Ethereal Thought Train Summer Review
Posted by Todd Engstrom in links, review on August 28, 2009
As summer winds down, I figured I’d do some highlighting of the blog over the past few months. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites and yours:
- The 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry | Innovation – This post contains most of my responses to Steve Lutz’s post on the 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry.
- Discipleship and Ministry – This post was my thoughts on maintaining faithful discipleship while you feel pressure for ministry.
- College Ministers and Adoption – This post is my dream that College Ministers/Pastors would create a culture of adoption in the coming generation.
- Book Review | Total Church, Book Review | Adopted for Life, Book Review | Vintage Church – Book Reviews from my summer reading.
Let me know in the comments if there was another post that you liked!
Benefit for Missionaries to Sudan
Posted by Todd Engstrom in missions, personal on August 27, 2009
Local Austinites – please consider supporting my friends Jonathan and Lauren Ramirez as they pursue God’s call to work with the Didinga people in Sudan!
Ramirez Sudan Benefit Night @ Dominican Joe
Friday, September 11th, 2009, 7:00 – 11:00PM
Music Performances by: Aaron Ivey and Aaron Peace
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Armed with wide eyes and a desire to learn more about worldwide injustice, Jonathan Ramirez made his first trip to Sudan in the Spring of 2006. He had found an American missionary who knew about a Sudanese pastor and his wife that were church planting in the remote hills of Southern Sudan among the Didinga tribe. Told to bring a tent and a head lamp, Jonathan trekked to Sudan to meet pastor William Laku and his pioneering wife, Eunice. The purity of the land and the people captured Jonathan’s heart as he witnessed God’s Spirit moving among a people group that had been ravaged by 50 years of civil war. He knew the only reason he wanted to come home was to get married before returning to the Didinga long term. So, he boldly wrote an email home to Lauren declaring his intentions to marry her and serve in Sudan as missionaries. The two were married in November 2006 and took a belated honeymoon to East Africa in the Spring of 2007 so that Lauren could see the land she would one day call home.
The past three years have been an important time for the Ramirez’s as they have established their marriage, found a sending church community in Austin, joined the Africa Inland Mission long term team, attended missionary training and raised support. They had the privilege of leading a team to Sudan last summer in order to reproduce themselves as advocates for Sudan back in the States and cast a vision to friends and family for the future. A new home and new family await them among the Didinga tribe as they look forward to serving alongside of William and Eunice Laku as church planters in South Sudan.
Please join the Ramirez’s Friday, September 11th as they raise awareness about the country of Sudan and seek support for their call to the Didinga people. The night will highlight the call on Jonathan and Lauren, the town of Nagishot, the country of Sudan, missions opportunities, photography, music by Aaron Ivey and Aaron Peace, and more… all to benefit Jonathan and Lauren as they prepare to depart on September 22nd as long term missionaries in Nagishot, South Sudan.
For more on the event, click here.
For more information on Jonathan and Lauren, check out their blog.
Not Being Able to Do It All | Kevin DeYoung
Posted by Todd Engstrom in Uncategorized on August 26, 2009
From Kevin DeYoung’s post On Mission, Changing the World, and Not Being Able to Do It All:
Maybe it’s because I’m Type A or left brained or a beaver or an ESTJ or a good pastor or a people-pleasing sinner, but I often feel like I could, perhaps should, be doing more. I could do more evangelism. I could pray more. I could invite people over for dinner more. Because of this tendency I actually prefer the “do not” commands of Scripture. “Do not commit adultery”–that’s tough if you take the whole lust thing into account. Obeying this command requires prayer, accountability, repentance, and grace. But it doesn’t require me to start a non-profit or spend another evening away from my family. I just (just!) need to put to death the deeds of the flesh, die to myself and live to Christ.
Not committing adultery is, of course, easier said than done, but the command doesn’t overwhelm me. Changing the world, doing something about the global AIDS crisis, tackling homelessness–those things overwhelm me. What can I do? Where do I start? How will I find the time? I have four small kids, a full-time job, I give much more than 10% away to Christian causes, I try to share Jesus with my neighbors, I pray with my kids before bed, I’m trying to be a better husband. So is it possible, just possible, that God is not asking me to do anything about sex trafficking right now?
Before you think I’m a total nut-job and scream “physician heal thyself”, let me hasten to add: I do understand the gospel. I know that all this talk of what I should be doing or could be doing is not healthy. I know that. And I’m really doing fine. I’m not on the verge of burnout or breakdown or anything like that. Most days I don’t feel guilty about all the stuff I’m not doing. But that’s only because I’ve learned to ignore a lot of things well-meaning Christians say or write. I’m only 32 and already I’m worn out by urgent calls to transform the culture or rid the world of hunger or usher in an age or world peace. I’m not a cynic, at least I hope not. I just realize there is only so much I can do. I also realize that right now that my main work is to lead my family, shepherd my church, and preach faithful sermons. If I do these things, by God’s grace, and grow in one more degree of glory this week (again, by God’s grace), should I still feel guilty for all that I’m not doing in the world?
This deeply ministered to me today…please read the whole article, especially you who are prone to taking the weight of the world on your shoulders!
Book Review | Adopted for Life
Posted by Todd Engstrom in adoption, books on August 25, 2009
The third book I had the opportunity to read through was Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches by Russell Moore.
As a short synopsis, Moore paints the theological foundations of adoption in the first portion of the book, asking the church and Christians to consider our calling to serve and minister to orphans. The latter half of the book focuses on specifics of adoption, including the challenges of the adoption process and engaging the church after you have adopted. He uses his personal testimony of adopting two boys from Russia as the narrative thread of the book, providing personal insight into a variety of topics.
In his own words, Moore aims to:
In this book I want to call us all to consider how encouraging adoption–whether we adopt or whether we help others adopt–can help us peer into the ancient mystery of our faith in Christ and can help us restore the fracturing unity and the atrophied mission of our congregation.
Below is the table of contents:
- Adoption, Jesus, and You: Why You Should Read This Book, Especially If You Don’t Want to
- Are They Brothers? What Some Rude Questions about Adoption Taught Me about the Gospel of Christ
- Joseph of Nazareth vs. Planned Parenthood: What’s at Stake When We Talk about Adoption
- Don’t You Want Your Own Kids? How to Know If You—or Someone You Love—Should Consider Adoption
- Paperwork, Finances, and Other Threats to Personal Sanctification: How to Navigate the Practical Aspects of the Adoption Process
- Jim Crow in the Church Nursery: How to Think about Racial Identity, Health Concerns, and Other Uncomfortable Adoption Questions
- It Takes a Village to Adopt a Child: How Churches Can Encourage Adoption
- Adopted Is a Past-Tense Verb: How Parents, Children, and Friends Can Think about Growing up Adopted
- Concluding Thoughts
This book is a worthwhile read for anyone, regardless of your interest in adoption. It contains a great deal of material associated with the adoption process, and certainly some practical insight into the realities of adoption, but the book goes so much beyond the mechanics of adoption. Through his excellent presentation of the nature of the family of God, to examining particular individuals in Scripture, Moore did an excellent job of articulating the character of God and the heart of the Gospel through the lens of adoption. You will be blessed theologically, should you pick up this book, as well as pastorally and practically blessed with respect to adoption.
One of the particularly poignant portions of the book for me was chapter 2: Are They Brothers?. Moore does an excellent job of working through the issue of our identity as children of God, and the practical outflow for us as a body of Christ. I loved his articulation that we as believers ought to view the Old Testament as OUR family history, not just a family history, as we are indeed the spiritual children of Abraham. He also has an excellent section about our relationship to Christ as our brother, which began a series of excellent thoughts for me. You can read the chapter here.
I thoroughly enjoyed Chapter 3, which is a biblical and historical understanding of how adoption is actually spiritual warfare and battling against the very heart of evil. He does an excellent job of highlighting the major attacks on defenseless babies throughout the Bible (using the genocide of Pharoah in the time of Moses and the genocide of Herod in the time Jesus as primary examples) and history. This chapter did more to elevate my view of the spiritual reality of adoption than the rest of the book combined.
The practical sections of the book are useful in that they are a good first-hand account of Moore’s adoption, but they deliberately do not provide much in the order of details for adoption. If you are looking for a pragmatic book, I’d suggest going elsewhere.
I urge you to pick up this book and read, even if you have no interest in adoption, because you will absolutely be blessed by its depth, and convicted by the call of God to care for the orphan.
Buy a Book, Support a Mission
Posted by Todd Engstrom in books, college ministry, missions on August 23, 2009
College Students: As you are preparing for you return to campus and your fall classes, inevitably you are going to purchase your textbooks. Makarios, one of our partnering organizations in the Dominican Republic, has set up a site where you can purchase your books through Amazon and they receive a percentage of the proceeds.
Friends: If you have books you’d like to purchase from Amazon, please consider using the link below, as a portion of the proceeds will go to our ministry partners in the Dominican Republic, Makarios.
Books cost exactly the same (new or used) as they would on Amazon, so you can get a great deal on your books and support our friends in the DR!
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