Matt Chandler - Bored Out Of Your Minds

Matt Chandler addresses "the most entertained generation in the history of the world" at Campus Outreach National Conference 2011 with incredible words of wisdom, bringing to light the fact that we are *bored out of our minds*, constantly filling ourselves with the abundant fleeting pleasures of the world. We settle for so little when we have been invited to be a part of the most epic saga that is the gospel.

Easter in 2:12

HT: PyroManiacs

Matt Chandler: Nobody Dies Early

Download or listen to part 1 of the series here.
Download or listen to part 2 of the series here.

Is Church Membership Biblical?

By Matt Chandler

“The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”

                 — Cyprian, Treatise on the Unity of the Church, 6.

I was 28 when I became the pastor of Highland Village First Baptist Church (now known as The Village Church). I had had a rough go early on in my church experience, and at that time I was not fully out of my “disenchanted with the local church” phase.

In all honesty, I wasn’t sure at the time that church membership was biblical. Despite that, the Spirit had made it all too clear that I was going to be pastoring this small church in the suburbs of Dallas. That was one of the many ironies of my life in those days.

Highland Village First Baptist Church was a “seeker-sensitive” church in the Willow Creek mold and had no formal membership process, although they were actively working on one and wanted the new pastor’s input. I had a strong understanding of the church universal but wasn’t well versed—and, as I said, somewhat skeptical—about the church local. We started growing quickly with young and oftentimes disenchanted 20-somethings who usually had no church background, or bad church backgrounds. They liked The Village because we were “different.” This always struck me as strange because we weren’t doing anything but preaching and singing.

In conversations with these men and women I began to hear things like “The church is corrupt; it’s just about money and a pastor’s ego,” or “I love Jesus, it’s the church I have a problem with.” My favorite one was, “When you organize the church it loses its power.” Although something occasionally resonated in me with these comments (I, along with most of my generation, have authority and commitment issues), I found them confusing since they were being made to me by people who were attending the church where I was the pastor.

Continue reading here.

Suffering (Matt Chandler)

This talk was given at the Our Fathers & Our Future Conference in Orlando, FL at the beginning of 2011. Matt has been battling malignant brain cancer for the past year and a half.

Source: http://theresurgence.com

7 Miles - Matt Chandler

Matt Chandler is the lead pastor at The Village Church.
Original Sermon: The Call to Mission
Sermon Series: The Great Cause



HT: Truth Matters