adam feldman blog

BaptistLIFE article

I'm in between meetings right now (surfing free WiFi @ SBux) and just got around to hunting down the article that I wrote on church planting for the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware per their request back in August. For reasons that I explain in the article, I dodged writing it for about a year. When the opportunity came back around, I wrote it. I would appreciate your thoughts/comments on the article. You can post them here or directly on the site.

You can find the article HERE.

pastoring is dang hard

This summer Metanoia is walking through Colossians. Two weeks ago I preached through Col. 1.24-2.7 and talked about the call to be a pastor/elder. In the sermon I affirmed that there are many callings and many ministries, and that the call to be a pastor/elder is to equip others to fulfill their callings and ministries.

I also talked about how hard pastoring is. In the text, Paul refers to his work as toil. In Greek the word is agonizomai--the root word we get "agony" from in English. Not many people realize how agonizing pastoring is. Expectations and pressures abound from within the pastor's own heart for the church community that he serves. In the US, many expect the pastor to be an amazing public speaker, a jack-of-all-trades and capable of making everyone happy. Pressure within and pressure from the community that ought to be lovingly supporting the man God has called to serve them is compounded by pressure from our common enemies: Satan, flesh and the world. No wonder 4 out of 5 seminary graduates are no longer serving in full time ministry within 5 years of graduating!

Yet, amidst the agonizomai, there is the sweet promise that God works powerfully in the pastor's ministry. There is the joy of shepherding and guiding Jesus' people through His strength. There is the excitement of leading the only counter-cultural movement the world has ever seen--and the thrill of danger around every corner. There are friendships--statistically few, unfortunately--where the pastor is known and loved as a person and not an "office." There is the hope of one day hearing, "Well done my good and faithful servant."

If you are a pastor and need a word of encouragement, I hope this has been a breath of fresh air for you from someone else in a foxhole just down the trail. If you are not a pastor and want to know how to practically support your pastor, here's the mp3 of my sermon. Download it and pray for the man God has called to equip you for your calling and ministry.

doctoral work & book writing

A few weeks ago I shared with you that phasing out of roasting coffee at the Bean Hollow Cafe was a good thing for my family due in part to some changes coming down the pike. Well, here it is: I'm back in school working on my doctorate.

Last month I began working on a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min) degree through Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Boston). I am concentrating my studies in the area of spiritual formation and spiritual theology. I have always been interested in how a Christian experiences the work of God's grace transforming her life ("sanctification"), but more recently I have taken a deeper interest in the subject.

About a year ago a book concept related to spiritual formation popped into my head. As I began exploring the concept I realized that I could probably earn a doctorate at the same time that I wrote the book. So, one of my desires in this doctorate program is that I will also produce that book.

I selected this particular D.Min program at G-CTS because of its heavy focus on contextualized ministry application--Metanoia will reap the benefits of my education immediately.

It is fair to anticipate that the subject matter and tenor of my blog will shift to focus more on my area of studies. How much so is yet to be determined. I'll keep my Facebook account for more personal updating.

twittering the national ecclesia gathering

For those of you on my Twitter feed, you'll be pleased to know that I'll be tweeting the Ecclesia Network's national gathering: Forming Missional Congregations. The conference runs today through Friday and has some pretty big presenters: Darrell Guder (author of the book that started the whole missional dialogue), Eddie Gibbs, Mike Breen and Jon Tyson.

penn says: respect for christians

A few months ago I posted a "Penn Says" vid on his thoughts on the Bible. He recently posted a follow-up to his initial thoughts in which he states that although he is a very devout atheist he has grown in his respect for Christians based upon how they responded to his vid--and how they didn't respond to his rude (Penn's word) vids on Mother Theresa and creationism.

Here it is (HT: Joe Kennedy... who, by the way, has a sweet photoblog up and running):

penn says: a gift of a bible

If you haven't taken 5 minutes to see this video yet, you need to. No commentary necessary from me. The video says it all.

Ed Stetzer is "speechless," but still has some good thoughts to offer on the video.

web-based platform for human rights: the hub

The Hub is an offshoot of Peter Gabriel's human rights activist website, Witness. The concept for both sites is simple: get footage of persons suffering injustice at the hands of corrupt officials, publish the footage on the web and let the global community bring pressure on those who are guilty of the violation.

Witness provides people with cameras, whereas The Hub is providing the global community with a Facebook-meets-YouTube means of public awareness and activism. Solid stuff.

I see this as a wonderful opportunity for Christians to get involved in righting wrongs and serving those who are victims of injustice. A few ideas:

1. Pray, pray, pray. Don't just watch and gawk, but pray about it. Then, act...
2. Does your church conduct "mission trips" with a people group who has recently been victimized? Now you know how to help them the next time you visit the region.
3. Maybe your church doesn't "go" to such places just yet. Perhaps you can lead the charge to bring practical help and the light of the Gospel to a dark place?

Any other ideas?

metanoia church turns 3!!

Wow. Its so hard to believe, but Metanoia Church turns three this month! It really does feel like we started down this journey just yesterday, and here we are 36 months later.

I want to thank everyone who made our celebration something special today: thanks to Chad for opening his home, thanks to Chad & Patty for coordinating food and such, thanks to Sarah for pickin' up a cake and roughing it without power since Hannah blew through yesterday, thanks to Art for debuting his new worship song, thanks to Jesse for being the sound dude and thanks to everyone who brought food!!

Most of all, thanks go out to my wife for standing beside me, offering advice and supporting me in this dream. Kim: I see the grace of Jesus Christ in you every day and wouldn't dare do this without you, love!

Ultimately, Jesus, we couldn't do any of this without You. It goes without saying that we are excited to see your Bride coming to fruition right here in our midst and are humbled that you use ordinary people like us. Amen.

metanoia, garden and village - 3 church plant sunday

Metanoia Church is pursuing a ministry partnership with Garden Church in Baltimore city (Bolton Hill). Joel Kurz (church planter) and I met via our blogs a few years back and have since discerned that our churches ought to prayerfully consider partnering. I'm pumped about this for several reasons. For Metanoia this means we begin to tangibly "look outward" beyond Ellicott City and we develop a significant on-going inner city relationship. For Garden it means they get some money and manpower from us--hopefully increasing in both as Metanoia grows. For both churches it teaches us more about Kingdom work--that we all need to work together.

Yesterday Joel spoke at Metanoia (you can listen to his message online) and brought some members of his core group. To our surprise, another inner city church plant, Village Church (Hampden), also showed up! I must confess, in the midst of a loooong summer with many folks out on vacation, it was great to see a swell of people in the room. The only downside was that our child care was taxed to the limit as we literally had three times the number of little ones in the room!

As we worshiped together a really neat thought popped into my head: we're all on the same team. We'll see each other briefly here on earth, but in heaven we'll see each other for eternity. I was so happy to see Metanoia folks stand and lay hands on all our visitors and to pray for their new works and ministry. What a tremendous blessing to be a blessing!

different methods: same gospel

Metanoia Church is part of a network of over 40 Southern Baptist churches in the middle Maryland region. Recently our network, the Mid-Maryland Baptist Association (MMBA), featured us in a newsletter article celebrating the diversity of churches in our particular network. Check out the article: Different Methods: Same Gospel.

Those of you who hang around Metanoia know that I strongly believe in cooperating with networks and organizations that further God's Kingdom. The MMBA is one of those networks that not only embraces diversity of ministry style, but puts their money where their mouth is by financially supporting churches like ours. Admittedly, Metanoia really doesn't look like a lot of Southern Baptist churches in our area, but we share the same doctrine and core value for mission.

I have little to no tolerance for Christians who bemoan the "institutionalized church" (whatever that is), denominations and traditional forms of church as completely useless. Granted, a lot of these ministry styles are "out dated," bureaucratically bloated and are ridiculously slow to embrace change, which is why I am serving as pastor at Metanoia and not one of them! However, if it weren't for these churches and the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in these churches who met God, embraced His call to mission and shared the Gospel, Metanoia wouldn't be here today. And, I seriously doubt that those who bemoan such expressions of church would have met Jesus personally--who else would have told them about Him?

One of the things I have always said is: I am Christ's child by identity, a member of Christ's family (the church) by adoption and associated with the doctrine and mission of Southern Baptists by choice. I may not agree with all that my tribe does all the time, but I cooperate until such relationship is no longer possible.