Choosing Who to Mentor | Touchpoint
Posted by Todd Engstrom in discipleship, leadership on March 11, 2009
The more I read David Watson’s Blog, the more I am enjoying his insights. He has some excellent words in a post about who to choose and mentorship/discipleship, and what he looks for before investing in someone.
His six points of evaluation are below:
- Christ-like
- Christ-centered
- Character
- Capability
- Competency
- Capacity
- Chemistry
Read how he expands on these points here.
This is a great framework for leaders as they seek to reproduce themselves in ministry. I continue to pray that God would use the men that I am investing in to advance His kingdom, and ultimately they would be faithful to reproducing reproducers (2 Timothy 2:2).
Preparing Young Men to be Husbands | Pure Church
Posted by Todd Engstrom in marriage on March 10, 2009
This was a great thought from Voddie Baucham’s book What Must He Be…If He Wants to Marry My Daughter on preparing young men for marriage (via Pure Church).
Imagine a family who did not prepare their children for college. This would be unthinkable in today’s world. Everyone prepares their child for an academic future. Day-care programs boast about the head start they will give children in their “academic careers.” We buy houses in neighborhoods with “the best schools.” Beyond that, many families place their children in expensive preparatory schools, enduring tremendous financial burdens, incurring debt, and commuting hours each day in an effort to give their children an edge in that all-important race for the apex of academia.
However, little thought is given to preparing our sons to be husbands. Thus, they meander through life without the skills or mind-set necessary to play this most important role until one day, having met “the one,” they pop the question, set a date, and—in the rarest of cases—go to the pastor to learn everything they need to know about being the priest, prophet, provider, and protector of a household in four one-hour sessions. In the words of that great theologian Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”
via Pure Church: Are We Preparing Boys and Young Men to Be Husbands and Fathers?.
As I am involved in ministering to nearly and newly married couples, I am acutely aware of the deficiency of many men, myself included, in effective spiritual leadership of the home. I am grateful for the mentors in my life who have shaped my marriage, and pray that I will set an example of being a godly, biblical husband (Ephesians 5:25-33) for my son and the men to whom I am called to minister.
Deep Thoughts from Graeme Goldsworthy
Posted by Todd Engstrom in theology on March 10, 2009
This may be the single most awesome paragraph I have read in a long while from a sheer depth of thought.
So, the long and the short of it all is that somehow the biblical theologian and the dogmatic theologian are both confronted with the same unavoidable “chicken and egg” dilemma of the question of priority? Is priority in God as the source of reality; in Jesus as the mediator of the knowledge of God; in Scripture as our only source of God’s inspired testimony to Jesus; or in the Holy Spirit’s enabling of the once incapacitated human mind and spirit to know the truth? The answer is clearly, “yes; all of the above.” Thus we can make the distinction between the ontological priority of the Trinity, the hermeneutical priority of the incarnate Christ, the material priority of the Scriptures, and the epistemological priority of the Spirit’s inner testimony to the regenerated heart of man. These all coinhere, are interdependent, and relate in the hermeneutical spiral. This interdependence is no greater a burden on our subjective knowing than is the coinherence of the three persons of the Trinity, or the coinherence of the divine and human natures of Christ, or of the divine and human natures of Scripture, or of the relationship of the divine Spirit’s indwelling of the believer and our own humanity. Not only is it no greater burden, it is also of the same importance.
via The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology – Graeme Goldsworthy.
The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology
Posted by Todd Engstrom in theology on March 9, 2009
As our small group has been studying through Systematic Theology together (this is round 3 of me teaching), some new thoughts have arisen as I consider doctrines. One that was particularly interesting was the result of teaching revelation, and having a very significant thought that related to this quote, which captures the challenging portion of the doctrine of revelation very succinctly.
The biblical theologian who accepts the canonical coherence of the source documents has already made a dogmatic assumption, or a whole series of them, about the nature of the biblical canon. This is only to say that our doctrine of Scripture is itself drawn from Scripture. If we then recognise that the Bible causes us to reckon with its testimony to the ontological Trinity as the ultimate source of all reality, including the canon, we might feel justified in an arrangement that starts with dogma concerning God (the objective). Yet it is we (the subjective element) who are contemplating this objective. In the final analysis, whether we view this from the perspective of biblical theology or the perspective of dogmatics, we find that the relationship of the subjective and objective is always before us.
via The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology – Graeme Goldsworthy.
When you return to the ultimate question about revelation, and the fact that it is a question of the relation of a subjective experience of the believer to an objective truth, we seem to forget that God is both objective AND subjective. This is the result of both the perfection of His being and His personhood.
God’s ontological perfection is indeed His objective nature, but He is not merely a concept to be objectified; He is a personal being who relates to us, and therefore transcends the objective/subjective divide through reaching down, not us reaching up.
Perhaps this is an oversimplification of a very deep philosophical problem, but I think far too often in our philosophical challenges with our doctrines we forget the fundamentally relational nature of our God.
Renewing Cities Through Missional Tribes | Q Ideas
Posted by Todd Engstrom in missional on March 6, 2009
I just read this quote from a Q short by Jon Tyson.
Though they may feel like it, these people are not alone. This loss of community has in some ways become our collective experience of American life. This relational disconnection was first identified and popularized in the year 2000 in Robert Putnam’s work Bowling Alone. Simply put, he proposed that America was losing its sense of community, or its social capital — the reality that we are a part of “the whole,” and that we participate in small but significant ways to the greater good.
In many ways, a significant work of the church in our context is the re-establishment of the social fabric of our culture. I think one of the most significant barriers to movement in the West is the complete disintegration of social fabric with the onset of our hyper-individualistic, consumer-driven culture.
Regardless of your strategy (Jon Tyson’s seems to be missional community driven, as is ours), there is much work to be done in tying the threads of relationships back together through the power of the gospel. In a disintegrated social culture, we must adopt a posture of building bridges relationally into existing “tribes” outside the church on the small scale, and we must leverage our large corporate environments toward building relational ties among believers who are equally as devoid of relationships often times.
In a culture that is rapidly losing touch with other people, the attractional nature of biblical community and corporate worship is visible and palatable, and can serve as a powerful declaration of the gospel. I pray that we do not share counterfeit expressions, but authentic, gospel-centered community in our churches.
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