Logos Giveaway: Tyndale Ministry Collection

Hey all. I'm now a member of the Logos blogger team that is helping to get the word out about  Logos products. So I am hosting a Punchtab giveaway for you.

The Prize 

Tyndale Ministry Collection (9 vols.). The winner will be chosen at random on August 18th and the collection will be sent to the winner’s Logos account. Don’t have an account? No problem! You can sign up for free here and download free apps to read your books on any device here. I use Logos on all my devices.

Here's How You Enter...

Starting Monday the 4th you can login below with your email address or Facebook account and follow the steps in the widget. That’s it! Each prompted action you follow will earn you additional entries. You can always come back and share a link to the giveaway with your friends for additional entries.

• Start Date: Monday, August 4 at 1am PST
• End Date: Monday, August 18 at 11pm PST

Just So You Know: By entering this giveaway you consent to being signed up to Logos’ “Product Reviews” email list. You’ll receive emails featuring content written by me and a few other Christian bloggers like Aaron Armstrong, Lore Ferguson and others!

Christ & Pop Culture

I've recently joined the writing staff of ChristandPopCulture.com (CaPC). Here are my first two pieces: "Saintseneca's Dark Arc: Stripping Off The World's Varnish" and "Must Music Be Authentic? Roger, Wilco."  

I've known of and read pieces by CaPC for years and have been thankful for their voice(s). Pieces there have often informed me and helped me think about cultural issues through the lens of faith in Christ. Even when I've disagreed I've gained much from interaction, even when only internal. 

Now, as a writer, I've been even more engaged with the articles, website, podcast, and in the writer's-only forum where I realize how thoughtful, funny, and engaging these folks are when off the record as well. 

CaPC is starting a new phase of life offering memberships that gives you access to some free shtuff (ebooks, music, magazines), a members-only forum to discuss things on CaPC or start discussions on whatever you are engaging with in the culture, and more. As a writer the greatest benefit of CaPC for me, beside having a place to publish my writing, is the discussion happening behind the scenes. Now that gets expanded to include you as you become a member. Really excited about that. 

Check out ChristandPopCulture.com, memberships, and even learn how you can become a patron. This website has produced so much for almost nothing for years now and this is a way to help build a CaPC for the future. 

My Blog & Resisting Gossip

Back in December I got this email from Matt Mitchell. His name wasn't familiar to me and I didn't remember the details of his story very well. But this is pretty cool...

I've been an on-again-off-again reader of your blog for a long time (and I follow you now on Twitter).

Today, via Google, I (re)discovered this (long forgotten) post of yours.

And I found myself commenting on it about half way down the page:

Anyone know a good book about gossip? It would be great to read a biblical, systematic, yet practical treatment of this very common sin. I sometimes find myself in similar situations to Steve in this post or have to give counsel to those who are, and I often feel at a loss to know how to evaluate the complexities of this area.

If no book exists, it seems like this would fill a big need in the church.

And then you reply to me, and I say:

What? Do my own Bible study on gossip? How "Old School!"

Okay, I'll do it. And then maybe I'll write the book and go on the Christian-lecture-circuit. =D

What's funny, is that even though I didn't remember this back-and-forth, eventually I actually did the study and write the book! :-)  (My earliest memory of the idea of studying this topic was August of 2008, more than two years after this exchange.)

The reason I decided to write you was not only to relay the funny story, but also to thank you for the blog, for your graciousness, and for inciting me in the first place to take up this study!

Blessings,

-Matt Mitchell

How cool is that? Matt is more than kind in saying that I incited him toward writing a book, but it's a neat story nonetheless.

Not only is that cool, Resisting Gossip is available this week only for 50% off. A great deal. Need more incentive? Forward is by Ed Welch... 

"Isn't it amazing that most of us have never read a clear, pastoral and practical book on what Scripture says about gossip? Well, here it is. Matt will guide you through this topic in such a way that you will be convicted–I certainly was. But he will do more than that. He will give you ideas about how you can spread good news about others in such a way that the church will be more united and God will be honored.”

Thankful that Matt recalled this great backstory and shared it with us. Now go grab Resisting Gossip!

Lots-o-Links 3.13.13

Sam Storms has a new blog, is on Twitter, and you can "Like" on Facebook. It's a trifecta of Stormsian awesomeness!

I got a Maglus Stylus for my iPad (and one for Joe) and it's great! I've tried several now, and it's the best I've used. Joe told me today he's loving his too. Not only is the tip wonderfully responsive with minimal pressure, but the fact it's magnetized makes it almost impossible to forget. PLUS, if you click here you can get yours for 10% off. I seriously hope many will try this one out. LOVE it.

Serving Without Sinking is another book put out by The Good Book Company that I look forward to reading. Actually Molly might beat me to it. It looks quite helpful for those in ministry needing to not merely do our job, but to find delight in our service to Christ.

Eugene Peterson: Living the Resurrection is $1.99 for Kindle.

If you haven't seen it yet, I really hope wives of church planters, pastors' wives, and wives of men in all sorts of ministries buy and read The Church Planting Wife. Molly has been so blessed through it.

New *George Whitefield Resources* Page

I just launched a George Whitefield Resources page. As I searched the internet I found various, helpful resources in various places. I hope this page will serve you well by trying to bring all the links and books and journals and letters to one place. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Release the APE Website Is Running

Check out the new website of Beau Crosseto that includes other authors like JR Woodward (he posted on it today), James Choung, and others. What is Release the APE? I'm glad you asked...

Release the APE is all about activating the Apostolic, Prophetic, and Evangelistic vocations into the world. We are committed to telling real time APE stories, sharing thoughts that shape the APE, and encouraging believers to live into APE vocations so that all the potential for God movements can be unleashed everywhere.

You may know A.P.E.S.T. from Alan Hirsch's books & teaching. That's where the APE comes from. Who should read the blog? Here's their list

• If you have a deep passion for ministry but you never saw yourself as a traditional pastor and don’t desire to be one.
• If you are a pastor and love it, but want to engage further material about releasing catalytic leaders in and out of your church.
• If you love challenging the status quo in Jesus name.
• If you love starting things for God
• If you have a deep sense for justice (hello prophetic leaders)
• if you love seeing people come to faith (we will have lots of conversion stories)
• if you feel alone in your mission and need inspiration and community
• if you love the missional church movement
• if you believe that the mission of God should and can be carried out by every day ordinary people.
• if you are crazy about seeing that happen too 
• If you want mentors and friends who will push you to risk, try, and do things in Jesus name you thought you never could do!

I align with several camps: I'm baptist. I'm reformed. I'm missional. Etc. This looks like a good site for the missional camp to engage, so I'll be reading. Would love to know what you think about their site as the first couple of posts have gone up: "Release the Apostolic, Prophetic, Evangelistic" Part 1 & Part 2. Also check them out on Twitter, Facebook.

Before You Leave A Church

Advice from Mark Dever (originally found here) on what to do before you leave a church and if you leave a church. Good advice that is rarely followed. (I may have listed some of these before, but saw them again at Challies.)

Before You Decide to Leave

1. Pray.
2. Let your current pastor know about your thinking before you move to another church or make your decision to relocate to another city. Ask for his counsel.
3. Weigh your motives. Is your desire to leave because of sinful, personal conflict or disappointment? If it’s because of doctrinal reasons, are these doctrinal issues significant?
4. Do everything within your power to reconcile any broken relationships.
5. Be sure to consider all the “evidences of grace” you’ve seen in the church’s life—places where God’s work is evident. If you cannot see any evidences of God’s grace, you might want to examine your own heart once more (Matt. 7:3-5).
6. Be humble. Recognize you don’t have all the facts and assess people and circumstances charitably (give them the benefit of the doubt).

If You Go

1. Don’t divide the body.
2. Take the utmost care not to sow discontent even among your closest friends. Remember, you don’t want anything to hinder their growth in grace in this church. Deny any desire to gossip (sometimes referred to as “venting” or “saying how you feel”).
3. Pray for and bless the congregation and its leadership. Look for ways of doing this practically.
4. If there has been hurt, then forgive—even as you have been forgiven.

While I Was Away...

I was very isolated from my laptop on vacation (which lasted 2 weeks), but I did find stuff that looked interesting on my feed reader and my Twitter feed and then saved them for later. Here are a few things that caught my eye...

• Tim Keller: 4 Wrong Answers To The Question "Why Me?" | In Defense of Apologetics
• David Murray: Spiritual Strength Training Pt 1 | Pt 2: 7 R's of Soul Care & Maintenance
• Seth McBee wouldn't quit talking about this book (kindle edition) & wrote The Neighborhood Mission Start Up
• Joe Thorn: Plant Midwest
• Matt Smethurst: Unbelievable Gospel: A Conversation With Jonathan Dodson
• Christianity Today gives Wayfarer: The River 4/5 stars
• Joe Gorra: Evangelism & God's Presence (a review of The Sacrament of Evangelism)
• Chris Lagerlof: Rethinking Evangelism

Introverted Church Moves On

Adam McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church (my review), says this over at his Introverted Church blog...

I leave this blog today, not because my convictions have faded, but because I know that the message is out there now. Believe it or not, last month tallied the highest number of visitors in Introverted Church history, coming in at almost 25,000 people. Some people will think I am crazy to step off this platform now, but in my mind, last month gave me the permission that I needed to stop. People are talking about introverts and church, and I have accomplished what I set out to do.  It was never my intention to become The Voice for introverts. It was always my intention to help my fellow introverts find their voices.

Read the entire post "A Moment of Silence". I'm thankful for Adam's book, blog, and ministry. Looking forward to his new book, The Listening Life, coming out next year.

Explore App - The Good Book Company

I really like The Good Book Company. Brad Byrd is a friend and is always telling me about new resources they are putting out. But before he could even tell me about it, I noticed the Explore app on The Good Book blog and downloaded it on my phone. It's excellent.

It's a self-paced devotional that you can use daily or use as you want. You start with 28 daily devotions free as an introduction to the devotional, and then you can subscribe to more. And these aren't just written by some no-name dude behind the scenes. They come from guys like Tim Chester, Christopher Ash, and Tim Keller. 

Go to your app store and find Explore and give it a try. I think you'll like it.

Don Draper Presents Facebook Timeline

Ok, I'm sold on it now.

UPDATE: Embedding video has been disabled, so go watch it at YouTube.

PastorMark.tv

Very cool to see Mark Driscoll's new website, PastorMark.tv, where he, his wife Grace & his daughter Ashley will be writing. Grace will write on being a Godly wife, mother, and friend. Ashley will write book reviews for teens and on how to balance the pressures of high school and staying faithful to Jesus. Mark will be writing on, oh, you know, the stuff a pastor, preacher, movement leader might write on. :) Should be a fine resource.

Shop at WTSBooks.com

I'm now linking most books through Westminster Theological Seminary Bookstore as I've become a "blog partner." I've been buying books there for a couple of years and it's an outstanding store, often cheaper than Amazon.

If you don't buy your Christian books at WTSBooks.com, I strongly encourage it. My experience has been that shipping is cheap and fast. Click through the permanent banner on my sidebar or on the picture in this post and it will help me buy books for my ministry since I don't have a book budget at my church. By the way, this program works through the number of "click throughs" I get, so click away and buy some great books!

A few Reformissionary Recommendations to get you started...

• Note To Self by Joe Thorn (pre-order | cheaper than Amazon)
• Love Walked Among Us by Paul Miller (cheaper than Amazon, one of the best books I've read)
• Think by John Piper ($5 for hardcover | $4+ cheaper than Amazon's paperback)

Redeemer City to City

Redeemer City to City, a network founded by Redeemer NYC and Dr. Tim Keller, has a new site up and it looks great. Here's a video intro to their ministry.

ESV GreekTools

If you are like me, you use the ESV Online a lot. I'm always referencing it and using the ESV Study Bible notes. Now you can for $10 get lifetime access to ESV GreekTools...

ESV GreekTools puts the original language of the New Testament into the hands of beginning and advanced students, as well as seasoned pastors, scholars, and laymen looking for an affordable and accessible Greek reference tool. Intuitive, easy-to-use, and fully customizable, ESV GreekTools is an online application available through the ESVBible.org platform. Now you can do serious work with the Greek text, at home or on the go, no matter your level of proficiency.

Features:

• Complete NA27 Greek text
• ESV interlinear and reverse-interlinear renderings of the text
• Complete data set for each word, including lexical data, contextual and morphological information (including parsings), and Strong’s number.
• Powerful search tool that lets users search by Greek word, transliterated Greek word, Strong’s number, English word, or any combination of those values
• Complete English and Greek concordances
• Customizable interface that works seamlessly with other ESVBible.org features, including study resources and notes. 

I already bought my ESV GreekTools. Go get it.

Support Reformissionary

After Governor Quinn signed a new tax law, Amazon has terminated all Illinois Associates. Many of my links go through Amazon. It costs you nothing extra, and it supports my me and my family by helping me buy books (I have no book budget at my church), music, and recently my Kindle. Starting April 15th, this revenue ends.

So if anyone can support Refomissionary by clicking through an Amazon link when you need to buy something, it would be greatly appreciated. I very much appreciate how many of you have supported me this way in the past. Some have even emailed me asking for direct links for books and other products so that they could buy what they need and I could bring in a little money. If you are interested in that: pastorsteve [at] gmail [dot] com.

Again, it's at no extra cost to you. It's the same price. But if you click through one of my links over the next month or so, you'll support Reformissionary. Thanks so much for whatever support you can provide. Click on the banner below to buy something! Thanks for anything you can do.

Christians & Internet Presence - A Discussion

Had a friendly little discussion with Brandon Smith, Jared Wilson, and Trevin Wax on what it means to be a Christian with blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc | Christians & Internet Presence. You should check it out.

Thanks to Brandon for putting it together.

Ligonier $50 Giveaway

Want $50 of resources from Ligonier Ministries? Here's your chance.

Ligonier is led by R.C. Sproul and produces solid resources for thinking Christians. I've benefited greatly from books like The Holiness of God (I've also enjoyed the audio of The Holiness of God teaching series more than once), the audio for The Consequences of Ideas, and the great Reformation Study Bible (ESV). I want folks to check out these and other resources at Ligonier's website.

So I'm giving my readers a chance for $50 worth of resources at Ligonier. Here's how you enter...

STEP 1: Copy & share the following without the quote marks on Twitter (if you aren't on Twitter, use Facebook): "Win $50 for the @Ligonier Ministries Store. RT this & comment at Reformissionary to win: http://bit.ly/dFYZOc "

STEP 2: Leave a comment below (so I can verify you did step 1). Include your full name and real email address (kept private) so I can contact the winners. For fun, also add to your comment the percent chance that the Bears will win the Super Bowl. I'll say 70%. :)

Wednesday (15th) in the late afternoon/early evening I'll be choosing and contacting a winner. 

Merry Christmas!

Coming Attractions 11.18.10

Here are a few things in the works...

1. Ads: You can see that I'm gearing up for some advertising on the right sidebar. I've thought about it for a long time & had some advertisers express some interest. I'm going to give it a go. It would be financially helpful for my family during tight times. If you are interested, click on an "Advertise Here" link. 

2. Links: I also want to add that whenever you see a link of mine to a book or music on Amazon with the Reformissiona-20 tag on it, that means I get a small cut for recommending it. It adds nothing to your cost. It's the same as if you went straight to Amazon. Essentially by buying products with my link you get same good price and help supply my book budget. I have no other book budget than this. Thanks for supporting it. And I work very hard not to just point you to anything in the hope of making some cash. I skip over recommending many deals that I don't personally want to recommended.

3. Reviews: I have reviews coming on Tim Keller's new book, Generous Justice, and Jim Elliff's reworking of Pursuing God. Both are great. Hope to get to both very soon.

4. Writing Projects: I have several blog articles in the works that have been fermenting for a while and that I'm excited about. I want to get a regular schedule for posting articles in the next couple of weeks. Look for that. I'm saying it publicly so I feel guilty if I don't get it started. :)

5. Phriday is for Photos: I haven't been very active in photography lately, but I'm also planning on getting it kicking again. 

6. Molly: I know it doesn't seem like a very cool "coming attraction," but expect more soon about my wife's battle with Chiari I Malformation. The blog has helped her to connect and minister to many women who are suffering the same things and scared. 

7. Tim Keller Resources: It's been a while since I seriously worked on my TK Resource page. Without doing anything a few things there look broken. I hope to get it back in shape for your resourcing pleasure.

Lots-o-Links 3.24.10

Poets.org: National Poetry Month is one week away

Skye Jethani: Why I Don't Tweet (I left him a comment)

Ed Stetzer for missionSHIFT: Introducing Jeff Vanderstelt (via)

This looks like meals together with believers and unbelievers 2-4 times a week; cleaning up the yard of our widowed neighbor next door; serving at the elementary’s auctions, community events and after school programs; going through “The Story of God” 1-2 times a year with unbelievers to introduce them to the Gospel; sharing our house for others to live with us and join us on the mission; having an “open door” policy to our neighbors and friends; throwing parties regularly to meet more people who we hope will also come to faith in Jesus; etc… We focus on demonstrating the change the Gospel makes in our lives through tangible expressions of serving and declaring the reason why we live this way by sharing the Gospel.

Tim Keller

• Proverbs: A Mini-Guide to Life 
• Serving Each Other Through Reconciliation & Forgiveness

Jamie Munson on Opposition

• Opportunity & The Curse
• Expect Opposition. Really.

Opposition is diverse and relentless and, if given all of your time, deadly. Perspective dies as the opposition blurs our vision. Hope can die as the opposition becomes weightier than the opportunity. Fatigue can kill you if you spend more time running from the opposition than pursuing the opportunity.

What would you say if you had cancer and may not make it until next Christmas? Here's what Zac Smith said...

The Story of Zac Smith from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.