Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.

I recently sat down with Matt Chandler, Pastor of The Village Church (A29) at the recent Acts 29 Retreat in Vail, Colorado. Matt shares some insights from what he has learned through his experience with cancer and how to lead yourself and your church through suffering.

For more from Dustin Neeley, check out his blog Church Planting for the Rest of Us.

Acts 29 Network

A network of churches planting churches for the glory of Jesus. Get more info.

Social Media

John Calvin wrote that the human heart is an idol factory. He was right.

Throughout history, we have bowed down to golden cattle, celestial beings, stone animals, and even human body parts. The passage of time has only increased the number of ways we exchange the worship of the One True God for lesser, false gods. Today, we can sadly add yet another idol to the list—social media.

Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), as technology, is neutral and harmless. Social media can and should be used for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel in every possible way. But natural-born idolaters like you and me are no more than a few clicks away from making this good thing a god thing.

Tainted Meals

Social media carries a unique set of temptations. Much like the adulterous temptress described in Proverbs, social media offers us the invitation to come into her house and enjoy the choicest foods, only to find the meal poisoned.

The most dangerous of these tainted meals is pride. Few other creations in history have allowed us to see how "important" we and our thoughts are with such tantalizing immediacy as our blog and tweet stats. There are times we check our stats because we are more concerned with the applause of man than the affirmation of Jesus, and we forsake the true justification of who we are in the gospel for the false justification of who we are in the eyes of our followers. We do the opposite of what we set out to do in the first place; we serve ourselves instead of God and his people.

Check Your Hearts

Pride creeps in through tweets and status updates. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with mentioning where we are having lunch or who we are with, we would be well served by checking our hearts before we do. Are we sharing this information to give people a helpful window into our lives as we seek to live out the gospel, or are we unwittingly (or even quite wittingly) enticing our friends toward coveting the life we are living? Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth tweets.

So what's the answer?

1. Think before you post.

It sounds simple, but stopping to think about why we are about to do what we are about to do is an amazing sin-killing weapon. Use it and use it often. It has been a great help to me.

2. Consider "fasting" from social media for a season.

While this may seem extreme, in light of Jesus' counsel about tearing out our eye if it makes us sin (Matthew 5:29), fasting seems like the least we could do to expose the true condition of our hearts. If we are flatly unwilling to consider it, that tells us something.

3. Believe the gospel.

Make your solid theology soundly practical in daily life. If, when we are tempted to go to the fleeting approval of man to shore up our insecurities, we instead go to the approval of God that is ours in Christ, the approval unaffected by the abundance or absence of re-tweets, we, our followers, and the kingdom are better for it.

Calvin was right. The heart is an idol factory.

But at this intersection of technology and idolatry, pull the plug on the bad and keep the good.

Luke Sermon Series

The current Mars Hill sermon series traces the life of Jesus through the Gospel of Luke. Watch the preview.

Recently I sat down with David Platt, Pastor of the Church of Brook Hills in Birmingham, AL, and author of Radical, at the Advance the Church 2010 Conference. In part one of our conversation, David shares his thoughts about the spiritual landscape of the South, his counsel for younger leaders, and his "one thing" for pastors.

Recommended Books

Get the best books on various important topics. Check out our recommended reading section.

At the recent AMBITION Boot Camp, I sat down with A29′s Tyler Powell to talk about calling, timing, and preparing for church planting.

Tyler, as always, had a good word for all those wrestling with a call to plant a church.

Vintage Church Team Study Pack

Designed for church leadership teams. Includes study guides and DVD curriculum. Check it out.

Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.

In this clip Darrin Patrick talks about learning from other “tribes” and pastoring our families. As usual, Darrin offers some great counsel.

For more from Dustin Neeley check out cp4us.org.

Acts 29 Network

A network of churches planting churches for the glory of Jesus. Get more info.

Justification by X: Click | View Series

A Confession

Let's start with a confession: I love Affliction T-shirts.

The fleur de lis reminds me of my city. The skulls remind me of my depravity. They are comfortable and hand crafted. I love 'em. But because of their cost, I own only one of them that I bought on clearance at Macy's. Oddly enough, at the risk of sounding girly, I actually think about that one shirt a lot (although the bones do help my case). And it's not primarily for the comfort or the craftsmanship, though it may indeed have something to do with my depravity.

As the thought turns in my mind, the question that haunts me is, "Why did I really want that shirt in the first place?" Is it for the reasons I mentioned above, which seem harmless enough? Or is it for some less harmless reason like, "All the cool kids wear them and I want to fit in?" Hmmm... The plot thickens.

We have just stepped from the dark closet where my shirt hangs into the much darker corners of the soul.

The Lie

All of us have "false justifiers" that we use to try to justify ourselves before God and others, and there are ways we seek false justification that are as nuanced as our own personalities and ministry contexts. For many, what we wear, or at least our appearance, is high on the list. And each time we allow how we appear before others to become more important than how we appear before God, it is stark evidence of our belief in the great Lie that Jesus and the good news that he has spoken over us is not enough.

The Truth

As with any lie, the only way to effectively counter it is with the Truth. When we seek to "clothe ourselves" in the righteousness that the "right kind" of clothing can provide, we must remind ourselves that we are already clothed in the righteousness of Christ (Isa. 61:10). When we seek to find our value in the fact that we can buy something of significant value on earth, we must remind ourselves that we are of great value to God and have been bought at a great price (1 Cor. 6:20) already. We have to counter the Lie with the Truth.

So is it wrong to wear an Affliction T-shirt? No.

Is it wrong to define yourself by what you wear? Yes.

So tomorrow when you reach in the closet for what to wear, stop and ask yourself, "Why am I about to wear what I am about to wear? To honor God or to seek to impress others?" If you find the Lie at work, kill it with the Truth. "I am not justified by what I wear, but by the righteousness that I am now clothed with in Christ." And with the name of Christ written on your soul, it doesn't matter what name is written on your shirt.

To be continued.

Learn more about how to spot the Truth and the Lie working in all areas of life at the Exchange Conference in San Diego, June 17-18.

Doctrine Book

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.

Justification by X: Click | View Series

We Know the Truth

Most of us reading this post have a deep and abiding love for the gospel—the good news that Paul heralds in Romans 1:16-17: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

And most of us would also be quick to proclaim and defend the searing indictment of Romans 1:22-25: "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."

But We Still Succumb To the Lie

While this text is speaking specifically about the practice and consequences of those who do not know Christ, I fear that those of us who do know him are often guilty of falling prey to the same deception that is seen in verse 25—exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. This may not be in regard to our eternal salvation, but in what we look to to "save us" in the difficult moments of everyday life and ministry. And while our souls might not be in eternal danger, the intimacy of our relationship with God and our effectiveness in ministry and mission certainly are.

We look to Jesus to justify us before God in eternity; but we often look to lesser, functional saviors to "justify" us in the moment. These can be things like:

• Material possessions.
• Ministry results.
• Misplaced identity.
• Social media.

The ruins of our false justifiers litter the landscape of our lives.

In the following series, we will take several of these "false justifiers," seek to deconstruct them, and disarm them by the power of the gospel. My hope is that by the time we finish, we will be able to exchange these lies for the truth.

To be continued.

Exchange Conference

Mark Driscoll, Peter Jones, Francis Chan, Kevin DeYoung, and others will teach you how to distinguish the Truth from the Lie in all of life at the Exchange Conference.

At the recent AMBITION Boot Camp sponsored by Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY, I sat down with Darrin Patrick, Pastor of The Journey in St. Louis (Acts 29), to talk about how to avoid common church planting pitfalls, dealing with criticism, and more.

Thanks Darrin for the great counsel.

Listen. Learn. Tweet.

Exchange Conference

Mark Driscoll, Peter Jones, Francis Chan, Kevin DeYoung, and others will teach you how to distinguish the Truth from the Lie in all of life at the Exchange Conference.

At the recent AMBITION Boot Camp, I sat down with A29 vice president Darrin Patrick to talk about what wisdom he had for church planters and his tips for preaching. I believe he offers some invaluable counsel. Listen. Learn. Tweet.

Darrin Patrick's book Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission will be out this August from Crossway.

How Jesus Made Disciples

Reflections from the book of John on How Jesus Made Disciples.

At the recent AMBITION Boot Camp sponsored by Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY, I sat down to talk with Scott Thomas, Acts 29 Director, about a very interesting topic…Mark Driscoll.

Scott’s comments offer a unique and “up close” view into the life of a leader that many admire from afar.

As you hear these insights from Mark’s life, I would encourage you to examine your own life in light of the Gospel for what God desires to cultivate even today.

Listen. Learn. Tweet.

Doctrine Book

Doctrine is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.