Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Peter’s Top 3 Ministry PodCasts

podacstMy favorite podcasts rank only below my books when it comes to finding likeminded friends and biblical encouragement. Being a big believer in networking,  I want to share with you the three podcasts that have shaped me and my ministry the most.

Ready to be challenged with the Word? Let's go.

Pastor’s Talkpastors talk

This is not just any pastors talking. This podcast consists of Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman talking through everything from cooperate prayer to church planting. They bring the gospel and the vast amount of experience (Check out Dever's Book Nine Marks of a Health Church) to bear on every issue. And they always leave their audience with a better understanding of what biblical Christianity looks like. Click here to download the podcast.

 

For The Church

for the church

Jared C. Wilson (the author of several great books including The Prodigal Church) hosts this podcast. He regularly brings in guests from all over the evangelical world to tackle topics that directly affect us, our ministry and our church body such as preaching, preventing ministry burnout, and the danger of skipping church. Click here to download his podcast.

 

Truth In Love

truth in love

Dr. Heath Lambert, the Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and an Executive pastor at First Baptist Jacksonville, Fl,  hosts this podcast devoted to equipping the church to counsel. This podcast is by far one of the most practical and relevant podcasts available for believers. Dr. Lambert and his guests tackle the daily struggles that we regularly run up against such as depression, mental illness, and addictions. Together, they reveal how the Bible equips us to achieve victory over our sin. Since we all have problems, we all can benefit from this podcast. Give it a listen. Click here to download the podcast. 

Now it's your turn. What podcast have you found helpful?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Hope For Hopeless Christians

sad-adultA bunch of hopeless people. This is what you will find as you make eye contact with the people sitting in your church pews. You will be greeted by smile after smile that is nothing more than a cheap movie set façade. Turn the corner and you will realize there is no firm foundation of joy. All that exists is some thin piece of painted plywood held up by two supports of flimsy church culture.

The hearts around you and me are hurting, struggling, and hopeless.

Many of us Christians gave up on the idea of the sufficiency of the Scriptures. We took up God’s script with interest when we first heard about the king of heaven. We eagerly followed every divine word of Scripture up to the base of the cross.

But as we left the cross and began the next scene of our life, we felt that the script was inadequate. The lines mentioned nothing about anorexia, ADHD, and our many other problems. Perhaps the script was no longer useful.

joseph-gonzalez-273526We addressed our concerns to local co-director. He heard our complaints and empathized with us, but agreed that the God’s script was actually kind of lacking. He patted us on the back and ushered us out of his office offering a few trite words encouraging designed to keep us reading and praying.

And so we conclude that the gospel that saves us essentially ends at salvation and will only pick up again at heaven. In the meantime, we improve things as best we can, trying to determine God’s will for our life by asking our heart, “what do you think is best?”

Quite naturally the heart that has put down the Scriptures and devoted itself to the study of itself, pop-culture, and modern thought, finds only cultural wisdom.

Our culture’s mindset is one of hopelessness. There is no hope for the sex addict, for the far too thing teenage girl, and for the out-of-control kid. Sure, we can toss some medicine and therapy their way. But at the end of the day, we can only medicate them. We cannot cure them.

And Christians who are more defined by their sin than their savior are going to be helpless. They cannot hope to be anything else. If God cannot help us with our problems, then we really are hopeless.

This is where all the lonely people come from.

Thankfully, we do not have to remain in this state of hopelessness. God does not call us to be facades. He calls us to build full and vibrant lives on his Word. The script does not end at conversion. That is the point when the plot gets really good. At conversion, we get the power of Christ to overcome our sins. The story of our life goes from being one of failure to one of success, because the hero Christ has arrived and empowered us with his helper, the Holy Spirit. Paul said it this way,

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with temptation he will also provided the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

– 1 Corinthians 10:13.

The message of the Bible is that you are sinners redeemed by grace. If you are stressed to the point of panic attacks, cannot handle you porn addiction, and cannot control your body weight, the Bible is for you. Dive into it, find a biblical counselor or a godly pastor, and you will see that there is a way of escape. God rescues his people.

Your ultimate problem and my ultimate problem when I think life is hopeless is our theology. The divine script is not wrong. We simply misread the text with our modern, sinful eyes.

To overcome our stress, worries, and depressions, we need to dive into God’s script. As Paul told the Corinthians,

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come – 1 Corinthians 10:11.

We like the New Testament believers live in the last age. Living in the last age does not imply the Bible is outdated. Rather, Paul says the Bible is full. We have all the stories of the Old and New Testament precisely because they are relevant to our lives today. The show us how to repent of sinful idols and how to refocus on Christ. The Scriptures are never more, relevant, important, and helpful than now.

All those fake smiles in our church by the power of Christ could one day be real and meaningful.

If you have more questions about how the Bible applies to your life or about how you or your church could start practicing the disciplines of grace, please reach out to me. I would love to help.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Christian = Counselor

counselingThe concept of the priesthood of all believers is readily assented to by most Protestants. Ask the following question, “Do you believe all members of the local church are responsible for doing ministry?” You will undoubtedly see most people in your congregation bobbing their heads up and down in agreement. But when you look around the church building, you still see the usual 10% of the congregation doing 90% of the work. Why is there such a large disconnect between our words and our actions?

I think much of the disconnect lies in how we view church. I believe most of evangelical Christians view church as a house of teaching and as a house of worship. They watch the pastor preach and agree that all people should be willing to preach and teach. Yet, most members do not have a regular opportunity to preach a sermon or to teach a Sunday school class. And even fewer have the musical skills necessary to lead the praise team. Thus, our members are agreeing to do that which their church will never ask them to do.

While church most definitely consists of making much of God through worship and through preaching, it also includes discipleship. This is where the rubber meets the road. Not all are called to preach or to play the piano. But all church members are called to make disciples by regularly sharing the Word in their homes, business, and communities. This is where the democratization of the Christian life is supposed to occur. All of us should be answering phone calls, knocking on doors, and sitting in living rooms to encourage and admonish our brothers and sisters in Christ and to be encouraged and admonished by our brothers and sisters. Not all are called to be pastors, teachers, or elders. But all Christians are called to be counselors.

Yet few Christians do this. When we encounter sin, we tell our friends to talk to the pastor. When our kids have questions about salvation, we ask the pastor to disciple them. We feel completely incompetent to share the gospel with others.

To fix this problem, we must once again realize that the Scriptures are sufficient both for our salvation and for solving all our life’s problems. We must seek out the Word. We must hide it in our hearts. And we must seek out faithful men and women to help us with our walk. We must seek out discipleship for the very purpose of seeing our own faith expanded and deepened. As we grow, we will be more ready to disciple others.

At the end of the day, we do not have to be scared of counseling. The ability to change and help people has never resided in us. God alone can and does change people with his Word. Do we know it well enough to share this power with others?