Thank You, Normandale Baptist Church

Dear NBC Church Family,

As we shared with you yesterday in service, our family is being called away to serve elsewhere. I wanted to share a few more of the details with you via this blog that has served as an additional communication tool and resource in my time serving you as discipleship pastor:

After two months of prayerful process, it has been confirmed beyond any doubt that our Lord is calling the Musgrove family to serve at The Village Church (Flower Mound). God is truly in all of this. It's been an astounding process these past few months, but one we couldn't share until just now. Since this all began I have been working with the NBC pastoral staff to ensure a smooth transition so discipleship and spiritual formation ministries do not lose momentum.

I was introduced as Associate Groups Pastor at The Village Church's "Group Connect" this past Wednesday evening, an event that helps people get into small groups so they might pursue biblical community together. My first office day at the Village is September 27th.

As Groups Pastor at The Village, I am charged to personally disciple, mentor, and pastor small group leaders and coaches so they can in turn disciple people in their group. There will also be opportunities to teach.

We are sad to leave NBC. There are just so many formative experiences that will forever make Normandale a part of my family's story: my first pastoral staff position and communal spiritual formation with all of you, Jenny and I being married in the worship center, the birth of Jordan and your outpouring of prayer and hospitality upon his birth, and my recent ordination to the gospel ministry to name only a few. The staff have been so supportive and helped me learn what it means to be a pastor to the people. I will miss serving alongside them and you.

So we are truly living a favorite John Piper quote, "Endings are for gratitude, beginnings are for faith", as the Lord is undeniable in moving me and my family into ministry at The Village. This coming Sunday (9.26) will be our last as members and as a pastor at Normandale Baptist Church. The Lord seems to have been preparing us for this as I preached in August a sermon called, "Godly People Say Goodbye/What You Leave Behind". I was led to this passage as while walking through the recent goodbyes we have all said as a church and the possibility that I could soon be one of them. I commend it to you, if only for the reminder and challenge that if we are living Great Commission lives we will be saying goodbye often. That is the nature of making disciples. Our God brings us together for a time to serve together and then sends us to other arenas where we may be used by Him.

But godly friends never truly say goodbye. We are spiritual family and have a shared inheritance. Our bond and hope and tether is Christ. And in Him we are never truly parted. Our goal is to continue glorifying Him whether we are together or apart.

So just as Paul upon his departures and separations from spiritual friends wrote that he looked forward to hearing further about their faith and obedience, so does the Musgrove family anticipate hearing of our Great Savior continually made famous by the body of Christ at Normandale Baptist Church. All of us who have been a part of this church for this time have reason for great expectation. Soon we all who have served and loved and pressed on together at Normandale during these days will look back and say in unision, "Only God could have done this."

I look forward to the Day with you.

Grace and Peace,
Your servant in Christ,
Jared Steven Musgrove

Godly People Say Goodbye (Acts 20:18-35)

Christians living rightly

are consistently saying goodbye.

Download the sermon from Acts 20:18-35

Church Membership Matters

Church Membership Matters because our church must grasp hold of each other in responsibility, accountability, and love.

Part II of the series, "Church Matters"

Download the teaching: Church Membership Matters

Preaching Matters

Biblical preaching matters because our church needs to hear directly from God and God speaks directly when His Word is preached fully.

Part I of the series "Church Matters"

Download the sermon: Preaching Matters

Hope for Introverted Preachers!

Just one of many reasons I love Tim Keller. Interviewed in this weeks' World Magazine, Keller talks about how God has prepared him through an introverted personality and love of study to be a gospel-centered preacher in the middle of Manhattan.

The following interview excerpts focus on fighting inferiority and superiority complexes as a pastor:

Q: How did you overcome your "painful introversion"? Are you saying, how did an introvert get to be a megachurch pastor in Manhattan? Very gradually. It is a combination: God called me to be a minister and then decided to prosper my ministry more than a lot of other people's, which was always a surprise. I do not know why. It is not false modesty. I am still not sure why.

Q: Gift and grace? The gift side of it is that God continues to send me people who seem to be helped by the ministry. That overcomes some of your lack of confidence, but the danger of relying on your gifts, saying, "Hey, I am a pretty good preacher, people will come back to listen to me," is that that leads to the opposite of an inferiority complex, a superiority complex, which is probably more deadly. They are both self-absorption.

Q: How do you fight that? As I moved from feeling like nobody likes me to everybody likes me—then you get really famous and nobody likes you again—I had to work on the gospel a lot in my heart. Every time I started to get too big a head, something would come along and God would bring me down. This is the way I think everybody grows. Something would bring me down and I would have to use the gospel to shore up my confidence on the basis of His grace rather than on my gifts. —

Read the rest of Marvin Olasky's interviews with one of my favorite preachers:

"A Wave Came In: How An Introvert Like Tim Keller Became a Great Preacher"

-jsm-

Deep Blue Devotion #4 - Bible Memory Aid

Originally published in WORLD Magazine, Coverdate March 13, 2010. p. 66

Do you need help memorizing Scripture? MemorizeNow.com is a website where you can paste in a passage and then use tools that aid memorization. You can, for instance, see the text with all the words displayed. With a click you can change the setting so only first letters are displayed. Or, from the full text page, you can click and make some words disappear. Scroll over the space where the missing word belongs and the first letter of the missing word appears.

Couple this useful tool with text copied from one of the online Bibles (See the English Standard Version at gnpcb.org)

|| Deep Blue Devotion || a series of biblically creative helps

at jaredstevenmusgrove.blogspot.com, intended to aid in

enhancing intimate times with the Lord and

deepening personal discipleship. ||

To Men of Faith Who Serve In the Shadow of Others

Charles Spurgeon's great devotional work, Morning by Morning, gives this word to you healers, counselors, teachers, mentors, and pastors who are "hindmost in honor and esteem" just as the Danites of ancient Israel. In a great sense, Spurgeon's insightful words here define the work of a discipler. This short devotion has ministered to me on countless occasions and I commend it to you, dear Reader. ---jsm-

“They shall go hindmost with their standards.”

Numbers 2:31

The camp of Dan brought up the rear when the armies of Israel were on the march. The Danites occupied the hindmost place, but what mattered the position, since they were as truly part of the host as were the foremost tribes; they followed the same fiery cloudy pillar, they ate of the same manna, drank of the same spiritual rock, and journeyed to the same inheritance. Come, my heart, cheer up, though last and least; it is thy privilege to be in the army, and to fare as they fare who lead the van. Some one must be hindmost in honour and esteem, some one must do menial work for Jesus, and why should not I? In a poor village, among an ignorant peasantry; or in a back street, among degraded sinners, I will work on, and “go hindmost with my standard.”

The Danites occupied a very useful place. Stragglers have to be picked up upon the march, and lost property has to be gathered from the field. Fiery spirits may dash forward over untrodden paths to learn fresh truth, and win more souls to Jesus; but some of a more conservative spirit may be well engaged in reminding the church of her ancient faith, and restoring her fainting sons. Every position has its duties, and the slowly moving children of God will find their peculiar state one in which they may be eminently a blessing to the whole host.

The rear guard is a place of danger. There are foes behind us as well as before us. Attacks may come from any quarter. We read that Amalek fell upon Israel, and slew some of the hindmost of them. The experienced Christian will find much work for his weapons in aiding those poor doubting, desponding, wavering, souls, who are hindmost in faith, knowledge, and joy. These must not be left unaided, and therefore be it the business of well-taught saints to bear their standards among the hindmost. My soul, do thou tenderly watch to help the hindmost this day.

Deep Blue Devotion #3 - Projected Worship

|| Deep Blue Devotion: a series of biblically creative helps

for enhancing intimate times with the Lord and

deepening personal discipleship. ||

You may have found yourself in the same situation I have: you are in a worship service singing your heart out to words projected on a screen. A thought strikes you: "I wish I knew this song better so I could worship with my eyes closed. Or have the freedom to not be glued to the screen. Or the lead worshipper's guitar face."

I'm a mostly eyes-closed worshipper. I like the minimization of distraction. But there are certain, neigh, many songs I don't know well enough to belt out by heart. So I am somewhat dependent on lyrics projected as I sing. They certainly are necessary (think back to that time last Sunday when the media team skipped or didn't change a slide to the tune. Holy Hush, Batman!).

But I truly dislike being glued to a screen as I sing in worship. It's especially difficult with your head downward in a hymn book (crushes the larynx). So I had the idea of glancing over the dozen or so lyrics on the screen as it changes, then closing my eyes and projecting those words to my Sovereign Father. It's amazing how your brain can pick up the lyrics so quickly and recall them (and it's just fine to peak mid-verse if need be).

Glance back up as the next set of words or chorus pop up on screen, praise and repeat.

Make a joyful noise in worshipping Him this week,

-jsm-