Some Of What Nick Shock Is Thinking About

I have the privilege of serving on staff with a great friend, Keith Ferguson. Some of you are aware of the history that Keith and I have in which we met during our college years while serving on a summer ministry team. For the past three and a half years we have worked together with many others to plant Hill Country Bible Round Rock.

One of the amazing things that has happened during this season is to see both of our lives continue to develop. And one of the main ways we have seen our ministries develop has been a growing understanding of the centrality of the Gospel. That may sound elementary to some, but what we have discovered is that because of the simplicity of the Gospel message, it is many times shelved post “the prayer” of salvation. So what happens is that we believe the Gospel is for those who have yet to put their trust in Christ, and that once cross the line of faith, it is then our job to work hard to be like Christ divorced from the Gospel. Which, by the way, is totally unbiblical and leads down a path to empty, moralistic religion. The power of God in the Gospel is what saves us and the power of God in the Gospel is what sanctifies us.

Anyway, I am rambling on now. (which I tend to do a lot) I wanted to link a sermon from this past Sunday that Keith preached at our grandparent church, Hill Country Bible Church Northwest, in Austin on freedom found in the Gospel. This message is really powerful and encapsulates a lot of what God has been teaching me in the past three years. Check it out and let me know what you think…FULLY FREE.

In my last post I included a Francis Chan clip where he was challenging church leaders to go to scripture and ask this question in essence: If the description of the Church that we see in scripture is all we looked to for understanding what the Church is, would it look like the expression we see today? If it is not, why and how do we need to realign with God’s intent for real gospel-centered community? I had the privilege of hearing Chan speak at the Verge Conference in Austin a couple months back and he said things very similar to the clip. It was heavy and it was compelling. Today, I saw the clip I posted below where he is resigning from Cornerstone where he has served for 16 years. This apparently has been a lengthy process of wrestling through the scripture for he and his wife. I am really curious as to where he will ultimately land, considering what he alludes to in the clip. Once again, thank you Francis for continuing to challenge us to live in line with Scripture and with radical faith-filled obedience in response to God’s stirring.

Francis Chan is stepping out in faith… from Catalyst on Vimeo.

I was reading Jeremiah 1 this morning and reflecting over God’s calling and charge to Jeremiah. I was convicted by a few insights from the chapter. In the passage, this phrase leaps off the page: “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.” Wow! How incredible to have the word of the Lord come to you. The word that comes, informs Jeremiah that He formed him, knows him, set him apart, and appointed him to be a messenger to His people. Jeremiah, just like Moses, makes the excuse that he does not know how to speak and that he is unqualified based on his age. I initially want to focus on Jeremiah’s lack of faith, but there is a healthy awareness that he cannot do what God is asking him to do without God. He realizes his human limitations. However, God presses in on Jeremiah telling him not to make excuses and that just as in the story of Moses, He is sending him and will give him what to say. So some questions for me and maybe you to consider:

Am I listening for the word of the Lord to instruct me?
Do I have a true humility that comes from seeing God accurately and myself honestly?
Am I making any excuses about why God could not use me? (driven by fear of failure?)
Do I genuinely see God as the source of my calling, content, and courage to do what He has asked me to do?
Do I realize that He is going to hold me accountable to the instruction He gives me?

I need to repent this AM!

I am still reeling and in somewhat of a funk after attending the Verge Conference this past weekend. I’m pretty messed up and distracted right now. Don’t misunderstand, I have great hope and excitement about what I heard and saw at the conference. However, I have a love/hate relationship with conferences, especially good ones, because I tend to get fired up and overwhelmed at the same time. I just heard Ed Stetzer call conferences “ministry pornography” because the guys that speak many times paint a glamorous picture that distract us from what God intended for us to be doing! If you’ve been there, you get the point.

I am by nature, a starter and risk-taker. I love getting a vision from God about what could be or should be, then seeing Him make it happen as we mobilize. Getting people stoked about reaching people with the Gospel in a new or refreshed way is addicting to me. This can be dangerous at times, because I have to make sure I stay focused on follow through as well as the launch. Though I confess the thought of maintaining a system gives me hives. At least after 13 years of ministry, I have learned to be better in moving at God’s pace rather than reacting solely to the emotion of the moment.

Anyway, I wanted to type out some of my high level takeaways from this past weekend to clarify what God is stirring in me…

1) God is moving all over the world in a significant way, and I am only one of millions who really want to see God do something God-sized in our world! (love this about being at conferences!)
2) We must stay Gospel/Jesus centered or all of this missional talk is a waste of time.
3) We need to focus on hearing from God personally more than plugging and playing the expression of the the Gospel movement elsewhere.
4) Our model of church planting needs an overhaul. Learn from other global models.
5) Contextualizing the expression of church our setting is something I need to get clarity on.
6) We need to take risks with urgency to accomplish the mission.
7) We must make disciples of people not simply plant churches.
God is leading the church to go exponential in its multiplication, even in the States!
9) I need to stay intentional in living missionally personally! (quit complicating, theorizing, analyzing, or theologizing it, and do it)
10) We have to continue to think global Gospel! This gives us westerners a great dose of reality that we are not the center of Christianity!

The past week or so I have been following closely the story of Matt Chandler, the lead pastor at The Village Church in Dallas. Matt has impacted me deeply from a distance, going back to my college days in Abilene, TX where he spoke at a weekly Bible study called Grace. I have watched God use Matt’s incredible gift of communication to rally believers to live their lives radically for the sake of the Gospel. On Thanksgiving he had a seizure, collapsed, and was diagnosed with a mass on the frontal lobe of his brain. Anytime something like this happens to a young person it is sobering. When it is a person you know, a leader in the church who is influencing thousands, it creates even more intense reflection. So, when these type of things happen, it is a gut check, heart check, perspective check, and even motive check. I have been praying for Matt, his family, his friends, and his followers. At the same time, I try to put myself in his position, and consider how I would respond in the face of suffering. I want to be the type of person who finds my focus on Jesus and the Gospel intensify in hardship. This video I have included below is a powerful testimony to the faithfulness of God. Hope it encourages you to live more faithfully rather than fearfully for the Gospel.