A Far Green Country

Lord willing Mindy & I will be working in Indonesia for the summer on the island of Java. It is a potential "feeling-out" of our future. The couple we are working with we met in Banda Aceh when we went to Indo for tsunami relief in early '05. Long story short, we have kept in email contact with this family who lives in Semarang & this summer when I visted an Indonesian congregation in Elmhurst, NY (in Queens) the pastor there was about to do the marriage ceremony of the missionary's daughter in Kentucky just 2 weeks later. This got me talking with the missionary again, who has since written up a request for Mindy and me to come serve alongside him after graduation in May of '08 (bless the Lord if I see that date). Soooo....here's some info on the people group we will be working with:

• Name: Jawa Pesisir Lor (Java Pal for short - simply means: North Coast Javanese)
  

• There are over 22 million Java Pal's, making it one of the largest unreached people groups in the world
  
  
• Less than .02% are Christian
  
  
• They are considered a "least-reached people group" which means, people groups among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group (usually less than 5% adherents & less than 2% evangelical
  
  
• They are Sunni Muslims
  
  
• They speak primarily Javanese & some Indonesian
  
  
• Most make their living through agriculture or used to work in ag & have come to the cities

This summer we would be doing evangelization and church planting (Lord willing) among this group, but if we came full time with the IMB and accepted this position, we would primarily be doing church planting and evangelization and I would teach one seminary course a semester at the Baptist seminary there after the first year of language training.

- to read more about the Jawa Pesisir Lor click here

I am excited about David Platt. I want to introduce him to those of you who do not already know (about) him. I got acquainted with his preaching over Thanksgiving break & cannot get enough ever since. He is 28 years old, so the first peer that I have heard who has the capability to transform Birmingham and the world through what God is doing in His life with the particular gifting that God has given him.

Platt is the new pastor at the Church at Brook Hills. If you are from Birmingham, you may be thinking - if he's so solid, why is he pastoring a contemporary mega-church? You may be thinking - the Church at Brook Hills is more like the Rich, Trendy Hang Out at Brook Hills. This is a SBC church that dropped from 4,300 in attendence to 2300 immediately after the former pastor Rick Ousley announced his resignation. Attendance is back up to 3,000. Sounds like a petty place - but, after hearing Platt's heart, vision, and preaching, I can't but think he will by the grace of God transform this church into a Kingdom advancing body or they will fire him, because he is bold and inspired and teaches the Word. He struggled with coming to Brook Hills because of its affluence and is convinced though that it was the will of God & that he can be used to inflict Christ-like change.

Another thing that surprised me is that Platt at 28 has 5 degrees and graduated from NOBTS with both his M. Div & his Ph.D. My first thought was, can anything good come from New Orleans? Indeed, it can - let me just encourage you to listen to this first message, (entitled OUTSIDE THE CAMP from his first series: Radical Restoration: Becoming the Church that God Intended 1) & then you will understand his passion and vision. This is a man of God with a heart for the nations (Indonesia especially!), discipleship, and the Word of God - after you have whetted your appetite with that first sermon, click here for a listing of any one of his messages, and listen (or watch) and grow in faith. He's an example of why I respectfully disagree with my pastor that you should keep the supporting passages and flipping around in a sermon to a minimum. Seriously, listen to these sermons. Oh yea, & did I mention, he's Southern Baptist.

Here are some other links from Brook Hills that have been added since Platt came in June:
Secret Church (I wanna do this!)
Persecuted Church
Theology of Suffering

Not from Brook Hills site - found a Christianity Today article on David Platt.

John Piper - God's gift to America & beyond in the 21st century. Should we drink or not? What music is appropriate for Christians to listen to? What TV shows and movies should Christians avoid? I love the way Piper approaches these issues through his reflection on the Word, from Hebrews 12:1 -

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us"

The fight of faith - the race of the Christian life - is not fought well or run well by asking, "what's wrong with this or that?" but by asking, "is it in the way of greater faith and greater love and greater purity and greater courage and greater humility and greater patience and greater self-control? Not ; Is it a sin? But: Does it help me run! Is it in the way?

As a boy I was mightily helped by having my very categories changed in the way I lived my life. I commend it to you young people especially. Don't ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits: What's wrong with it? Ask: Does it help me RUN the race!? Does it help me RUN - for Jesus?

Hebrews 12:1 is a command to look at your life, think hard about what you are doing, and get ruthless about what stays and what goes. - read or listen to the whole sermon here.

And I can drink to that - albeit a nearly hour-long in the freezer, ice slushed Cherry Coke.