Boone’s Creek Annual Fall Conference

I would like to invite you all to our Boone’s Creek Annual Fall Conference on Saturday, September 23rd from 9:00 – 3:30.   The theme is “Taking Acts 1:8 Seriously:  Inspiring You To Reach Your Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Ends of the Earth.”  Jim Smith, Randy Foster, J.D. Payne, and David Sills will be the speakers.  It promises to be a blessed time in the Lord!

NO LiMiT Phase Two, Trinidad Missions Trip a go!

Last night at our Members (Business) Meeting, our church voted to prayerfully support our missions trips both to Covington, LA, and to Trinidad & Tobago. Our NO LiMiT Team (New Orleans, Louisiana, Missions Team) will go to Hope Church to help with construction and clean-up in the New Orleans area.  We are truly excited about this because we are hoping to go down over the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Again, in Trinidad we will be doing construction work on the Mt. Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church in Point Fortin.  A team of 4-6 of us will go, and we will hopefully have around $4000 for supplies so we can finish up the work there (God has already provided almost a $1000).

If there is any way you can help with these missions endeavors, feel free to comment, e-mail, or mail us at:

Boone’s Creek Baptist Church
ATTN:  NO LiMiT II/ Trinidad ‘07
185 N. Cleveland Rd.
Lexington, KY 40509

Possible missions trip to Trinidad in January ‘07 — please pray

God has placed a huge burden on my heart for the country of Trinidad and Tobago.  I believe that God has opened a great door for our church to do some construction work at the Mount Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church in Point Fortin from 23-31 January 2007.  The team will be called COMET 2007 (Christians On-Mission Engaging Trinidad).  Plus, I have been asked to do a Family Life Conference down there as well.

I’m asking you to pray for the following:

• Six people have already committed to go.  Please pray that God would raise the finances necessary:  Approx. $750 for plane tickets, plus another $100 for extra money for emergencies. (I must say, God has already provided the finances for three of the six to go — He’s already at work!)
• We are planning on tiling the church sanctuary, which we estimate will cost around $3000-3500.  Please pray that somehow, someway God will provide those finances.
• That hearts and lives would be changed by God’s sovereign grace — both in Trinidad and even some of our own guys.  Who knows what God might do through them?

I covet your prayers, but if you are able to help with our finances, please send whatever help you can to:

Boone’s Creek Baptist Church
ATTN:  COMET 2007
185 N. Cleveland Rd.
Lexington, KY 40509

Thank you and may God bless you!

Highly Questionable Methods

by Robert Reymond

“The problem in our day, which gives rise to highly questionable church growth methods, is twofold:

On the one hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in the message of the gospel. Even the evangelical church shows signs of losing confidence in the convincing and converting power of the gospel message. That is why increasing numbers of churches prefer sermons on family life and psychological health. We are being overtaken by what Os Guinness calls the managerial and therapeutic revolutions. The winning message, it seems, is the one that helps people to solve their temporal problems, improves their self-esteem and makes them feel good about themselves. In such a cultural climate, preaching on the law, sin and repentance, and the cross has all but disappeared, even in evangelical churches. The church has become “user friendly,” “consumer oriented,” and as a result evangelical churches are being inundated with “cheap grace” (Bonhoeffer). Today’s “gospel” is all too often a gospel without cost, without repentance, without commitment, without discipleship, and thus “another gospel” and accordingly no gospel at all, all traceable to the fact that this is how too many people today have come to believe that the church must be grown.

On the other hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in preaching as the means by which the gospel is to be spread. As a result, preaching is giving way in evangelical churches to multimedia presentations, drama, dance, “sharing times,” sermonettes, and “how to” devotionals. Preaching is being viewed increasingly as outdated and ineffective. Business techniques like telemarketing are now popular with the church growth movement. Churches so infected also look to the multiplication of programs to effect their growth. They sponsor conferences and seminars on every conceivable topic under the sun; they subdivide their congregations down into marrieds and singles, single parents and divorced, “thirty-something” and “twenty-something,” teens, unemployed, the child-abused and the chemically dependent, attempting to arrange programs for them all. And once a person joins such a church, conventional wisdom has it, the church and the minister must meet his every felt need. Accordingly, ministers have become managers, facilitators, and motivators—everything but heralds of the whole counsel of God—and this all because they have lost confidence in the preaching of God’s Word as the primary means for the growth of the church and the individual Christian.

What is the answer? A restored confidence in the Reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God in salvation!”

— Robert L. Reymond, in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith

Let’s Not Circle the Wagons, Church!

Christians take two different tracks when dealing with all things dealing with The DaVinci Code.  Some say, "We should not support it!  It's wrong and we need to tell people it's wrong."  Others say, "Read the book, watch the movie, and know what you're dealing with so you can engage the culture in a dialogue."

I confess, I'm in the second track and my mindset was vindicate in Great Clips of Frankfort, of all places.  Long overdue for a haircut and conducting some business in Frankfort today, I had a few minutes and stopped for a haircut.  I sat down in the chair and the worker asked me, "So, did you go to the movies this weekend?"  I said, "No, time wouldn't permit.  Why?"  She then started peppering me with information about The DaVinci Code.  She was hearing all sorts of things about it and said, "You know, it made me question the what I had been taught."  

Thankfully, I was able to answer some of her questions and put her mind to rest for the time being.   Yet, if I was that someone who said, "I'm a Christian and I just think that it's wrong and you shouldn't go see the movie because it's wrong," you may shut down the conversation before it even begins.  Yet, I was able to reassure her about the trustworthiness of the Scriptures, the fact that church has not been hiding everything under the sun, and that Jesus is who the Bible says He is, etc.

This movie is heresy, yes.  But it is also an opportunity to engage the culture in a conversation and to steer that conversation to the glories of Christ.

1 Peter 3:15-16
But in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; [16] yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

Where is Your Denomination Located?

Al Mohler has such a helpful blog entry on this issue.  The Glenmary Research Center has put together a map showing where our various denominations are represented across the country. 

Speaking for Southern Baptists, why are we clustered so much in the South and Southeast?  I mean, I know we are Southern Baptists, but shouldn't we have moved out a little more by now?  Mohler makes a point that the Pacific Northwest has the fewest church represented there — and it shows by how liberal they are politically and socially!

Sounds like a part of Samaria that we need to reach, eh?

ESV Outreach Ministry to Trinidad

In some senses, I feel as if I am a missionary to Trinidad, having been there doing missions work three times in the last three years and currently having in the works to do a Marriage and Family Conference in the South early next year, Lord willing.

I also feel as if I am an ESV apologist. I went exclusively to the ESV in teaching and preaching back in 2004. And thanks to the folks at Crossway, they have donated over 60 pew Bibles that I have taken to Trinidad for a church in Point Fortin to distribute and use in their times of worship.

So imagine my surprise when I received the latest edition of “The Standard Bearer E-News” from The Standard Bible Society of the English Standard Version outlining an ESV Outreach Ministry Initiative. In this edition, they relate how they recently partnered with PastorServe to distribute ESV Bibles in … you guessed it … Trinidad. Words cannot express how this thrills my heart that the ESV is making in-roads to these incredible people.

Continue

Updated Report from NO LiMiT Team, Day Two

Our NO LiMiT (New Orleans, Louisiana, Missions Team) gang finished up their second day of work.  You can read about their Kingdom work at http://www.boonescreekchurch.com/NoLimit .  Please keep this team in prayer.

NO LiMiT Team Report, Day #1

Six members of our NO LiMiT Team (New Orleans, Louisiana, Missions Team) began their work with Hope Church in Waldheim, Louisiana.  Here's the report from the team on their first day:

—

We all got such a blessing today!

The guys fixed part of a roof for a family who's home was hit by a couple trees during Katrina. (Actually, it's hard to find a home that wasn't hit by a tree in Katrina. ) The family actually lived in New Orleans prior to the hurricane. They stayed through the storm, and were fine…. until the levees broke. It was the flooding that destroyed their home. They were lucky that they had an old piece of property with a house here in Waldheim. There were 3 people living in the house. A brother and sister and their elderly mother. The sister was actually swept away by the flood waters and grabbed hold of a stop sign until her brother could come and rescue her. They were a very nice family. Please pray for Arthur and his family.

So what did the girls do while the guys were on the roof? We stacked wood from a tree that had been cut up, raked the front yard, and cleaned up the shingles that came off of the roof. We were working hard too!

It is about 6pm at the time of the email. Us gals are back "home" fixing supper. They guys have gone to put up a new pump house for another family. It is such a blessing to be able to do things to help these people, and they appreciate it so much. Please pray that our strength holds out and everyone stays healthy! Praise God for this wonderful opportunity!

In Christ,

NO LiMiT Mission Team

—-

Won't you please pray for them.  They will return to Lexington on Friday, April 7. 

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns" (Isaiah 52:7, ESV). 

Being On-Mission is a Non-Negotiable for the Church

Many of us in the evangelical world (especially amongst us Southern Baptists) have grown weary with ‘institutional church.’ In other words, we have grown disillusioned with church as an inward looking entity and … institution rather than an outward looking organism. This happens for various reasons which will be outlined later.

It is much easier for a church to simply ‘keep house’ and to get locked in to business as usual. And, if I may use another cliche, we simply must begin thinking outside of the box — all the while remaining true to the glorious doctrines of the blessed faith as outlined in the Scriptures.

Below are two links about those who are outside the box thinkers. The first is an article from the IMB about a family who returned ‘home’ to South Asia following the death of their eight-year-old son. Conventional wisdom says, “Stay in the States where its safe.” Read their story with delight and reflection!

The second one was forward to be from one of our members who, from what I gather, took a similar trip in South Asia a number of years ago — so this story is very near and dear to him. Again — outside the box ministry work.

Missionaries return ‘home’ following family tragedy.

Backpacking Girls Reach to the Ends of the Earth

Our church has and will be undertaking the Acts 1:8 Challenge that will help us become a worldwide missions center. Yesterday, we had our first “On Mission Team” meeting which will show us how to prepare, learn, pray, give, go, tell, send and multiply in fulfillment of this Acts 1:8 Challenge put forth by our Lord Jesus Himself.

Any outside the box thinkers out there when it comes to reaching your world? I’m convinced this is a mandate for our church:

Upward in worship
Inward in discipleship
Outward in ministry and missions.

For individuals, it is this. We are called to:

Spread the glory of God.
Strengthen the church.
Study His Word.
Share with the lost.

Just some thoughts.