Gospel-Centered Resources from Midwestern Seminary
Ftc.co asks Will Standridge ‘How can student ministries implement theologically minded student ministry in the church?’.
Ftc.co asks Aaron Lumpkin ‘What does it mean to be “For the Church”?’.
Over the last ten years or so, I have had the joy—and the burden—of taking the lead on hiring dozens of ministry staff members at churches I’ve served. That means I’ve also had the difficult responsibility of wading through hundreds upon hundreds of ministry resumes and cover letters in search of great candidates.
Not long ago, a candidate reached out and asked me for specifics as to why he wasn’t selected, as well as for advice as to how he could better position himself the next time he applied for a position. The young man is to be commended for his willingness to learn—I have a hunch that will serve him well in ministry. Below is an adaptation of what I shared with him:
If you’re on the job hunt and not seeing much movement, don’t be discouraged. If we really believe that the Lord is sovereign and has a plan and purpose for our lives, we can trust Him with the timing of our next ministry assignment. Be sure to remain faithful right where you are until He moves you. Your current assignment is not wasted time—it’s preparation for what’s next.
One thing many candidates forget in their search is that qualifications often are not the differentiating factor between one candidate and the other. In this instance, for example, we hired someone who already attended our church. He understood our city, our culture, and our values. While other candidates had a stronger resume on paper, the relational fit and contextual familiarity tipped the scales. Remember that you don’t want to go somewhere you don’t fit, so take it as a kindness from the Lord when He keeps that from happening.
Your resume is usually your first impression, so make it count.
If you’re able to land an interview, be sure you’re well prepared for it. Take the time to do your homework on the church. Make sure you’ve looked over the job description or the church’s website and listened to a sermon or two so that you have a good feel for what the church is like and what they prioritize. When you answer questions, be thorough but do not ramble. Be prepared to answer questions with stories from your ministry experience. These should be real-life examples of things you’re proud of in your ministry, challenges you’ve faced, obstacles you’ve overcome, and problems you’ve solved. Stories like these help the person interviewing you know you’re up for the challenge.
Finally, make sure you’ve got someone in your corner throughout your search. This could be a mentor, your pastor, or a professor who stays in the loop with you as you apply and interview. Ask them to pray with you, encourage you, and speak truth into your life. If you’re connected to a seminary, most of them have student success offices designed to help you. Take advantage of those resources.
Remember, you can trust the Lord with your future. In His timing, He’ll make His plan known. In the meantime, prepare well, be faithful where you are, and rest in Him.
Lots of singles in the church. Fewer and fewer marriages. What gives? In this episode of the FTC Podcast, Jared Wilson and Ross Ferguson talk about their own observations and experienes in the “dating world” of the local church. Why are young men and women finding it difficult to find potential spouses? Why do they find it difficult sometimes to even talk to each other? What are the relational landmines in seeing the church as a dating pool? And what can singles actually do to enhance their potential for Christian marriage?
I work at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where we are unabashedly and full-throatedly “For the Church.” We have only this one note to strike to the glory of God. We don’t shy away from this. Along with this territory comes a necessary gravity towards training up steely, carnivorous preacher types. We’re cranking these men off the assembly line like gospel-built locomotives from a Chevy factory somewhere in Detroit. We’re catapulting them off our campus into the sin-dark corners of the earth, to ungospeled regions of North America, and into rural, dying churches. These are hardy, gospel-saturated, manly expository machines.
But what I’ve noticed over my time at Midwestern is that behind most of these expository machines is often an even more impressive wife! She’s often the steel spine of this dude! Usually she’s also a mom with kids in tow. What’s more, these amazing mom-wives have quite literally given their lives away for the gospel ministry, thus evidencing Jesus as their obvious Lord. They are the often unsung heroes of ministry. They have unflinchingly run headlong into the supposed storm of our culture, that is, what America calls an “identity crisis.” They hear regularly from feminists, family, culture, and even their own self-condemning inner voice, “Stay-at-home-mom, huh?” “So, why did I send you to college, then?” “Why would you waste your life like that?” “So you’re going to give up your career to wipe snotty noses!” “Don’t lose your dreams following your man around!”
If it’s true, and it is, that the first shall be last and the last first, there are going to be a lot of moms who wind up first in the ultimate line. My suspicion is that they’re going to have some fairly heavy crowns to cast before their Lord (cf. Revelation 4:10).
If you’ve ever had occasion to run into one of these selfless, majestic mom-creatures, you know they are no normal “moms.” It’s sort of like bumping into velvet steel! They live their lives by their Lord’s leave. They don’t know when or where they’ll receive their deployment orders, but go they will. These are disciples of Christ, gospel soldiers of which the world is not worthy. They don’t talk about following Jesus in theory. No, they do it every day in an Ephesians 5 way. They are blazing a trail, with their husband at the helm, and they’re eager to glorify God with all their minutes, pennies, and tears. They’re wicked smart—no mindless drones here. No, these are calculated, sharp, and cunning Kingdom women. They walk a road in life that is peppered with geographical moves, hard good-byes, and at times dark loneliness. But yet they abide! They stay the course.
This post is written in praise of these majestic mom-creatures. I salute you, mom! I raise my metaphorical Southern Baptist grape juice glass to you. You’re God’s beauteous, gospel-bearing feet that occupy his deployed boots-on-the-ground!
What I want to do in the rest of this post is to help you see the evangelistic and/or discipleship thread that streams through all the normalcy of everyday mom life. My aim is to transform in your mind what seems to be merely normal into the eternal. I am intentionally conflating the categories of evangelism and discipleship because in the theater of the home, they often collapse on themselves to the visible eye (Deuteronomy 6:7–9). The category would be most strongly expressed through “the fear of the Lord.” That is what you are doing, moms; you are teaching your children to fear the Lord above all else.
Mom, the raw materials of the Kingdom are sitting before you in all their diaper-bound, sticky-fingered, snot-prone glory. As you teach them to use a fork properly, to say “please,” to wipe their mouth, and not to burp aloud, you are laying the groundwork for Christian hospitality, that most important reality to the Christian faith, the field upon which Christians relate to one another in homes.
Hospitality is one of the most important means by which Christians are viewed as an attractively peculiar people in this world. It is how we care for one another. It is also how we bring a lost world into our homes to see a loving, well-ordered household. Hospitality is the oft-viewed theater in which the world becomes convinced that the gospel powerfully changes people. You, dear mom, are laying the groundwork for your child’s hospitality, not to mention that you are constantly doing hospitality yourself. Imagine if your child never learned these basic manners! They would be a social pariah. You may think what you are doing is the height of normalcy, but the Bible would say you are the mechanism of God’s great boon of discipleship.
What Deuteronomy 8 teaches us is that God brought Israel out into the desert, at least in part, to show them their utter dependence upon him as their guiding Shepherd. They had no food or water without God providing it. Not one ounce! This is likened to your feeding of the five children! They are helpless without you. They are not even equipped to fend for themselves without you. Ultimately, you are one of the many building blocks that God is using to teach your children their dependence upon him for everything. You may even be the most important building block in that particular foundation. They are helpless outside the help of the Lord. And you are the hinge point, daily, that stands between that knowledge of God and your child. You’re a living parable of the care and sustenance we have in the Father, as well as a parable of our utter reliance upon him. So, when you repeat to your baby one hundred times over, “Here comes the airplane!” you are evangelizing and discipling. You are teaching them the fear of the Lord. Just like Israel, it’s not really about the bread; it’s about God.
When you teach, or better yet, enforce, your children to adhere to a sleep schedule, you are upholding the long-prescribed practice of Sabbath rest. It’s through sleep that God gets at our finitude. Sleep is an acknowledgement of our humanness. It’s one of the ways we maintain the Creator/creature distinction. We are unarguably dependent upon the Lord. Set in the DNA of your child is the need for Sabbath, and you are helping them to see that. You are helping them to realize their absolute dependence upon their good Creator for provision and all things good.
The world has realities that are bigger than we are and that stand outside us. Realities such as these: Adultery brings utter destruction. Cops have the power to arrest you. There are consequences for your choices. If you ride your bike into the road, you can be killed. If you jump off the counter, it’s highly likely you’ll be maimed. When you teach your child to understand these realities using the word, the truth vehicle, “no,” you are evangelizing and discipling. Maybe it is more proper to say you are laying the groundwork for the Holy Spirit to convict and enliven (salvation), but evangelizing and discipling you are, nonetheless.
The concepts your children associate with “no” are the very foundational building blocks that God uses to help lost image-bearers grasp their need for his forgiveness. This is the fodder of regeneration. The realities that accompany the concept of “no” are often how God displays our need for Christ’s substitutionary cross work in our stead. You’re teaching them the Law, mom. You’re “doing Torah.” Don’t fall to the sin of minimizing your role. These children are the future inhabiters of the New Heavens and the New Earth! These are the future justice-makers, lawyers, teachers, counselors, preachers, moms, and dads. Take heart, dear struggling mom; you are pointing the way to the narrow road. You are indispensable as a means of God’s grace in your children’s lives.
Mom, you will be the precious touchpoint between your child and his or her reading the Word of God! The mechanics of learning to read are the eventual lens through which your child’s eyes will be opened to the basics of the world and to the magnificent universes of knowledge that rest in God, just waiting to be discovered. Imagine all the frontiers they’ll discover in God! You are the foundation of this. Imagine what they would miss if you didn’t teach them A, B, C, D, E…. Again, A, B, C, D, E. Never lose heart. God is using you to shape the inhabiters of eternity. Those little pudgy-faced gremlins are actually immortal, and you’ve been called before the foundation of the earth to be a tool in the hands of God to mint them into his image.
Mom, with every wiped nose, you stand in utter defiance of the abortion culture. Our age has tragically fallen into the sin of slaughtering image-bearers. We as a nation, and notion, have called light darkness. We have attempted to construe blessings as curses. But you, mom, stand against this every day. With every hug, every meal, every answered question, you are picketing Planned Parenthood. You don’t simply espouse sanctity of life; you live it! So teach the elementary principles of logic to those babies to the glory of God. Answer a thousand and one seemingly aimless questions to the glory of God. Adopt too many children to the glory of God. Clean up dropped bowls of food 37½ times to the glory of God. The world needs you to be the most glorious mother you can possibly be—the world needs your mothering, in a manner of speaking.
So, moms, you are a bright-shining city on a hill. You are the means by which God unleashes his compassion on the world. And by the grace of God and the love of Christ, you will stand resurrected before your Lord and Savior something different than you currently are, not that what you are isn’t already the stuff of amazement; but know that God is transforming you. God is discipling you as you disciple your children. He is running you through the gauntlet of motherhood with great purpose. He is changing you as your children change before your eyes. And your children are the next era of the Kingdom.
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Editor’s note: This article was originally published at For the Church on October 31, 2016.
Editor’s note: We’re celebrating 10 years of FTC.co this spring. The article below is one of the most read articles in our history, originally published on March 22, 2019. We’re thankful for our readers and for the many authors who have contributed to our mission to provide gospel-centered resources for the Church.
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Because of my work, I sit down regularly with single young women. Single young women who want nothing more than a wedding ring, the kids, the house, the whole lot. And mind you, their wishes are never wicked or wrong. What they desire is not evil. What they hope for isn’t silly. They are not glassy-eyed about their future. They are not sitting across from me wondering where Prince Charming is. They are faithful young women. Hard-working. Funny. Beautiful. Smart. And they have done well to steward what they have up to this point.
And yet, I see it. When the water is poured again and they lean back after a dish is served to their friends. When they take a breath and their shoulders slump a little. After they’ve told me all of they’ve said of their current life, their work, their time, their goals. They don’t want to say it, for fear that admitting it will make them look weak.
“I know it’s silly,” one girl said. “I know. But…” She hesitated, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I really just want to be married. To raise some kids. To take care of a home.” She’s almost embarrassed by the time she’s finished saying the sentiment. As if admitting it has made any impressive strength and wit she had fade away into a pile of proverbial laundry and dishes. As if she’s ashamed for wanting something so “trivial” and simple. “Is that silly? I mean, it’s really all I really want to do.”
We’ve gone so far down the road of feminism that we’ve forgotten how to proudly be feminine. You want to carry a child in your bones and lay down your life for them for more than 18 years? You want to lay down your life and learn to die to self for the rest of your life? You want to serve someone with all your heart, body, and soul? You want to master the art of cooking for a crowd and have clean clothes and end each day knowing that there’s a group of people who look to you as one of their anchors and rocks? You want to work your tired body from dawn to dusk for love?
How silly it is not. How trivial is no way to describe it.
I wish we loved the strength it takes for a woman to become a wife and a mother. We marvel at her physical strength when she births a child. But we forget what invisible strength she shows when she lays down her life for her home every day after that. Social media spends all its energy telling women to remember who they are, to fight for their sacred spaces, to become the women they want to be. All things that feel confusing when you’re holding a newborn baby and learning to forget your self-centeredness, to allow others into your personal space, and to become the woman that you are becoming and not who you thought you’d be.
I wish that as a culture we understood what happens in those four walls when two adults decide to sacrifice for one another, be good stewards of their money, welcome in guests, and raise a generation to know the heritage of the Lord. I wish we called it more than a contract, an agreement, or even a commitment to vows. I wish we called it holy, beautiful, other-worldly.
We’ve tried to make it easy. We’ve updated our lives with gadgets and gizmos aplenty. We’ve made our machines smarter. We’ve made our cleaning supplies more time efficient. We’ve scrubbed the hard work right out the door. We don’t even need to meal plan or grocery shop anymore. Fresh groceries can show up at our door, pre-measured, pre-planned, ready to go to the table within 30 minutes.
We’ve turned our properties into museums. Instead of well-loved they are well-liked on social media and we’ve forgotten how to create a home; instead we curate a scene for those who will never step foot through our door. We’ve replaced hard conversations with texts.
We’ve told husbands and wives that the primary goal of their marriage is their own happiness. We’ve sold them the lie that once it gets hard, tired, menial, once it gets weary, someone raises their voice, or someone says something they regret, that we can get out with a white flag that says, “This just isn’t for me anymore.”
We’ve made love about sex. And sex about self.
When a woman says she wants to make dinner for her family, we crack a joke about June Cleaver and we laugh because who wants to waste their time with that? When a woman says she wants to stay home and raise children, we give a curt smile and say, “But what do you really want to do with your life?” And should she decide to pursue that, other women will be the first to look down their noses at her, tell her she’s not adding anything, that she’s slowing down progress.
As if giving up your life for others isn’t an incredible thing. We applaud heroes on the battlefield, social justice workers on the borderlines, desperate souls who risk everything for the ones they love.
But marriage? Motherhood? Small living? Psh. *eye roll* It’s 2019, right?
As if the woman who chooses such things has given up. As if her internal engine doesn’t weary. As if she’s not feeling incredibly alone because all of her 9–5 friends have opted for happy hours and bursting bank accounts while she empties herself for souls who need every ounce of her life.
Children have become the last resort. The final hurrah for a marriage that spends years “finding itself.” Career trumps caretaker. Independence is king. Personal happiness above that insane idea of laying it all down.
This is not to say that those who can’t have children, don’t have children, or aren’t married are inherently wrong. I’m just wondering if we have to speak so condescendingly about those who have said the hard “Yes” to the humbling and long-term work of marriage and family. Can we stop acting like they’ve chosen a simple and silly life? Can we stop talking about children like they’re soul-sucking, dream-killing, money-grabbing leeches on society? Can we stop treating wives and moms with the eye-rolling disdain that says, “Only the simple-minded woman would choose such an outdated path”?
We all buy into this narrative so much that when a 21-year-old girl sits across the table from me and tells me that she wants to be a mother, she blushes and gives a thousand caveats as to why she knows it’s not the optimal choice.
And yet—here’s what I know to be true. I’m nearly 36. I’ve carried two children in these bones and I’ve nursed them, held them, and wept over them, and because of them, I’ve planned meals for more than 10 years now for hungry bellies and bottomless pits. I’ve had seasons of scratching the bottom of empty bank accounts and seasons where I’ve forgotten to worry about money at all. I’ve forgotten myself entirely and sometimes thought of myself only and always too much.
Everyone in their 30s is talking about a rebirth and I’m still learning how to die.
But the souls that move in bodies in and around my home? They are a legacy and an investment that I do not ever regret giving it all for. When I’m weary and feeling empty, when my life goals feel lifetimes away and my body isn’t the one I hoped I’d have, I can promise you that I wouldn’t give them up for a thousand trips around the world, a perfect waistline, or a name linked to fame.
The world can forget me, but they will not.
Last summer, while the kids chased fireflies and the men smoked pipes, while the bonfire’s flames licked the edge of the summer sky, my friend turned to me and said: “Do you ever feel like you found the secret to happiness?” Her long legs crossed, a toddler tucked on her lap, she smiled. “You know—you see all these people out there chasing happiness? Adventure? Purpose? And do you think we’ve found it? Right here in our simple homes, good husbands, these kids…” she trailed off.
“I do think we’ve found it. It’s all right here,” I nodded back.
So, my dear friends, as the poet Wendell Berry said:
“…every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.”
And don’t blush for saying that’s all you really wanted anyway.
Is there a particularly Christian way to approach sports? Does the Bible say anything about it? Beyond the typical warnings about idolatry and obsession, what good can Christians derive from athetlics and athletic competitions? In this episode of the FTC Podcast, Jared Wilson and Ross Ferguson discuss the importance and influence of sports, including the question about whether Christians should participate in sports like boxing and MMA.
Ftc.co asks John Marc Kohl ‘What is your favorite worship song and why?’.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well. (Psalm 139:14)
Psalm 139 ought to impress the weight and wonder of God upon your soul. In light of this psalm, churches should in turn feel the weight and wonder of their ministry to students. Let us take just a slice of this glory and meditate on verse 14, answering three questions: What does this verse mean, why does it matter, and what does it look like in your church’s student ministry?
First, consider the whole psalm. This is a psalm about wondering and pondering the magnificence of God. Specifically, David is marveling at God’s knowledge, His presence, and His creation.
In verses 1–6, David marvels that God knows everything about him. God knows his comings and goings, his working and resting, his acting and thinking. It is too wonderful for David. In verses 7–12, our psalmist wonders at God’s presence. There is nowhere David has been, is, or will be where God is not. David is never alone. God is in heaven and in the grave, in the sky with the birds and in the sea with the fish. God leads and holds. Not even darkness stops His presence. Finally, in verses 13–16, David punctuates these observations by wondering at how the Lord created him. It is God who formed him. It is God who thought of David, brought his parents together, knitted him in the womb, and watched his growth.
This is not a psalm about the magnificence of man but the magnificence of his Creator. It is the Creator’s magnificence that David so memorably praises in verse 14: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
We are fearfully made. Fearfully is an interesting word to use. But it is the same word that we ascribe to our relation to the Lord. We fear the Lord. This is a weighty thing. We are in awe of Him, in the same way we awe at how we were created.
Wonderfully made speaks to the uniqueness of our design. David marvels at how he was made as one of the people of God. He has been set apart as one of God’s chosen people.
This verse points to the image of God in us. We are all created in the image of God. We have been given souls that can have affections, minds that can practice wisdom, and wills that can do righteous deeds. We’ve been created to reflect the glory of God to the rest of creation.
This image uniquely gives us inherent dignity. We are valuable and worthy of being treated with respect because we are all little images of the Creator. His image gives everyone value, from the youngest to the oldest. In this way, God loves all people. They all reflect Him, whether dimly or brightly.
God is the Creator and sustainer of everything. Not a galaxy rotates in the universe without the instruction of the Lord. He spins the very universe on His finger and beholds all worlds and stars at once. He holds together the atoms that make up you and me. He sees every revolution of every electron that spins around every nucleus of every atom. He created the friendly dog and the majestic lion. He created the bustling trees and beautiful sunsets. He enjoys the sun setting continually on earth and on every other planet that exists with its sun. Yet of all these wonderful things, you and I are the crown of His creation. Humans. We bear His image, unlike everything else. You have intrinsic worth greater than any sunset or solar system. The students in your church have that same worth.
But at the same time, every other created thing in the universe obeys the voice of God. The only created things that rebel are the creatures that bear His image. We mar and distort the image with our sin. So, God in His wisdom, not desiring for us to stay that way, sent His Son. The perfect image. The radiance of His glory. The exact imprint of His nature.[1] His Son came and took on that image-bearing flesh. The true image takes on the reflection. He lived as we should and died as we should so that, through faith, our image might be restored to its true beauty.
So why does this psalm and the image of God matter for your student ministry? Because for the limited time that you have with them, you will have five or 500 broken image-bearers that need the image-restoring gospel. These students have worth that the world and even they themselves will try to blur and break. You have the gospel of life and light for them.
I want to impress the weight and wonder of the task on you.
First, if you are in Christ, you bear a restored image of God, and your students need to see that. Let whatever you do be done in holiness, love, and wonder. When you sing, sing in awe and fear of the Lord. When you pray, pray like you know the Lord hears and answers you. When you eat stale chips, drink flat Cokes, and play cringy youth group games, do it to the glory of God. When you speak, let your words be seasoned with glory.
Second, these students need the image-restoring gospel. Make sure they hear that gospel—that God is holy, they are not, Christ came to be what we could not be, and we can have Christ’s righteousness and forgiveness of sin if we repent and place our trust in Him and His work. The Lord has been with these students since the beginning. He knitted them together. He knew their names before they were conceived. He has providentially placed them in your care to hear the good news of Jesus. Do not waste that.
Reflect the Lord’s holiness. Reflect the Lord’s love. Reflect the Lord’s gospel.
That was the weight of your task. Now let me lighten it. Let me show you the wonder.
You can trust in the providence, wisdom, mercy, and grace of God. He is the one who does the life changing and soul saving. He lets us be a part of this process when we proclaim the gospel and build up the saints. So at the end of every Wednesday, school year, and church camp, you can sleep.
The Lord will care for these students after they leave your care. You are being entrusted with them for just a little bit. It is your privilege and responsibility. Be faithful and entrust the fruit to the Lord. His love is greater than your love. His grace is greater. His mercy is greater. I pray you minister this week with wonder and awe at God. Minister knowing that these students have been fearfully and wonderfully made. I pray you end each youth group gathering saying to the Lord, “Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
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[1] Hebrews 1:3.
Capitol Hill Baptist Church, located just blocks away from the center of American power, has a rich 150-year history. Its members have participated in significant world events, advocated for religious freedoms, and spoken out against the moral failings of the times. There’s no doubt this church has had a unique impact on evangelicalism from a significant location. But these lively characters and their unique experiences only tell part of this engaging narrative. On today’s episode of the FTC Podcast, Jared Wilson visits with Caleb Morell, author of A Light on the Hill, which tells the history and personal stories behind the influence Capitol Hill Baptist Church enjoys today.
