Update

Well I graduated from seminary on Friday. After graduation, Dr. Black told me I need to start blogging again, so I thought I’d provide a brief update:

We’ve been busy at work with planting a church in Denver, CO. You can check out what we’ve been doing at our website here.

Also, I’ve started blogging over at Tumblr, which allows for quicker blogging and making posts from my phone. Check that out here.

I also have been writing a decent bit outside of this, particularly over at Baptist21. You can check some of what I’ve been writing here.

Also, in case you’re wondering what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year before moving to Denver, I’m on staff at The Summit Church full time in preparation of them planting our church. It’s an incredible blessing.

Most Influential Books?

First off, let me wish you a merry Christmas. It’s good to be back in Raleigh after traveling the past 10 days.

As part of a church planting questionnaire I recently filled out, I was asked to include the five most influential books that I’ve read outside of the Bible.

If you enjoy reading this is always a difficult question to answer. I often find my brain locking up when asked this question because I either want to pick the most impressive books (“I was just skimming Augustine’s City of God the other day and…”) or because there are so many that have influenced me. The list I gave didn’t necessarily include the most challenging or enjoyable books, but rather those books that changed the way I think about God.

Here were my five, including why they’ve been so influential:

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity – As a new believer and religious studies minor at USC, my faith was challenged continually both by friends and professors. One of my classes featured a professor who used J.D. Crossan’s (Jesus Seminar) notes and called me a fool for believing Job was a real person. Reading Mere Christianity exposed me to a logical explanation of the Christian faith, and was used by God to protect my new belief during my college years.

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God – The centrality of the gospel and its application to all people came alive to me in this book. I also found out that I had become an “older brother” in reaction to my “younger brother” behavior earlier in my life.  Short, sweet, and simple, but it was like a glass of cool water during a spiritually dry time in my life.

John Sailhamer, Commentary on Genesis (Expositor’s Bible Commentary) – A commentary?! Yes! I read this my first month after coming to Southeastern. I picked this up after recognizing I was biblically illiterate compared to other students, and thought Genesis would be a good place to start learning more about the Bible. Sailhamer’s ability to capture the depth of the biblical text, Scripture’s overarching narrative, and that the Old Testament isn’t just a collection of stories that teach a moral rocked the way I read the Bible.

If I had read his The Meaning of the Pentateuch back then, which I’m reading now, I imagine it would have had the same effect. It is fantastic.

John Piper, God is the Gospel – What is our chief end in ministry? While we may claim it is God’s glory, it is so easy to allow the gospel to be another rung on the latter to reach another end – our own fame, success, or praise from others. This work by Piper kills the prosperity gospel (which tempts me daily) within the first few pages.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together – Bonhoeffer’s description of biblical community grabbed my heart and articulated beautifully what I had been thinking through for some time. I came to realize that biblical community is counter-cultural, and the way I treat my brother or sister in Christ is a reflection of what I really believe about the gospel.

In reflection, my list is fairly unimpressive. The authors are well known, most of the books are popular, and nothing is over a couple hundred pages long. However, the Lord used these five books to radically shape who I am today.

Any books that have shaped who you are today?

The New Site is Up!

Check out our church plant’s new website at www.Denver2011.org.

In particular, I’d ask you to take note of Project 100, our attempt to have 100 people to commit to pray for our January trip to the city of Denver. Please consider praying for our trip and ask God to help us find a location, develop effective “links,” and grow in love for the city and its people.

Once we’re back from Richmond, my blogging frequency will increase. I promise!

Merry Christmas!

An Update

I’ve found that all the time I once used for blogging has been invested in preparing for church planting. However, I don’t want to give up on the blog and once I get through finals (one more today and another tomorrow) I plan to restructure my schedule so that I can write more.

Three important updates:

1. We moved! We love our new apartment and living in Raleigh.

2. Check out http://www.denver2011.org – this is the site for our church plant and the full site will be up this week. Sign up for our newsletter which will start going out this week as well.

3. We’re parents! Meet Penny, the latest addition to our family:

Advance

On Wednesday I went to the most recent Advance conference.

The messages were fantastic and are now all available here.

I would particularly recommend listening to Jeff Vanderstelt’s talk here on gospel, community, and discipleship. I’m listening to it for a second time right now as I type this.

Follow Where We’re Going

Last week I mentioned where we’re going. Along with some friends, we’ll be planting a church in urban Denver, Colorado.

Now I’d love it if you would help us make all this a reality. We need all the prayer and support we can get, and want to share what God is doing in and through us with as many people as possible.

If you’d like to get updates, just comment below or email me at bryansbarley@gmail.com.

The Myth of Adolescence: An Illustration

I saw this over at Relevant. Please take the time to watch this video:

One of the most amazing parts? He was 14 years old when he started! As I prepare to lead a D-Now at the end of the month, I return to the wisdom of my professors Dr. Black and  Dr. Reid who believe that young people are plagued by low expectations. As our country perpetually pushes back the age of adolescence into one’s late 20’s and early 30’s, there are a few like this young man who decide to reject passivity and accept responsibility, even when the expectation isn’t there.

Take Courage & Love People

I couldn’t have said this better myself:

Be encouraged that simply finding people interesting and caring about them is a beautiful pathway into their heart. Evangelism gets a bad reputation when we are not really interested in people and don’t seem to care about them. People really are interesting. Every person you talk to is an amazing creation of God with a thousand interesting experiences…. Very few people are interested in others. If you really find their story interesting, and care about them, they may open up to you and want to hear your story—Christ’s story.

John Piper, Finally Alive, 185

The first step to being an effective evangelist? You have to actually love people the way Jesus loved people. Without that, all the clever slogans, memorized presentations, and programs won’t do you any good.

Lord, please let me love people the way you do. Amen.

Thoughts on Technology and Ministry

In Tuesday’s chapel, Dr. Reid showed this video:

I’ve been thinking about it like crazy ever since. As we prepare to church plant and think through the best ways to utilize social media outlets and technology, the issue is more complicated than it may seem. How do we best utilize these means of communication? How do we prevent them from replacing face-to-face contact? As my friend, Alex, noted, “how do we even know what will be ‘in’ two years from now?

Here are three observations I made on the matter:

1. High quality technology does not equate excellence

Just because you have incredible bulletins and a sweet intro video to the sermon doesn’t mean that you’re demonstrating excellence in ministry. This means that you’re demonstrating excellence in your use of technology. The two are not synonymous.

If a cool logo and website replace excellence in the gospel, then it is only a matter of time before you will fail. Even a church name, logo, and website must be reflections of a robust understanding of the gospel.

2. Lack of/low quality technology does not equate holiness

Our hearts are “idol factories,” and this manifests itself in many subtle ways. One way that I’ve observed is that some who abstain from the recent technological trends (facebook, twitter, blogging, etc.) can present this as though it’s the most spiritual decision – apparently the “super-Christian” would never Twitter.

I have no problem with people who think it’s the wisest decision not to own a TV, use Facebook, Twitter, or whatever else, but don’t make it seem like God is a little more proud of you because you have done so. I believe the model example for this is John Piper, who doesn’t own a TV, yet is incredibly gracious whenever he is asked about this during interviews. Let’s not try to further justify ourselves by our lack of technological use.

The same goes for your church if it has a website that’s done poorly. This can be another way for churches to justify themselves, as a poor use of technology is somehow equated with having a greater spirituality.

An acceptance of mediocrity in any area, even in the technological realm, reveals a larger philosophy of ministry where it’s okay to be selective in what we do well for Jesus.

3. Context needs to drive quality to some extent

The question remains, “how do we balance between these two principles then?” I point to J.D. Greear’s “just enough principle” that he applies at The Summit Church. The question applied to matters of facilities, technology, etc. is “what is enough to get the job done?”

This means that technology will look different in various contexts. The quality of the website needs to be better in an urban environment full of young professionals than it does in a context where half the congregation doesn’t have e-mail. For example, do you really need to use flash on a website when most of your people’s browsers won’t even support it? Cautiously allow your context to determine (but not drive) how you use technology.

However, the thing that should transcend our culture should be our desire to do everything with excellence, including our use of technology in the church. This means problems like broken links on the website, regularly misspelled words on the Powerpoint, and old information in the bulletin are inexcusable if they characterize your church. No matter what the context, mediocrity must be rejected and everything must be done well for Jesus.

Writing’s Greatest Disease: Clutter

I’ve intentionally attempted to diversify my reading recently, spending time reading works of business, fiction, and education along with the regular theology books. On Writing Well is one of these books that I’m enjoying at the moment. In its early pages it states:

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unncecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon… the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every wod that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what – these thousand and are the the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.

– On Writing Well, 6-7

I love that last sentence. I used to think that if something was too complicated for me to understand when I read (much of my undergraduate religious studies reading comes to mind) then I had a problem. I’m realizing that being verbose doesn’t equate intelligence, and complicated sentences deserve more indictment on an author than praise. 

I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that you haven’t truly mastered anything until you are able to articulate it to a child in elementary school. Amen. It’s not necessarily the scholar who writes thousand-page books that is brilliant, but rather he who is able to communicate the same material in a hundred pages.