Blog Archive

Tim Tebow is the man. Heisman winner. NCAA Football national championship quarterback. Follower of Jesus. And the last one is most important to him. ESPN Magazine has an article on him this month (HT: Denny Burk) where the writer calls him a “nerd for Jesus.”

One of my favorite clips of Tebow is a report by ESPN on his mission trip to the Philippines (Tebow is an MK who grew up there) and some other things he’s involved in. Here’s the clip, but make sure you get to the end where he’s preaching the gospel to inmates at a correctional facility.

I had to share this video of Thomas playing ball. He’s obviously having a great time. The ball was a gift at one of Sarah’s baby showers from Mrs. Whitley. Its great for a dad to see his son enjoy playing with a ball of any kind! Children are a blessing from the Lord.

After you click play, you can watch in high definition by clicking the HD button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Due to a budget shortfall, the IMB may have to make significant cuts in its missionary force. Danny Akin has called on churches to give to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering in August in an attempt to make up at least some of the shortfall. I’m glad to say Severn Baptist Church will be participating in Christmas in August.

Southwestern Seminary is in the process of making some promotional materials available here. A short video is already posted, which you can watch below. I know not everyone knows how to download YouTube videos, so I downloaded them and posted them here for download. (Right-click and choose “Save as…” )

Christmas in August Teaser (Normal Quality) .flv format

Christmas in August Teaser (HD) .mp4 format

Mark Dever’s church uses silence as an element of worship between

songs, Scripture readings, etc. I think thats a pretty cool idea. You can read his article over at the 9Marks blog for some of the reasons he feels like its beneficial to the church.

I really like how he says it “amplifies” what was just done. Almost as if it gives the words of Scripture time to echo in the minds of the hearers. I know often times I’m quick to jump up and launch us in to our next song after our Old Testament or New Testament readings. I think it may be worth a try sometime to insert some silence into our worship.

Chuck Lawless has some great thoughts on our need for prayer as we undertake a Great Commission Resurgence.

The Great Commission resurgence for which we long will not come if we pray only out of habit while we’re really trying to fix our problems in our own power.

God grant that we do not forget the power and necessity of prayer if we mean to accomplish anything of eternal value.

Last month I sent in a letter to the editor of the North Carolina Baptist newspaper, the Biblical Recorder. It was in response to this editorial and this letter affirming the original editorial. Somehow it got published and you can read it here.

The subject matter is the Great Commission Resurgence document and motion that passed at last month’s Southern Baptist Convention. If you haven’t heard about this movement yet, do yourself a favor and see the original document (take a minute to sign it if you’re on board) and listen to Danny Akin explain it in his sermon on the media page called “Axioms of a Great Commission Resurgence.”

There’s more excitement over this issue in SBC (especially among young pastors) than anything in recent memory. I hope there will be some great things that come out of the GCR movement.

The motion, offered by Southern Seminary President Al Mohler, was to allow SBC President Johnny Hunt to appoint a task force to evaluate our current way of operating. The task force is then to put together some recommendations on how we can more effectively and efficiently work together to help accomplish the Great Commission.

The last four updates have averaged about 6 months apart… I know its shameful. I’m trying a site reorganization to see if I can get a little better about keeping up with it. You notice the blog is the first thing you see. Before I was updating two pages (at least), this should encourage me to give some more frequent updates.

I’ll be working on getting some more recent photos and videos up too. So if you’re one of the dedicated few who continues to check back every once-in-a-while: Don’t give up just yet. I may get better!

Until then, check out our church website at http://severnbaptistchurch.com/ and look around there.

Just passing ten months at the church, I’m glad to report our time is Severn has been great. I’ve preached through several of the minor prophets, Philippians, most of the first half of Proverbs, as well as some other texts. Check out our church website at www.severnbaptistchurch.com and you can access sermon audio files. (You can also find directions, in case you’d like to make your way Severn Baptist Church and visit us sometime!)

For anyone who hasn’t heard yet, Sarah and I are expecting our first child in February 2009. The doctors tell us we’re having a boy and we’re pretty excited. You can check back here when that time gets here and I’ll post some pictures and other information.

I am happy to report that Sarah and I have been living in Severn, NC now for almost three weeks. Severn Baptist Church called me as their pastor on January 20th and February 3rd was my first Sunday.

Its been a long process, but God has obviously been at work preparing me for them and them for me as well.

Severn (pronounced “Sev-ren”) is about 5 minutes over the Virginia-North Carolina line, southwest of Franklin, VA. Many of the homes here are over a hundred years old and beautiful buildings The town is small but very friendly and seems to be close-knit. You can see the town in the map to the right. The church is on the south side of Main Street, and can be seen from the satellite view.

Now for a little about the church itself. It was founded in 1896. Right now, we are having a little over 30 in Sunday School and around 50 in Worship. My first sermon was from Rev. 19 and I talked about Jesus returning as a conquering king and about finding anew a sense of the majesty of God. The next week we started a 4-Part series on the attributes of God called “What Is God Like?” That is where we are now, as I write. Tomorrow will be the second sermon in that series.

The church has a parsonage and Sarah and I moved in almost three weeks ago now. It’s a beautiful two-story brick house and is huge for us with five bedrooms. We’ve spread out and tried to fill it up. We have 1 guest bedroom, a workout/ironing room, and Sarah and I both have a room for office/study. So things are going great here.

As for new contact information, our cell phones don’t work well here. We seem to be right in the dead spot between two cell-phone towers so our home phone is the best way to reach us. 252 is the area code here and the number is 585-1463 here at the house. I’m at the church mornings from at least 8-noon and the number there is 585-1213. Our mailing address is PO Box 502, Severn, NC 27877. I hope that’s enough of an update for now.

I wish I was better at keeping this website up but thanks to those who keep checking back! I’d like to start posting my sermons here at some point soon; check back in another week or two and see if I’ve got that going.

Everything has been going great for Sarah and I during this first year of marriage (just passed nine months as I write this). Below you can see a couple of pictures of us and our dog, Tucker, is in the first one. The second shot is of me and Sarah in Blacksburg at the infamous Virginia Tech loss to Boston College during the regular season. We had a great time at the game (as you can see in the picture) until the last two minutes of regulation. But Tech delivered retribution in the ACC championship game 30-16 down in Jacksonville.

Sarah and I are feeling like we’re pretty adjusted to married life now and she’s been working a local hospital doing physical therapy since graduating in May.