Free graduate level courses through Covenant Theologial Seminary

For many people in pastoral ministry, especially in charismatic or pentecostal contexts, and particularly overseas in developing nations, the cost and logistical implications of pursuing a high quality, formal, graduate-level theological education renders this utterly impossible. Although the wonderful congregation I now serve as Senior Pastor is very graciously making it possible for me to pursue my Master of Divinity at the the seminary Dr. Jack Hayford founded in Van Nuys, California (The King's Seminary), I could have never done this during the years that Teresa and I lived in France as career missionaries.

For people who are unable to finance a seminary degree, I have recently discovered one way on the internet to study the Scriptures on a true graduate level at no cost whatsoever. The Covenant Theological Seminary (If you are unfamiliar with the Presbyterian Church of America, think Francis Shaeffer) in Saint Louis, Missouri offers an amazing selection of actual course audio recordings, lecture transcripts, syllabi, and course study guides on the internet via their free, Covenant Worldwide program.

By listening to these lectures, reading the texts listed in the syllabi, following along in the study guides, etc., you potentially receive a significant portion of the same benefit as if you were actually enrolled in their program. (Note: You would NOT receive course credit this way, any formal degree, be actually enrolled in the classes, or have any interaction with the professor, other students, etc.! This would be strictly for personal and ministerial enrichment...!)

Since I am currently preaching my way through the life of Christ as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, I downloaded the first lecture this morning, The Historicity of the Gospels, from the Life and Teachings of Jesus taught by Dr. Daniel Doriani and found the quality of material covered and the presentation to be very, very good. (Click here to download/listen to the lecture audio file in mp3 format; click here to download/view the study guide in pdf format; click here to read the written transcript of the lecture online; click here to read/download the written transcript of the lecture in pdf format; you can also sign up to receive the entire course via podcast, for more information, click here.)

I do not know the people at Covenant, but, being a former missionary who still has much contact with indigenous church leaders in various countries around the world, many of whom read this blog, I am deeply moved by their generosity! I think it would be very difficult to find another fully accredited, reputable seminary that so freely shares the priceless gift of godly learning on a "Whosoever will, let him come..." basis. (If you know of other accredited seminaries that share their actual audio lectures, etc., online, please let me know and I will post that information, too.)

May God bless Covenant...!

What a hoot... MeChurch ... NOT...!

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time...! Enjoy...!

Thanks to Matt Green of Ministry Today for pointing the way to this video clip on YouTube in his Wednesday Fun post.

Real-Time World Conversions Map...!

One of the most fascinating new uses of technology in ministry that I have seen recently is something my friend, Samuel Balverde, over at France Advance and Top Chrétien is working on right now. Their various sites, including the wildly successful Looking for God witnessing portal, are now available in several languages and are seeing over four hundred people a day registering decisions for Christ. (For more information about their various ministries, read this post from my Hillcrest Church pastoral blog.)

Their new beta technology feeds the results of those first-time commitments to Jesus into the Joy in Heaven mapping engine which displays satellite maps showing where the latest decision for Christ has just been registered through their sites. Global activity, of course, depends on what time of day it is in the various time zones of the world, but in the last few two or three minutes as I have written this post, I have seen decisions registered in Nairobi, Kenya; Wichita, Kansas; and a little village in Austria...!

As we prepare to go into our annual 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting at Hillcrest Church, this is going to be a wonderful tool to mobilize people to intercession during our evening corporate prayer meetings. As you watch the map, right before your very eyes, it shifts to a new place in the world where someone has just prayed, asking Jesus into their hearts...and you know to pray for that person in that place...! I admit that I am a closest techno-geek, but I really do think that is a very cool and creative and "out-of-the-box" application of emerging technology...!

D.A. Carson on private prayer languages

In Joel Willitts and Michael Bird’s blog, Euangelion, they have a great, though rather detailed, quote from the eminent evangelical theologian, D.A. Carson supporting the private use of a prayer language in light of 1 Corinthians 12:7.

Andrew Jones on the Hazard of Hotels

Concerning the ongoing discussion among Christian leaders about the need for us to carefully guard our moral purity, Andrew Jones (aka TallSkinnyKiwi), renowned blogger in the emergent church movement in the U.K., wrote a very interesting piece entitled, Haggard and the Hazard of Hotels. Jones spells out the precautions he takes when traveling alone, including avoiding staying certain places.

He writes (typos included),

Most of the time I travel alone but i am careful here i stay. If i have a choice, I crash on a friends couch. In summer I bring my tent. I even crash on airport floors to save a few bucks and travel time. If i don't know anyone in a city, I usually stay at a youth hostel. Its really cheap and i stay in a room with 5 or more people. I have to sleep with my wallet and passport in my pocket or under my pillow but it keeps me away from hotels where i am all alone and where weird things happen.

Here’s the deal. Hotels can be treacherous places for people of God to stay at because of the spiritual residue from weird and dark things that have happened in that room. OK - some of you will think me loony here. And some of you don't believe in demons. But let me play it out. Hotels, like a particular house in New Orleans, have been the ruin of many a poor boy. Some hotels are famous for the part they had to play in the destruction of careers and downfall of movie stars. Fatty Arbuckle at St Francis Hotel, San Francisco (pictured above) comes to mind every time i walk by that hotel. And there are others.

Hotels are often places where anonymously weird, perverted, dangerous, evil things of a dark nature happen - all attracting the attention and the attachment of evil spirits. Permission is granted to those spirits in those places and I don't think that permission is withdrawn once the people are gone. That means if you end up in a hotel room where weird things have just happened, you really need to do some kung fu in that room and cleanse it out before you put your bags down and settle in for the night. Really. And someone close to you should know where you are.

Those are very interesting words coming from someone who is part of a movement whose theology many evangelicals view with suspicion, and yet they obviously evidence a very deep desire to pursue personal purity at all costs. I wonder how many of those same critics are as serious about being careful in their own, personal lives as Andrew is?

His words remind me of something I heard Cliff Barrows say at Billy Graham’s Amsterdam ’86 Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. Cliff stated that when he enters a new hotel room, the first thing he does is drape a towel over the television set and place his open Bible upon it as if it were a pulpit. Even back in the eighties, well before the proliferation of online porn, Barrows had been deeply impacted by learning how many ministers he knew had fallen into the sin of watching dirty movies as a result of spending too much time alone in hotel rooms. He was determined to avoid that trap with God’s help, so he established these specific boundaries in his own life in order to reinforce his own best intentions.

In the same vein, someone once told me about hearing the late Dr. Lester Sumrall say that when preaching out of town, he never went directly back to his hotel room alone after speaking. Instead, he always asked the host pastor, or a male staff member that pastor recommended, to go out with him for a cup of hot chocolate and chitchat before retiring. Apparently, he believed taking the time to unwind over a cup of hot chocolate before going to his room was an important safeguard to his own moral purity. He also felt the hot chocolate included certain chemicals that helped replenish the nutrients his body had burned while preaching and praying for the sick. Dr. Sumrall had discovered that, by taking the time to unwind in safe company before going to his hotel, when he did get to his room, he was tired enough to go straight to sleep instead of being so wired on adrenaline that he would be tempted to stay up flipping channels until the wee hours of the morning. Let me mention, as an aside, that Dr. Sumrall’s out of print but still available biography, My Story to His Glory, is an amazing, “must-read” for any missionary or preacher.

For me, the bottom line in all of these discussions is that true spirituality, as I once heard Dale Yerton put it, is “naturally spiritual and spiritually natural.” There is a mysterious mix of the natural and the supernatural in the ministry God accomplishes through us that enables us to become and do so much more than we could ever hope to in and of ourselves. We must be very vigilant to never, ever forget, that no matter how much God uses us, we always steward “…this treasure in vessels of clay.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NIV). We are still human, still vulnerable, still utterly dependent upon the God who created us and called us.

I will never forget the story an extremely gifted, anointed worship leader shared with me over dinner after service one night at a pastor’s conference where I ministered several years ago. It had been such a joy to receive from the ministry of a true psalmist during the sessions. When I went out of my way to speak words of affirmation and appreciation to him, he told me how, not long before, he had experienced something very unusual in a similar meeting. On that occasion, when he walked out on the stage with the band behind him and a very large crowd in the room in front of him, as he took his guitar pick in his fingers and was about to strike the first note, suddenly, it was as if all knowledge of how to play the guitar completely left him! He told me that, in an instant, in spite of many years of training, practice, and experience, he could not even recall how to play the initial notes! He stood there, bewildered and embarrassed for several seconds, while the crowd began to fidget restlessly, wondering what was wrong. Then, just as quickly and completely as it had left him, his musical ability came flooding back into him in an instant. As he struck the first chord, he said the voice of the Holy Spirit whispered to his heart, “That’s just so you will never forget where all this comes from!”

May God help us all to never forget where our gifts, our reputation, our circle of influence, our network, even our character and our integrity really come from, and may we never forget how much we need His ongoing help to both serve and honor Him…!

Dr. David Shibley's New Blog

Had a great chat today over Tex-Mex with my very good friend, Dr. David Shibley from Global Advance. After tasting such local delicacies as roasted avocado with chicken fajita meat at a new restaurant called Chiloso (that I really hope opens franchises soon - sort of like Chipotle taken to the next level...!) we went back to his office for a bit. During our visit, he mentioned a book that he was reading and I urged him to start a blog that he could use to share his thoughts with pastors like me.

Well, one thing led to another and in a few moments we had him up and running at davidshibley.blogspot.com. David is one of the leading spokesmen for world missions in the charismatic world today, the author of several books including A Force in the Earth and The Missions Addiction. Anything he writes will be well worth reading!

If you know pastors in developing countries, in particular, I encourage you to point them toward another of Global Advance's websites entitled www.2tim2.org. It contains resources for spiritual leaders in English, Spanish, French, and Russian. At Hillcrest Church, we believe in David and the Global Advance ministry and we support them financially on an ongoing basis. If you would like to find out more about the work they do around the world, check out their online video entitled, Touching Leaders - Changing Nations.

Jack Hayford - It Could Happen to Any One of Us

In his From the General Supervisor letter to Foursquare pastors entitled It Could Happen to Any One of Us, about the recent, highly mediatized moral failure of a prominent spiritual leader, Jack Hayford wrote the following words worth remembering,

1. If you’re looking at anything, anytime that would not pass the judgment of your spouse, it’s inappropriate.
2. If you are unavailable and no one knows where you’re at for considerable time allotments, it’s dangerous and needs to change.
3. If you’ve created a web of lies and cover-ups, then the tentacles of sin have taken deep root.
4. If repentance and accountability are not clearly present in your daily routine, then you are lion bait.
5. If you don’t practice what God says about the need for purity of heart and head (avoid all sexual immorality), then you’re headed for a great fall.

AMEN! and God help us all...!

French Evangelicals and the Polical Process

A post on Ben Witherington's blog entitled, "Evangelicals in a Post-Haggard, Post-Rumsfeld World" prompted me to take a subject I had referenced in passing in my own "Tony Campolo on Liberal Evangelicals" post and write the following,

Hi Ben!

Before becoming a pastor here in America, I served as a resident missionary to France for a number of years. It was a very interesting and eye-opening experience to pastor wonderful, Spirit-filled people who were highly committed members of the Socialist party, or who even voted for the Communist party during their elections...!

I came to discover a couple of important differences between what I perceive to be the mindset of a majority of French evangelicals as opposed to their American counterparts:

1. French believers have zero expectation that their civil government will ever be run by people who are actually born again Christians, so they do not examine the personal lives of their leaders from a biblical perspective before voting for them. It never enters a French believer’s mind that a politician’s personal life would be sufficient reason to withhold their vote from him or her.

2. French believers view the political process as inherently corrupt due to its built-in dynamic of compromise and deal-making, not to mention its potential for conflict of interest or illicit monetary gain through the trafficking of special interest lobbyists, etc. This causes them to conclude that it would be completely impossible for any believer to maintain his or her integrity and run for office with any of the major parties.

This is due, in part, to the fact that French politics are based on a parliamentary style system that renders it virtually impossible for anyone to run for office as an independent. In the mind of French Christians, no believer could ever attain the backing of any major party without having engaged in so much questionable prior activity in support of that party, or without having incurred so many "IOU's" to so many other political figures, that their integrity and freedom to act according to their conscience would have already been fatally damaged before even being put forth as a candidate.

3. Believing that the major power brokers of all major political parties have long ago compromised their personal integrity and conscience, French pastors and other spiritual leaders would view with deep suspicion any overtures from politicians trying to court the support of the church in the electoral process. Most French pastors have a very hard time understanding why their American colleagues get so excited when representatives from the White House or Congress come calling or send invitations to functions inside the Beltway. In their minds, Americans should understand that offers of political power and access are never altruistic, but always come at a price, namely, a requirement to stand by the party or candidate in question in other areas of public policy, even though those other issues may not be clearly biblical in nature or even of great importance to the church world.

4. As a result of these and other factors, French pastors tend to believe strongly that spiritual leaders, local congregations, and church movements should play the role of public conscience to the larger society and never try to forge any sort of alliance with one particular party.

In the beginning of my stay there, I questioned their perspective, given what seemed to be great gains made by the evangelical church in America regarding certain social issues in exchange for publicly supporting individual candidates and forming a de-facto alliance with one particular party. Now, I look back with dismay and think we were probably duped into believing that we could salvage our souls while selling our support.

Although I personally have strong political convictions regarding certain issues, and have voted for the same party’s candidates in every election for nearly thirty years, and though I believe there are individuals who are called by God to run for office, I have purposed in my own heart to only use my pulpit to proclaim biblical principles. I believe the best way I can shepherd all of my flock is to teach them spiritual truths, many of which do, in fact, have a direct bearing on one’s conscience and decisions when entering the voting booth, but that I should never use my position or platform to promote a particular party’s or candidate’s agenda.

In the end, the only real hope any of us have for making the world a better place, not to mention improving the state of our country, is the kind of profound spiritual renewal and transformation that comes through a deep encounter with the living God through His Son Jesus Christ. As a pastor, leading people closer to Him is the greatest contribution that I can possibly make to the political process in our nation, for the closer we are to Him, the more we will live and govern in a way that is in harmony with His character.

Great list of Charismatic/Pentecostal blogs

I have just stumbled across a great blog by Rich Tatum called Blogrodent : Pentecostal Rumination and Review. I have just begun reading his blog and have already discovered that, among other things, he has an interesting list of links to other blogs called PneumaBlogs and a call to fellow Pentecostals and Charismatics to begin blogging.

Rich also has a link to a great post on Google Blogoscope pointers on good blogging style. The layout of Rich's own blog is a great example of how to "spruce up" your blog with graphics, fonts, and neat little tools like showing an executive summary of posts on your home page with links to the full post that even include an estimate of how long it will take you to read that post...!

Looking at the beautiful layout of Rich's pages shame me terribly and have already added to my determination to update the look and feel of this page just as soon as I can...!

Enjoy...! It is well worth the clicks to check Rich out...!