Good News for Toronto!
Some of you may remember that a while ago Paul McDonald was authoring a blog called 'Good News for Toronto'. Well, I have some good news: Paul has begun blogging again!
His blog is devoted to experiences, questions, reflections, and thoughts on evangelism in the city of Toronto. It is an excellent resource and an excellent read. He has already written two posts this week. Here is an excerpt from the first:
Whatever happened to that evangelism blog? Wasn’t it called Good News for Toronto … or something like that? It was, it still is; in fact, it has been resurrected!
My last post was in May of 2010 (yikes! … it was year of Sabbath rest!). Lots has happened since. Caleb was born (Dec 4, 2010) – Georgie and I love him so much!!! Praise be to God for such kindness to us! I served as Pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church for a year! And well … lots of other stuff too.
Something really cool just happened a couple of weeks ago. My dear brothers and sisters at the Grace Fellowship Church plant in Don Mills hired me to help in the work of establishing the Church! Georgie and I have long standing friendships with many of them so we are very humbled to receive this mercy – this opportunity to walk in the works that God has prepared for us here (Eph 2.10).
I highly recommend you adding Paul's blog to your RSS feed.
Autumn Church Plant Updates
Hired Help
Paul & Georgie with Caleb
We are thrilled to announce the hiring of Paul McDonald to a half-time position where he will oversee ministries relating to evangelism and discipleship. Far from being a hired-gun evangelist, we’re desirous of putting Paul to work equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, creating a culture of evangelism and discipleship within the body.
Some of his work will include:
- Training for evangelism and leading evangelistic efforts
- Some one-on-one discipleship and mentoring
- Small group studies
- Preaching and teaching various series as appropriate
- Labouring for the church in prayer
- Providing the church with global missions vision & awareness
I’m so excited to work with Paul! In God’s providence we attended seminary together and have laboured together for a number of years at GFC Rexdale before the church plant. He is a man of unquestionable character, by God’s grace, and is, as Titus says, ‘zealous for good works.’ I can’t wait to see the impact of his ministry in our local body.
A Meeting Place
We continue to meet at Greenland Public School. We are so thankful to God for the renewal of the permit which just came through last week. God has provided for us in great ways! With this permit we have been granted the use of two rooms we were previously denied access to—and they are great! They will facilitate better ministries to children and families, so we are thankful for that.
From Mark to Peter
We have finished working our way through our first book studied together on Sunday mornings: Mark's Gospel. From there we will launch into 1 Peter on September 18. Please pray for me as I study and plan out that series in the coming weeks.
A Full Fall
This autumn we launch our full ministry schedule for the first time. We’ll be meeting for corporate worship Sunday mornings, doing group studies and children’s ministry on Sunday nights, and our small groups (Truth Application Groups) midweek in various homes. One thing I’m really excited about is the prospect of having all of our small groups led by members of the church rather than pastoral staff. What a blessing to have the congregation ministering to each other! I’m so thankful to God for giving us so many mature men & women from the start.
A Big Sunday
This past Sunday we ran out of chairs and bulletins. The gym where we meet felt full. In reality there was a lot of room to grow, but compared to previous summer weeks, this felt like a big change. It was an anomaly in the sense that many of the visitors from this past week were only visiting for one week, but it gave us a taste of great things to come.
A Week of Prayer
Beginning programs and ministries and beginning to see growth, far from making us feel strong, makes us feel our weakness, inadequacy and dependence more than ever. As a church we’re dedicating ourselves to prayer this week as we launch into our new fall schedule. Would you please join us in prayer? Ask our God and Father to strengthen us and equip us for the work he has called us to. Ask that we might be granted strength through his Spirit to comprehend the magnitude of the love of Christ, so that as a church, we might be built up to maturity, and that we might be increasingly conformed to Jesus, made a suitable dwelling place for our Lord.
Singing a Hymn with Jesus
The Last Supper
Mark 14.26 has always struck me as a bit of a funny verse. I've always wondered just why Mark felt it was necessary to insert this little detail into the narrative of Jesus's last night. After they finish eating the Passover meal, where Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper, we hear this: "And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives."
Why do we need to know that, I wondered.
As it turns out, this was part of the Passover meal as celebrated according to the Mishnah. The Hallel Psalms (Psalms 115-118) were sung at various points in the evening, especially toward the end, with the drinking of the fourth cup (there are four total). And it all wraps up around midnight.
So this detail is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which that it specifies the chronology of events as passing from evening (14.17) to midnight (here), to cock-crow (14.72), to morning (15.1), just exactly as Jesus had predicted the previous day in the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13.35). This is unfolding exactly as Jesus has predicted the 'coming' of the Son of Man would.
But beyond that, my (hopefully sanctified) imagination got working. The disciples got to sing a hymn with Jesus. What would that be like? How cool would it be to sing with my Lord? And then I got to thinking about what they would have actually been singing; so I went back and read those Hallel Psalms.
Psalm 118 is significant, of course, because it's the Psalm that the people are reciting when Jesus approaches Jerusalem in Mark 11. Psalm 117 is glorious, but short, so probably not what they would have been singing (or at least not all that they would have sung). Psalm 115 would probably have been sung earlier, leading to them likely (this is definitely speculation) singing Psalm 116 as Jesus prepares to go out to Gethsemane.
Can I challenge you with something? At some point today, read Psalm 116 as Jesus would have sung it that night. Imagine what was going on in our Lord's heart as he prepared for Gethsemane and Golgotha. Imagine how these words took on meaning like never before:
I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.
Because he inclined his ear to me,therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.
Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!”Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.
The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;
I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.I believed, even when I spoke, “I am greatly afflicted”;
I said in my alarm, “All mankind are liars.”What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people,
in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 116, ESV)
And now, think about us. How amazing is it that we can sing about God hearing our pleas for mercy because Christ went to Golgotha? How precious is it that he inclines his ear to us because he did not incline his ear to his Son in Gethsemane? How wonderful that the snares of death which encompassed Christ have been defeated so that I will never feel the pangs of Sheol! I can call on the name of the Lord and ask him to deliver me, and know for certain that he will because he first delivered Jesus, the firstborn from the dead.
Now I actually can sing Psalm 116 with my Lord in an even truer sense than the disciples did on that fateful night. What they sung, unaware, I sing with retrospective faith, believing that Jesus has forever filled up the meaning of this Psalm, and will always sing it with me.
Prayer
Martin Luther's Prayer Book
I'm fighting the urge to fill this post with inspirational quotes on prayer. They're everywhere. It's a funny thing, but people (myself included!) often seem to be able to write things about prayer a lot better than they are able to actually pray. That's sad.
It's also true that it's very easy to make people feel very guilty very quickly about how little we pray, or how little faith we actually have even when we do pray. I don't want to make anyone feel guilty about that.
All I want to say is this: I've never regretted a moment I've spent in prayer.
And that's saying something. I've regretted time I've spent with people. I've regretted investments I've made. I've regretted places I've gone, things I've said, things I've thought, and things I've wished. I've regretted decisions I made for our family and decisions I made for our church. I've regretted things in just about every area of my mistake-filled life. But I've never regretted praying. Not once.
I've never ever met with God and then thought, 'Boy, that was a waste of time...' or 'Now how was that worth it?' It's always worth it. It's never a mistake.
I pray that for however long God gives me on this earth, my life would be one continually filled with an ever-increasing awareness of my dependency on God, leading to an ever-increasing felt-need for prayer, which leads to an ever-increasing quantity and quality of prayer. I know I won't regret it.
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** This is written as part of the series 30 for 30: Reflections on Life at My 30th Birthday **
Why is Our Hunger for God so Weak?
As a church, we have been going through our annual week of prayer this week. It has been a blessed week. But as the week has progressed I have been asking myself, "Why is my hunger for God so weak so much of the time?"
I was convicted when I found this answer from John Piper:
The greatest enemy of the hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.
Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, “as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, “the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4: 19). “the pleasures of this life” and “the desires for other things” –these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.
- John Piper, A Hunger for God, 14-15
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