Ambassadors (Missionaries)
- John 1:14; 20:21 read or listen online
- Colossians 1:19 read or listen online
- 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 read or listen online
- Messengers | Tim Keller | MP3 As disciples of Jesus, we are his messengers, and our mission is to communicate the belief that we have in Christ. Service based on performance, pride, and self-image can be manipulative and harmful, but service based on who we are in Christ allows us to rejoice in what God does in our lives and in the lives of others.
- Witness | Tim Keller | MP3 In Isaiah, we are reminded of the promise of God’s everlasting covenant for those who truly encounter him. When you allow him to change your heart, you receive a new mission: to give testimony and witness to others. This is a sign of conversion in your life, and God gives us the power and motivation to share the message of his unconditional love and promise of new life.
- The Cost of Mission | Tim Keller | MP3 The reality of meeting God changes you into a person of mission: one who is willing to leave what is comfortable in order to love and serve others. As you take risks to bless others, you will find yourself receiving not only the gifts and resources necessary to do so, but the greatest blessing of all - His presence in your life.
- The Challenge of Mission: Developing a Platform to Be Heard | Mark Young | Video Lecture This is an great 11 minute excerpt from classroom lectures from Dallas Theological Seminary. It dives right in the middle of the lecture. For more context start at the beginning of the 2 lectures here.
- Why Plant Churches? | Tim Keller | MP3 A crucial strategy for dynamic church renewal and growth in a city is through church planting. Following in the footsteps of Paul and Titus, church planting is mandated in the Bible according to the Great Commission. It fosters a kingdom mindset as well as concern and commitment to renew, not displace, existing churches. As neighborhoods change, a planted church can effectively respond to new communities and new generations of people.
- The Mission: Reaching the World Next Door | Eric Simmons | Sovereign Grace Ministries | MP3 Think globally: Keep the big picture in mind. Don’t get so caught up in life’s details that you lose a vision for God’s kingdom—a kingdom that is advancing all around you. Act locally: Sometimes the most unreached people are the people next door. The places you live and work aren’t accidents; God has sent you there. Why? So that you can join in this mission to reach the world.
- Should I Not Love that Great City? | Tim Keller | MP3 Many recoil at the thought of being called to reside in a large city. Jonah felt the same way when God asked him to go to Nineveh, and he made every attempt and excuse to avoid the great city. Like Jonah, we may see crime, pollution, greed, and moral decay as deterrents to living in a city; but in God's eyes its peoples are precious, and his grace and mercy are available to all. Once we glimpse the heavenly eternal city, the city of God, we will share God’s view of the lost and will be able reach out in charity and love to a broken world.
- The New City | Tim Keller | MP3 As Christians in the 21st century, we are called to obey God’s laws, because they are tools for understanding and expose the workings of our heart. Once we realize that we are saved by grace alone and accepted by God, we can respond to God in genuine obedience with transformed hearts. As members of a local Christian community, we become an alternate city within a city, a holy nation, representing Christ and serving the community in which we worship and live.
- What is (Christian) Cultural Renewal | Tim Keller | MP3 Christians commonly think we can change the culture around us through evangelism or through great individuals. However, culture is primarily changed through communities. Dualism, the separation of the personal and public spheres — the way we often separate our faith from other areas of our lives — prevents us from having a stronger impact upon culture.
- Acts 17:16-34 read or listen online
- Can I Believe? (10 sermons)| Tim Keller | MP3 A collections of Keller's talks on many of the biggest barriers to belief in Jesus: absolutism, doubt, evolution, hell, injustice, literalism, religion, suffering, exclusivity.
- A Woman, a Slave, a Gentile | Tim Keller | MP3 The gospel of Jesus Christ transcends cultural and socioeconomic differences. Here we have three examples of conversions in Philippi: of the religious, the oppressed, and the secular. The gospel is presented through rational discourse, a power encounter, and through practical embodiment of a gospel-changed life. The message of Christ liberates and transforms lives, and unites people who once had nothing in common into one family.
- Out of the Saltshaker & into the World: Evangelism As a Way of Life | Rebecca Manley Pippert | Book Pipert's book is both light and profound, through many different stories, she gives a biblical and relevant view of what engaging and effective evangelism might look like.
- Becoming A Contagious Christian | Bill Hybels | Book Hybels introduces several practical ways to engage friends and neighbors in gospel conversations in ways that are authentic, relational and motivated by love.
- Evangelism (4 part series) | Mark Dever, Mike Bullmore, Jim Donohue, Kenneth Maresco | Sovereign Grace Ministries | MP3 This series reminds us that it is God who changes hearts, and that God has charged us to bring the glorious gospel to those who don’t yet know him, believing in the power of the gospel to change others’ lives.
- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism | Tim Keller | Book Keller carefully addresses all of the major objections to biblical faith in a way that is thorough and very respectful to those who do not yet believe. It can help us think through many of the problems friends and neighbors may have with Christianity.
(Religions of the World, Cultures, Postmodernism)
- Exclusivity: How can there be just one true religion? Tim Keller, audio Religion poses a danger of creating division or intolerance between groups of people. However, the gospel lead us to three things: humble service, reconciling behavior that is neither patronizing nor self-righteous, and a love toward people who hold different beliefs than we do.
- Cultural Discernment from a Biblical Worldview | Albert Mohler | Sovereign Grace Ministries | MP3 Dr. Albert Mohler addresses how a Christian should think and speak about cultural issues including homosexuality, marriage, feminism, and politics. The seminar concludes with a question-and-answer session.
- The Gospel in a Pluralist Society | Leslie Newbigin | Book Newbigin's analysis of gospel and culture written in 1989 still holds true. He show the pitfalls of many Enlightenment and Postmodern assumptions about the world and calls the church to leave behind the dualism of sacred and secular and live lifes of faith in all spheres.
- So What's the Difference? | Fritz Ridenour | Book A classic first released in 1967, this revision takes a current look at the answer to the question, "How does orthodox biblical Christianity differ from other faiths?" In a straightforward, non-critical comparison, Fritz Ridenour explores and explains the basic tenets of 20 worldviews, religions and faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, New Age and Mormonism.
- The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog | James Sire | Book For more than thirty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for a clear, readable introduction to worldviews. In this new fifth edition James Sire offers additional student-friendly features to his concise, easily understood introductions to theism, deism, naturalism, Marxism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism, New Age philosophy and postmodernism. Included in this expanded format are a new chapter on Islam and informative sidebars throughout.
- Genesis 1:28; 9:1; 12:1-3 read or listen online
- Matthew 28:18-20 read or listen online
- Why Plant Churches? | Tim Keller | MP3 A crucial strategy for dynamic church renewal and growth in a city is through church planting. Following in the footsteps of Paul and Titus, church planting is mandated in the Bible according to the Great Commission. It fosters a kingdom mindset as well as concern and commitment to renew, not displace, existing churches. As neighborhoods change, a planted church can effectively respond to new communities and new generations of people.
- Planting Churches Cross-Culturally, David J. Hesselgrave Hesselgrave presents from the book of Acts, the Pauline strategy for missions and evangelism which puts establishing local churches at the heart.
- Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, & the People of God | Harvey Conn & Manuel Ortiz | Book Covering almost every aspect of urban ministry, this book not only informs us of the challenges of urban ministry, but equips us to face those challenges. The message of the book is not to just evangelism in the city, but mobilizing leaders and the church as a whole to bring about social transformation in the global urban centers.
