A year ago today a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the small Caribbean nation of Haiti, killing an estimated 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 more, and leaving roughly 1,000,000 people homeless. In a matter of hours, all eyes were on this tiny country, and thousands of organizations went into action to offer aid to its people.

In a spirit of gratitude to God for being gracious to work through us, we want to update you on two ways in which DG was able to respond to this disaster.

Creole For Your Joy Project

Our International Outreach department quickly made it a priority to finish the project of translating For Your Joy into Creole. We partnered with a Haitian pastor and a Compassion …

Continue Reading →

At the end of this month, Lord-willing, my wife and I will be adopting our first child. We’ve been matched with a birth mother and things are moving along very quickly. We are exorbitantly excited about this! At the same time, though, I feel the weight of quickly approaching parenthood. I will soon be a father to my very own child. This is a bit overwhelming, to say the least.

As I pray and think about this, I have asked God to prepare me and guide me as we quickly approach this new chapter in our lives. I found helpful, profound wisdom on page 157 of N. D. Wilson’s book, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl:

The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining …

Continue Reading →

By God’s grace, there are now many places to look for theologically sound, reformed music. In my experience, however, I have found a great deal of this music to be lyrically stimulating while musically uncreative.

Kenneth Padgett, a friend of mine and a long-time fan of DG, has created a musical experience called The Joy Eternal.

What is The Joy Eternal?

Buy their new release, A Sweet and Bitter Providence, on iTunes / Amazon to support The Joy Eternal.

Join the Facebook group.

Follow The Joy Eternal on Twitter.

Kenneth Padgett is a member of Treasuring Christ Church in Raleigh, NC, which is a church plant of Bethlehem Baptist Church. He attends Southeastern Baptist Theologica…

Continue Reading →

Praxis Church in Phoenix, AZ is hosting an Acts 29 Boot Camp on November 9-10 titled Surge: The Gospel’s Movement into the City.

Speakers include Wayne Grudem, Darrin Patrick, Jeff Vanderstelt, Matt Carter, Scott Thomas, Justin Anderson, and David Kinneman.

What’s an Acts 29 Boot Camp? “Acts 29 Boot Camps are church planting conferences open to the public that focus on the vision of church planting, calling of the planter, mandate to multiply churches and the theological foundation for gospel-centered church planting.”

Lukas Naugle, former DG employee and my good friend, went to Phoenix to start Changegoat Creative, and he serves at Praxis Church. He will be at the event and plans to g…

Continue Reading →

"The Christian life is an entrance into rehab."

Reach Records released Lecrae's new album, Rehab, on 9/28/10. This amazing album ranked very high on several iTunes charts, including #2 in Hip Hop/Rap albums and #3 in all music genres. The debut week sales for Rehab were 25,864 units. This is a huge jump from the first week sales (about 10,000 units) of his previous album, Rebel. No other Christian Hip Hop album has ever sold so well in its first week.

One of my favorite things about the release of this album is that the day it released, Lecrae was in Southern Sudan working for Jesus' Kingdom. At the RR blog he writes:

At the height of my new album REHAB, I plan to be in Southern Sudan

…

Continue Reading →

N. D. Wilson wrote a fantastic book, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World. This book is a whimsical, and sometimes humorous, look at the world we live in and the ways that humans try to make sense of this carnival ride that we find ourselves on.

He tackles, in thought-provoking ways, questions about evil and hell and many other big issues that we deal with everyday in our own lives as we minister to people living in a broken world. In Wilson’s words: “Welcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Let the pages click your thumbs.”

Here is a bit from the book (pp. 186-187):

In the beginning there was no earth, no air, no fire, and no water. There were no up …

Continue Reading →

At the end of July, I went down to Chicago to be a part of Legacy Conference 2010. The theme of the conference was Solus Christus (Latin for Christ Alone). This year’s conference drew over 1,000 people to the campus of Moody Bible Institute for a three-day conference consisting of plenary sessions, dozens of workshops and hip hop concerts, and an eight-hour outreach event on the last day of the conference.

Two of our National Conference speakers, Francis Chan and Thabiti Anyabwile, spoke at the conference. One of the most striking things about this conference is how doctrinally-centered and theologically-oriented all of the main sessions and the breakout sessions were. Legacy truly “exist…

Continue Reading →

Advance the Church has posted the audio and video from their recent conference, Contextualizing the Gospel in the New South.

Desiring God has partnered with Advance the Church the past two years in a couple ways:

1. Last year, John Piper spoke twice and participated in a Q&A at Advance09.
2. This year Piper gave a short talk via video, and Scott Anderson, our Director for Networking & Partnerships, emceed the event.

The speakers at this year's event included Tyler Jones, J. D. Greear, Ed Stetzer, Johnny Hunt, Tullian Tchividjian, David Platt, Jerome Gay, and Matt Carter. I highly recommend these important messages.

In chapter 7 of Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper challenges us to live in a way that proves that Jesus—not money or possessions—is our treasure. He argues that Jesus calls us to a wartime lifestyle and a hazardous liberality (like in Mark 12:42-44). Consequently, one of the core values of Desiring God is Radical Generosity.

Desiring God seeks to partner with ministries that share this value, ministries like Come&Live!. Come&Live! exists to live simply and give generously. Their mission is “to establish the kingdom of God within a community of musicians.” They give away all of their music to display radical generosity. Fans are encouraged to share and copy their music.

Ther…

Continue Reading →

Bob Blincoe, US Director of Frontiers, will speak at our Conference for Pastors next week. God has used Bob to influence many to go to hard, unreached places—places void of the gospel. We hope you will be encouraged and challenged by this interview. (And pastors, if you haven't yet, there is still time to register!)

Nick Laparra: What's happening at Frontiers right now? How is God working?

Bob Blincoe: The great need in Frontiers, and particularly in me, is to keep believing, as Jesus said, that we have a heavenly Father who knows our every need. As Dr. Dan Fuller says, “It is some encouragement to you that I love you (and that I will stop to help you change your flat tire), but how…

Continue Reading →