Procrasted posts or blog backsliding...continued...again

As part of the third installment from a previous blog, below is the link to one of my posts in another blog that explain the points I highlighted on how God had been directing us in homeschooling.  A final blog in this series is forthcoming later this week.

Why do we homeschool?

Thanks for stopping by!

Soli Deo gloria,
Adam

Procrasted posts or blog backsliding...continued

As promised in the previous blog, below is the link to one of my posts in another blog that explain some of the points that I brought forth.  In particular, this one relates to taking a more solid doctrinal stance.  Other blog posts will be forthcoming in the next week.  

Why I am no longer a Calvinist!

Thanks for stopping by and Merry Christmas!

Soli Deo gloria,
Adam

Procrasted posts or blog backsliding?

I realize that it has been almost two months since my last post and that there has been a somewhat sporadic elements to my posts over the past 9 months.  Am I intentionally procrastinating or backsliding on my blogs?  No...and yes!  No in that I have not decidedly relaxed my number of posts but yes in that I have given them less of a priority.  Not that my blogs have ever taken priority over the more important things in my walk with Christ, but I have been rather occupied with what I believe is more necessary than simply posting thoughts or our latest evangelistic endeavors.

Much has happened for my family and I over this past year.  I started out the year in a fog of transition concerning my understanding of the role of family in regards to the local church.  By God's sovereignty, He led me to several ministries that provided invaluable resources to guide me through the theological thickets.  Interestingly though, the issue wasn't just about age-segregation in the local church.  It was instead more about how the full scope of how the church operates and functions in regards to what Scripture reveals.  While many would wish to say they hold Scripture as their sole, divinely-revealed authority their actions prove to the contrary.

Not wanting to be the ivory-tower critic who casts down condemnations to the masses, I took a step back and looked at everything I had done in my short time of ministry first.  What I came to discover was that I too was pragmatic in areas of my thinking.  I had justified the creation of church positions, the employment of certain methods and preaching practices in the pulpit and on the streets, the position of homeschooling versus public schooling, and role of family ministry more on results that biblical teaching.  Furthermore, I had yet to completely solidify my doctrinal stance.

In order to expand on each of these, I will be posting to the other blogs I write for:  Sola Saturated and A Gospel Driven family.  I will post links on this blog to the others as they are created.  Suffice it to say, my stance on homeschooling, family-integrated church, preaching, church positions, family ministry, and the like have not changed but have instead become strengthened through biblical doctrines.

I am praying to have these posted during my small break between seminary semesters.  As always, thanks for praying and for stopping by.

Soli Deo gloria,
Adam

Project 180 outreach

For the past several months an outreach operation has been in place across the nation and in Canada to get a powerful Christian documentary by Living Waters into the hands of college students.  The DVD, known as Project 180, has been viewed over 1 million times since its release earlier this month and now has been placed into the hands of close to 200,000 individuals.

I was blessed to be one of the team leaders for two campuses:  Elizabeth City State University and Old Dominion University.  Since the campuses are an hour apart from each other, I asked a brother in Christ and fellow Ambassador's Academy graduate Chris Jones to be my point of contact on the ODU campus while I was at ECSU.

We needed to keep this outreach under wraps so its opponents would not have the opportunity to block our efforts.  Over the months I recruited a few trusted brothers in Christ to help.  Several weeks before the outreach,  I took a small recon team to ODU to scope out good locations to hand out the DVD's.  We encountered no opposition and passed out several hundred tracts in the process.  Before I knew it, the day had arrived.

With both teams fully stocked with DVD's, it was time to put the plan into action.

I started out with a team heading to the campus of ECSU in Elizabeth City, NC @ 8 am with 1000 DVD's.  The team included myself, my 6 year old son Ephraim as well as two fellow brothers Kyle and Roland.  I had packed two bags with the DVD's and used a cart to carry the rest of the boxes.  After praying, we split up on campus with my son and I taking station near the Student Center.  

Within a few hours we had handed out the first 200 and were already three quarters of the way through the next box.  The campus slowly came to life and we almost couldn't keep up with the number of students.  My son was a great help as he darted back and forth trying to beat me in the number he could hand out.  Around 11am I was approached by campus security who soon directed me to an office to get permission to continue.  I had spoke with Michael Marcavage of "Repent America" beforehand and found out that there is a law in NC and VA that prohibits us from remaining on campus once we are asked to leave.  The loophole though is that as long as a organization sponsors us, we can stay there.  While it took over an hour to get a signature from a sponsoring group on campus, it did open doors to future on-campus ministry through this group.  

We soon continued handing out the DVD's.  Some students approached us after watching it saying it was powerful and encouraged others to watch it immediately.  By 1:30 pm we had covered the entire campus with almost every student now telling us they already had a copy.  Here is the testimonial from one of the guys on that team:

"Truth be told I was trying to "get out" of going Tuesday to the college. I had all kinds of scary scenarios dancing in my head. Eating breakfast I remember saying : what will this day bring? Once there I realized this was a "covert military action" and all the students were still asleep. First person walks by... "good morning, did you get one of these ?" Some would ask: what's it about ? I was cool as a cucumber.."It's a historical Documentary about how history repeats itself." Oh OK, thanks ! I got too close to a Frat house one time, they told me to "move along"... Then Adam got nabbed so we had to stop. Went to work later with a new joy. Guys at work wanted to know where I had been.. so we had a good conversations for the whole afternoon. It was a good day!"-Kyle Mengel, ECSU team

This was the first time Kyle had ever done anything like this.  I have invited out for our outreaches before and was thrilled when he finally agreed to come.  I believe this was a first huge step for him to fully engage in boldly, biblically sharing the Gospel.

Chris Jones rallied the ODU team together and hit the campus with 4000 DVD's at 9am.  I received calls from the during the morning updating me ont heir progress.  They faced absolutely no opposition and even handed the DVD to passing security and professors.  They had several great 1-2-1 encounters and finished the day around 3pm with 3200 DVD's handed out.  Some of them wanted to continue handing them out and went to the Norfolk State University campus where they gave away an additional 600 DVD's.  I was later told that a rumor had spread on the ODU campus earlier that the DVD contained a virus.  This had gotten to the NSU campus and some students were asking about such.  This was an apparent attempt by the enemy after they had caught on to what we were doing.

The reports from the other teams flooded in later in the day and, even now we are hearing news of how the DVD has impacted people.  If you have yet to watch it for yourself, please visit www.180movie.com and do so.

Thanks for stopping by!

To God be the glory,

Adam

180 movie

Watch this powerful movie and see what made several of these pro-abortion advocates make a complete "180" on their position.

Even when it seems like you are preaching to no one...

Last Saturday, Steven Long and I went to Waterfront Park for some open-air preaching. During one of Steve's messages I took the photo you see to the right.

You can see Steven circled in the yellow and the large open space in front of him. I took this picture because it was a great reminder to me of how we are simply commanded to "Go!" and should not be concerned with how many people we can reach or how large of a crowd we can gather.

We are simply laborers in God's harvest, He alone brings forth the fruit. We are proclaimers of Christ, it is the Father who draws them unto Him. We are responsible to proclaim the only Way of salvation, but the Holy Spirit applies that finished work.

Even when it seems like you are preaching to no one, you are preaching to an audience of One. Don't get so focused on crowds or numbers. Focus on Christ!

To God be the glory,

Adam

Reforming Missions part 2

Continuing from the previous blog, I will now attempt to unravel the last point made: "Lack of sincere and consistent faithfulness".

In His final earth-bound words to His disciples, Christ reiterated the Great Commission to them.

But you shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you. And you shall be witnesses to Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8, MKJV)

After this, Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father. What an incredible departing commission! Notices that He said "You will" not "You should" or "You can be". He said they would be witnesses in these areas.

What has struck me most over the past few years is the ripple effect this passage seems to take.

The commission starts with a focus in the city where the Holy Spirit would come to indwell the disciples only a short time later and moves outward. Upon the martyr of Stephen, Acts 8:1 tells us that great persecution came upon the disciples and many were scattered throughout the land. This was a fulfillment of what Christ had said concerning the scope of their witness. But do not let that stop us from thinking that Acts 1:8 was only a prophecy from our King. I believe the underlying principle is similar to that of 1 Timothy 3:4-5. It shows us a importance of faithfulness in sharing the Gospel.

The disciples would first be faithful locally in Jerusalem. Here they would testify of the risen Christ and proclaim Him to those who had formerly rejected Him. Keep in mind that those in Jerusalem likely knew many of the disciples personally, some even before they became born-again. To those who knew them, such a contrast to their former lives would have drawn much attention.

Then their witness was to move outward to their fellow Jews living nearby in Judea. This meant more of these people would be less likely to know them as personally as those in Jerusalem. They had undoubtedly heard of Jesus but may not have been as intimate with the details of His crucifixion as those in Jerusalem.

The next ripple would take them outside of their culture to the Samaritans. The Samaritans were a people descended from the Jews who had returned from the Babylonian captivity to marry pagan Gentiles living nearby. The legalistic Jews of Jesus' day saw Samaritans as half-breeds unworthy of even mentioning the name of YWHW. Christ showed continual compassion on them in both His treatment of the woman at the well (John 4:1-26) and in His parable which including a compassionate Samaritan (Luke 10:30-34). But for the disciples, to take the Gospel to a people they were culturally taught to despise was to move them further from their former comfort zone and reflect the love for the lost we are all to have.

The final ripple encompassed the rest of the world specifically seeming to indicate the importance to evangelizing Gentiles. As if reaching out to the Samaritans was not uncomfortable enough, they would soon reach out multiple people groups, almost all of whom were under Roman control.

Two common themes emerge: continual movement out of one's comfort zone and a focus on local faithfulness prior to expanding outward missions. The latter of these should make us stop and ponder the present-day implications.

Imagine you are a church leader and someone comes to you who wants to lead a Bible study. For the sake of the analogy, let's just say our person is a faithfully married father of three. Here is a question most would never think of asking this man: "How faithful are you to have regular family worship/Bible study at home?" If he replies that he rarely, if ever, spends time in the Word with his family, should he be consider to lead a Bible study for others? If he is not faithful in his first task to lead his family, why should we think he would be faithful to lead others?

Now imagine someone comes to you and says they want to go on a mission trip to (name your place). While there are a laundry list of qualifications you could come up with, has it ever crossed your mind to ask this one: "How faithful have you been to go on missions in our local area?" If they are not faithful enough to share the Gospel with strangers locally, why then would we think they would be faithful to do so elsewhere?

I believe we have grossly missed the mark when it comes to missions. We think of missions as something that takes place in another state or country. People clamor at the opportunity for their church to fund them to go to exotic locations yet think almost nothing of hitting the dingy, dirty streets of their local town. The opportunity is always there and in greater availability that a foreign mission trip. Yet every time they are asked to join an evangelism team to share the Gospel only minutes from where they live they almost always seem to find an excuse.

We must admit that we have failed in missions. America is now the world's third largest mission field. Faithful disciples from other countries where we once sent numerous missionaries are now flocking to America. Why? Because we have failed to biblically, faithfully, and regularly carry out local missions. We spend a large amount of money to fly halfway across the world to rebuild a bathhouse, never to share the actual Gospel of Christ, and come back with pictures and a sore upper back from the numerous pats we gave ourselves from doing such a noble deed.

Brothers and sisters, we need to wake up! To reform missions, we must start in our own Jerusalem, which is our own homes. If we are unfaithful to share Christ there, then we should not leave the city gates to venture onto any other mission field. We then must move out locally into our towns and cities that surround our church buildings. We must blanket the community with proclaimers of the biblical Gospel. We must show ourselves to be disciples of the One who left His heavenly throne to be the Good News for those whom God would redeem.

Let us raise the bar for potential foreign missionaries, both long and short term. Let there be a greater requirement of having them show themselves faithful in the home first and then locally before we endorse and fund their overseas mission. Let us not rush into endorsing or permitting a potential missionary before they are thoroughly examined (1 Timothy 5:22).

Towards the end of the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16, Jesus summarizes this teaching in verse 10 by saying "He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much". I believe the principle taught here is vitally applicable to missions. We will not be faithful to share the Gospel anywhere if we are not faithful to do so locally.

As always, may God be glorified as we seek to proclaim Him to the lost. Thanks for stopping by.

Until the whole world hears,
Pastor Adam