Church Planter. It’s been all the rage since its presale. Our friends at Crossway released this long-awaited book just a few days ago, and The Resurgence produced the following trailer. Well worth watching.

From The Resurgence:

It’s not often that we create something that we think every man needs to watch. This video is one of those you must see. We made it to announce the new book, Church Planter, and we think every reader of the Resurgence should read it ASAP.

Darrin Patrick, vice president of the Acts 29 network and a veteran church planter himself is one of the most qualified men on the planet to write this book. It is written for Church Planters, but will challenge any man (really any person) to follow Christ with everything he’s got.

This book is a call for God’s men to rise to their calling to be the men God’s called them to be, with the Word God has called them to preach, on the mission God has called them to. Seriously… Get a group of guys together and read this book.

Buy at Amazon: Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission

“Church Planter” by Darrin Patrick from Crossway on Vimeo.

A Christian’s job in doing ministry is not to perfect the world; such an effort would be an exercise in futility. Rather, the Christian’s job in doing ministry is to show the heart of the Father, and the Kingdom of heaven,  to people who are in a world that is fallen—and will remain fallen—until Jesus returns.

Let us remember that every person Jesus healed died a bodily death at some point. Lazarus even died twice. Let us also remember that God is not interested in band-aids, but is infinitely purposeful in all that he does. So then, we ask: why does he heal when the healings never stick? Why does he raise people from the dead when they will only die a second death? It is because these miracles are an eschatological sign of a Kingdom that is still yet to come. Therefore, healing does not exist for the sake of healing. Feeding does not exist for the sake of feeding. The point of miracles is not miracles. The point of good works is not good works. God uses the miraculous, as well as practical ministry, to show the truth of our present spiritual reality, and the promise of the physical future.

That true present spiritual reality is death.
The promise of the physical future is in Jesus Christ.

God grants healing because we have full spiritual healing through Jesus, and we will have full bodily healing in heaven. We give food and water to the needy because God has met our every spiritual need and he will meet our every physical need in heaven. The dead are brought back to life because we have been given eternal life through Christ, and will live forever in heaven with him.

In short, miracles, as well as practical ministry, exist to give us a tangible sign of the heart of the Father so that we might know the truth. This does not diminish the importance of ministry, but rather, it amplifies it. With this view of ministry, we see that we are not merely accomplishing a worldly goal, but that our efforts are a means by which people might see the Divine, and praise the one and only God.

Let us do ministry with this in mind: that we are not perfecting a broken world, but that we are showing the truth of God’s nature, and his promises, by the way we live and by our interactions with others. This world is not our home. But while we are here, as pilgrims traveling through this world and onto the next, we must be ambassadors for the Kingdom of heaven showing the world a glimpse into the heart of the Father.

Let our work in this world be evidence of the next.