship and I’m expecting a great deal more engagement than I’m getting, so I just kind of adjust my expectations to the kind of human being I’m dealing with (Adrian laughing), and if I’m at a more, you know, lively place, I’ll expect that. Here I’m pleased to settle in with my expectations kind of in the middle, and it’s been good!









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Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone. On the cross Christ endured for us all the punishment required of us because of our sin. And in order that God, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever, Christ has performed for us in his perfect obedience to God all that God required of us.
Many of the opponents of the doctrine of justification and penal substitution criticize us for not being as interested in the resurrection as the cross. I increasingly think that it is not so fair to accuse most evangelical theologians of not having a place for the resurrection in our system of beliefs. I do feel, however, that we perhaps under-emphasize the resurrection at times.-762464.jpg)



