A good, convicting word from Dane Ortlund.

My pastor, Mike Bullmore, began his sermon last Sunday with a brief update regarding a conference he ministered at the previous week in Toronto. The conference MP3s are available for free, and here’s what Mike contributed:

1. The Functional Centrality of the Gospel
2. Panel with Q&A: Bullmore, Martin and guests
3. The Gospel and Pastoral Character
4. Panel with Q&A: Bullmore, Symons, Boot, Martin, and guests
5. The Gospel and Pastoral Labor
6. Panel with Q&A: Bullmore, Martin and guests
7. The Gospel and Pastoral Hope
8. Panel with Q&A: Bullmore, Martin, Symons, and guests

By Jenni Naselli

Andy recently gave me Gospel Meditations for Women by Chris Anderson and Joe Tyrpak. I’m enjoying and being edified by it. It’s not fluffy.

The thirty-two-page booklet is broken into thirty-one days of specific Scripture-readings with a corresponding gospel-meditation. It applies the gospel, for example, to relationships (“The Gospel Crushes Relational Conflict”) and trials (“Jesus’ Crucifixion and My Trials”). The topics range from theology (e.g., sanctification, inspiration, Christ’s substitutionary death) to specific applications for women (e.g., modesty, singleness, romance, motherhood, older women mentors). I especially appreciate the little nuggets of application at the bottom of each page, which sum up the meditations. This morning I read, “Let the Gospel affect your relationships.” Very good. I need this.

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• order ($2.50 for 1-9 copies, $2.25 for 10-50, $2 for 51+)
• sample PDF
• more info
• Chris Anderson’s posts: 1, 2, 3, 4

Perhaps the most important truth that Jenni and I have especially internalized in the last couple of years is that the gospel is central to our Christian life—not simply step one. We immediately identified with the following paragraph when we read it recently:

For complex reasons many in the Western church came to speak of ‘the simple gospel’, by which they at one time meant the gospel summarized in convenient and simple form, usually for evangelistic purposes. The result is that for many today ‘the gospel’ or ‘gospel preaching’ refers not to the glorious, comprehensive good news disclosed in scripture but to a very simple (some would say simplistic) reduction of it. Some churches distinguished between ‘worship services’ and ‘gospel services’: one wonders which term, ‘worship’ or ‘gospel’, has been more seriously abused. Doubtless the motives behind these developments were often excellent. But the fact remains that a variety of serious problems were thereby introduced. For many, evangelistic preaching became identified with simplistic preaching. Worse, ‘the gospel’ came to be associated in their minds exclusively with the initial steps of faith rather than with God’s comprehensive good news that not only initiates salvation but orders all our life in this world and the next.

–D. A. Carson, “The Biblical Gospel,” in For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future (ed. Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon; London: Evangelical Alliance, 1996), 82.

Related: My review of Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love (Themelios 33:1 [2008]: 102–3).

“Beginning with Moses” just posted the following article by Michael Bird: “A Theology of the Gospel: The Gospel as the Starting-Point and Integrating-Point for Biblical and Systematic Theology.”

Outline:

1. Introduction
2. Prolegomena: Setting out the Gospel
3. The Gospel in Biblical Theology
4. The Gospel as the Integrating-Point of Systematic Theology
5. The Gospel and Discipleship, Evangelism, and Ministry Formation
6. Conclusion

“It is not only the importance of the gospel to the Church’s witness that should lead us to be vigilant and uncompromizing about the integrity of the gospel, but the entire task of being theological communities rests on our capacity to construe, imbibe, digest, and apply with greater effect the gospel in our theological and ministerial formation. For the gospel is the beginning point for theological investigation, it is the link between the Old and New Testaments, the integrating theme for theological discourse, and proclamation of the gospel is the goal of theological instruction. In the end the scarlet thread running evangelical theology is a theologia evangelii, a theology of the gospel.”

Kevin Bauder recently preached a five-part series on the gospel at Bible Baptist Church (apparently downloadable in IE but not Firefox):

1. What Is the Gospel? (1 Cor 15:1-8)
2. The Gospel as the Believer’s Motivation (Phil 1:12-26)
3. The Gospel and God’s Justice (Col 2:13-15)
4. The Gospel and God’s Love (Rom 5:8)
5. The Gospel as Liberation (Heb 2:14-15)

HT: Chuck Bumgardner