Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Tim Keller

Tim Keller: Want to Change America? Get Trained by Doing College Ministry

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Great insights from Tim Keller on how College Ministry is the best way to equip leaders who will impact our nation, from a post on ByFaithOnline.com:

Keller paints a bleak picture of where America is as a culture: “This is an unprecedented time in human history…What’s new is the breadth of conviction that there is no such thing as truth. There have never been whole societies built on that idea. Never.”

“Everyone knows that younger people are far less religious than the generation before … and despite all the things that we’ve been doing for the last 30 years, we’re losing them.”

According to Keller, if you’re on a college campus, you’re on the culture’s cutting edge. It is, he says, our best leadership development pipeline. By exposing people to the cutting edge of culture where they have to deal with the modern mindset, where they have to deal with non-Christians – that, in Keller’s opinion, is the best way to develop pastors and lay leaders.

Read the whole article here – worth the read for Keller’s insights on where our culture is headed and what we need to do about it.

HT: @stephenlutz

Every Good Endeavor – Developing a Theology of Work

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every good endeavorTim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor has been on my nightstand to-read stack since it came out.

Enter Andrew Wise with this handy Executive Summary. Andrew just graduated from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and was an intern with us with Cru for two years. His professional opinion on the book:

“this should be required reading for every college freshman/sophomore”

While I still plan to read the book…in the meantime this is a helpful, well organized overview of the book, chapter by chapter.

Some highlights:

“Our work can only be a calling if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests”

If this life is all there is… everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught…Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.

Without meaningful work we sense significant loss and emptiness…Work is one of the ways we make ourselves useful to others and discover our identities.

Work of all kinds, whether with hands or minds, evidences our dignity as human beings because it reflects the image of God the Creator in us.

Choosing Work: “How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God’s will and human need.

Since we already have in Christ the things other people work for, salvation, self-worth, a good conscience, and peace — now we may work simply to love God and our neighbors.

If you have to choose between work that benefits more people and work that pays you more, you should seriously consider the job that pays less and helps more — particularly if you can be great at it.

All work is objectively valuable, but it will not be subjectively fulfilling unless you see it as a calling to love your neighbor.

Today young people are seeking to define themselves by the status of their work. It is a major identity marker.

    • Many college students do not choose work that actually fits their abilities, talents, and capacities, but rather choose work that fits within their limited imagination of how they can boost their own self-image.
    • Three kinds of jobs they see — those that pay well, those that directly serve society’s needs, and the cool factor.
    • Results in students choosing work that doesn’t fit them or fields too competitive for them. Sets them up for dissatisfaction / meaninglessness.

If we have the luxury of options, we should choose work that we can do well — what’s something you can excel at?

Tim Keller on How to Get into Gospel Conversations

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Some great thoughts from Tim Keller on Evangelism in this video.

Some highlights:

  • If you strictly do Evangelism, the outside world sees it as recruitment, increasing your tribe, a power grab
  • You need to combine Word and Deed.
  • The best way to combine Evangelism and Good Deeds is on a personal level (more difficult to do on a organizational level)
    • You’re not going to love a friend without sharing the Gospel with them. And as a friend you will serve them as there is a need
  • Keller’s two steps for setting up Evangelism:
    1. Let the other person know you go to church
    2. Let the other person know that your Christian faith means something to you, even in passing: “my Christian faith has really helped me here…”
      • There are a lot of simple behaviors that you should be doing, that will lead in a very organic way into deeper spiritual discussion
      • You should be doing the simple behaviors first:
        • Loving and caring for people
        • Being a person of integrity
        • Letting people know that your Christian faith
      • And it will just bubble up naturally
      • I think most people think, I have to find out a way to get the whole gospel out in one conversation or get in a debate about Creation and Evolution. That’s not the way to go. Be simple.
  • He goes on to talk about how sharing the gospel in the city is more complex and requires more skill.

HT: @hanskristensen

 

Sharing Sermons

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You know me. I like sharing.

One thing I wish people would share more of is what sermons they’ve listened to recently that they enjoyed.

So in the spirit of the Golden Rule . . .

Here are some sermons I’ve listened to recently that I loved. I’m talking mind-blowing.

Leave a comment and share with all of us what great sermons you’ve listened to recently.

Ranked in order of awesomeness:

Beau Hughes — Learning Contentment (click to go to download/read the transcript – also available in The Village Podcast feed)

Skipped right over this on the Village podcast because, well, it wasn’t Matt Chandler. And Beau is definitely not Matt Chandler. In style, probably his polar opposite. Kind of like Keller (at least in this sermon), somehow enthralling despite its dry delivery.

  • I think it’s good for us to be sobered by how horrible our discontentment is. It’s not just a respectable sin that we can deal with here and there.
  • Contentment= Our highest ambition is to be the Lord’s and to be at His disposal
  • The first sin in the Bible is mankind being discontent with the blessings of God.
  • Discontentment erodes worship, rejects ministry and hinders joyful obedience.
  • It’s really hard to follow someone that you don’t trust, and it’s even harder to follow someone with whom you are angry. So discontentment is not the soil that joyful obedience grows in. Do you think you’re going to be obedient to God when you’re frustrated with Him and you don’t trust Him?

Tim Keller — Marriage as Commitment (click to go to podcast in iTunes)

So good (and I assume he unpacks a lot of this in his book that is still sitting on my night stand waiting to be read)

  • Marriage is a commitment first, and a feeling second
  • Marriage requires the ability to hear criticism without being crushed
  • The ability to give criticism without crushing
  • God takes your selfishness in marriage and uses it against you for your own good
  • You finally have to come to grips with your sin/selfishness because its ruining your life in your marriage. For the first time in your life, you can’t run

Matt Chandler — A Call to Pray (click to go to download/read the transcript – also available in The Village Podcast feed)

This is how to give a talk on prayer

  • The main issue in our prayerlessness is we have a problem believing and grasping that God likes us, enjoys us and delights in us.
  • “Do you think God delights in, rejoices in and enjoys you right now?”
  • I do not think that you struggle with believing that God likes you ten years from now. Because you ten years from now is awesome.
  • “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden.”
  • You’ve got to hear this invitation as it relates to prayer. Because the invitation isn’t, “Start doing what’s right.” The invitation is, “Come to Me. You’re not doing what’s right.” So the solution to what ails us, what weighs heavy on us and what exhausts us is not us trying harder at overcoming those things, but it’s rather us coming to Jesus, walking with Jesus, being in a relationship with Jesus that overpowers our affection for the struggle.
  • It’s, “Come to Me. Are you a train wreck? Come here. Are you broken? Are you stuck in lust? Are you stuck in anger? Are you stuck in fear? Get over here!”

Tim Keller — The Story of the Lamb  (click to go to podcast in iTunes)

Keller helps us “Behold the lamb of God” through unpacking one of THE dominant threads of the Bible.

Brilliant in making clear (even to a secular mind) the need for substitutionary atonement.

Tim Keller — God With Us 

A Christmas message that matters all year long. Tim Keller takes a sometimes trite phrase “God with us” and makes it come alive. Why “God with us” should excite and transform us.

Share the wealth – what great sermons have you listened to recently?

What I’m doing for Bible Study

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I started this blog because, as Russ Martin said in Tithing your Time Online: “By spending five minutes to upload the presentation from your last small group leader training you could save someone hours”.

It’s one of the primary reasons I read so many blogs – to quickly glean from others and use their thoughts for Cru talks, Bible studies, and staff coaching. I feel that it multiplies my time (requiring a lot less prep/admin time so I can spend more time with staff and students).


So hopefully this will help you save some time. Here’s a few things I’m using in my Bible study the coming weeks:

“Repentance is THE way we make progress in the Christian life. Indeed, pervasive, all-of-life-repentance is the best sign that we are growing deeply and rapidly into the character of Jesus.”

  • I’m also using this question from Tim Norman in Bible Study today: “Why do you think it’s important to read the Bible?” followed by his Devil’s Advocate questions and study of 2 Timothy 3:16—17 he lays out in his post (he just started blogging – you should definitely subscribe! And not just cause he’s my boss).
  • For the next five weeks in our Bible study, we will be reading through a chapter a week from Fight Clubs. I’ll have them read through the chapter during the week and then discuss and apply during Bible study. The “Bible” part of our Bible Study discussion will come from digging deeper into the various passages in each chapter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this e-book is free anymore. You can preview the intro and 1st chapter here. Or buy it here.

What we fight for: “All else that is good and beautiful flows from him, but our thoughts don’t naturally drift to Christ. This is precisely why we need to fight.”

Why accountability groups fail in this fight: “We need to remove accountability [groups] from the center and replace it with the Gospel. We need to orbit around Jesus, not rules or confession. Instead of groups gathered around accountability, we must gather around Jesus. Only then will we find something truly worth fighting for.”


What are you using right now for BIble Study and Discipleship?