Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations

Best Podcasts for Church Leaders

Here are the best podcasts for church leaders that I have found. 

The ITunes links will only work if you have the free ITunes software installed on your computer.  See below for more directions.  I have also put the MP3 location for each link in case you don't want to bother with ITunes. 

Catalyst Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location.  The Catalyst Conference was this past weekend.  It is this cool conference for pastors under 40.  See my preview of it here.  There are good interviews with Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Andy Stanley, Eugene Peterson, and Donald Miller.

Defining Moments Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location. These are samples of the Willow Creek Association Defining Moments audio CD's.  They are good 10 minute interviews but really leave you wanting more.  And that is the point.  They want your church to become part of the WCA and then the pastor will get the full CD's.   

Emergent Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location.  The Emergent Village is the main organization of the Emerging Church movement.  These podcasts are usually just plain good theological discussion.  You will enjoy them even if you aren't "emerging."  The first seven are with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. 

Mars Hill Bible Church (ITunes): MP3 location.  Rob Bell, of the NOOMA DVDs, Velvet Elvis author and author of spring 2007 book Sex God, has more people download his sermons than anyone. 

Mosaic (ITunes): MP3 location. Erwin McManus, author of The Barbarian Way, and numerous other books, and pastor of Mosaic in LA. 

MPPC Sermon-Cast (ITunes): MP3 location.  John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and author of The Life You've Always Wanted and other books, is an outstanding teacher. 

North Point Ministries: Life Rules (ITunes): MP3 location.  This is a series on relating with one another.  This is with Andy Stanley, pastor of the #3 influential church in the nation according thechurchreport.com and author of the new book Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication. North Point only podcasts their most recent sermon series. 

Practically Speaking (ITunes): MP3 location.  This is a series for church leaders based on the Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley and friends. 

Covenant Worldwide of Covenant Theological Seminary has thirteen classes that are podcast.  They actually have many more for free at their website here. Below are the ITunes links. 

1. Old Testament History with V. Phillips Long (now at Regent College).
2. Biblical Theology with Gerard Van Groningen.
3. Life & Teachings of Jesus with Daniel Doriani.
4. Life & Letters of Paul with Hans Bayer. 
5. Ancient & Medieval Church History with David Calhoun.
6. Reformation & Modern Church History with David Calhoun. 
7. Calvin's Institutes with David Calhoun.   
8. Christian Ethics with David Jones. 
9. Apologetics & Outreach with Jerram Barrs.
10. Youth Ministry with Mark Davis. 
11. God and His Word with Michael Williams. 
12. Humanity, Christ and Redemption with Robert Peterson. 
13. Spirit, Church & Last Things with Robert Peterson.

See also my post about the best audio on the internet which is my most popular post. 

Other ITunes podcast links:

The below ITune links either aren't as strong as the ones above or are not directly related to church leadership.  But I thought I would place them anyway for your to see what is available and what I'm listening to.  The links below will only work if you have ITunes installed on your computer.  If you don't, I'm sure these MP3's are available but you will probably have to google them.  I don't want to take the time to find them right now. 

NYT Op-Ed Podcast (New York Times and other NYT is good.)
NPR (Anything at NPR.org or podcast is good. National Public Radio)
Moyers on America (PBS)
Nature (Science journal)
Science Talk: The podcast of Scientific American (Science journal)
Relevant Podcast (Relevant Magazine for Christians in 20's)
Jesus Asked (Book by Conrad Gempf; Zondervan, 2003. Read by the author in 15 minute segments.  "In the Gospels, when people asked Jesus a question, he often replied with one of his own. This book looks at the questions Jesus asked and how they can enrich our understanding and faith.")
PeterKreeft.com (Christian Catholic philosopher)
wiredparish.com (interview with Rob Bell is pretty good)
Willow Creek podcasts (not much there right now except a few random sermons)
Leadership Network  See my posts about listening to these video venue audio segments here.
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Gordon-Conwell Chapel
Donald Miller a few posts from a while ago
BusinessWeek - Climbing the Ladder
Christian Audio podcast - Devotional Classics
Duke Chapel Podcast including Richard Hays and Walter Brueggemann
USA Today's Pop Candy - on pop culture

Here are some basic instructions to get you started using ITunes for podcasts.

Basically, you download ITunes here.  It is free.  I would recommend doing it.  You might as well learn what people are talking about and it is free and convenient to have ITunes download your MP3's for you. 

Basically, ITunes like Internet Explorer doesn't work unless you are connected to the internet. When you open ITunes and see the ITunes store, go to the right side of the page under "Quick Links" and click "Power Search."   On the next screen, click "Podcasts" which is on the right side of the page.  Under Title, put "Mars Hill Bible Church" and then click "Search."  You will have found the podcast for Rob Bell's church.  Click on Mars Hill Bible Church.  Then you can see the main page for the podcast.  At the bottom, all of the episodes are available.  If they are not in the right order, click on "Release Date" to have them organized from most recent to least recent.  You can either "Subscribe" at the top so that you get each new sermon as it is posted on the net each week or you can just click "Get episode" and download the past sermons that you want. 

You can click on "Podcasts" under Library on the left side of your screen.  This will show you all the podcasts which you have downloaded and subscribe to.  Right in front of the title of the podcast you have downloaded is a little triangle pointing right or down.  If it is pointing down, you can see all the details of what episodes you have downloaded.  If it is pointing right, the details are hidden.  When you click on the name of the podcast, it is highlighted and a little arrow appears to the right of the title.  You can click on this arrow to go to the ITunes home page for that podcast.  You right click on the icon of the podcast on its ITunes home page to get its ITunes link (url). 

If you want to get back to searching for more podcasts, just click on the left side of your screen where it says "ITunes store."  In the ITunes store, you can always click back to the ITunes front page by clicking the little house at the top of your screen. 

The podcasts you download are audio computer files called MP3's.  Podcasts are generally free.  You can also download audio books or songs but you have to pay for them. 

Unlike the Apple song files, you can play the podcast MP3's on any computer and MP3 player. You can also burn them on CD's and play them on some CD and DVD players. 

For convenience, you might want to be able to access your ITunes MP3's without ITunes.  Here is the default location where podcasts are downloaded to your computer:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Podcasts

If you want to make a shortcut, go to My Documents, My Music, ITunes, ITunes Music, Podcasts.  Then right click and click Create Shortcut.  Cut that Shortcut folder and paste it on your desktop. 

You can grab the MP3's there if you want to transfer them to your MP3 player or a CD.  I

You can double click the photo on this post to get a bigger photo of what my ITunes looks like. 

Good Books on Christian Community

Students and faculty at Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college, are beginning to think about returning to school. One of my students, S., is involved in leadership on campus. She emailed me to ask if I knew of any good resources on koinonia (Greek for "fellowship") or Christian community to read before returning to Taylor. I have put below her email and my response. Perhaps you have some other ideas. Feel free to comment.

Andy...

I hope summer is going well for you and Amy and little Ryan . . . Summer is winding down fast, though, so I'm starting to think more about school stuff.

[I’m in leadership at Taylor this year] and I thought koinonia would be a great theme to focus on. The Acts 2 style church is really already set up for us at Taylor. Being the master researcher you are, I wondered if you had any article, sermon, book suggestions on this topic? I want to explore it more before the school year.

My friends and I love your blog and read it often! Tell Amy we say hi!

Have a great week Andy!

S.

Dear S.,

Delightful to hear from you.

You have asked about resources on koinonia and what else to read on Christian community before returning this fall.

I have attached a little Libronix stuff on a Microsoft Word document.

Download Koinonia.doc

First I have put all the occurrences of the word in the New Testament. You could look those up and see what you learn. See my Basic Bible Study Links guide here.

Then I have pasted the BAGD lexicon definition of Koinonia. (It is sort of hard to read because of all the footnotes below. Just ignore those).

You could also get a good commentary on any of the passages to study more. See here for some good commentary suggestions.

Tell me more what you want and I will suggest some other things. Do you want stuff on church? Or habits of the church? Or fellowship and relationships?

My guess is that you are wanting to articulate more clearly and more biblically what it means to care for one another in Christian community.

I would suggest looking at these books in this order:

Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them (Hardcover)
by John Ortberg.  Zondervan (March 1, 2003)

Amy's reading it right now and loving it. He is readable and fun. He is great to listen to on audio as well.

The Safest Place On Earth (Hardcover)
by Larry Crabb.  W Publishing Group (September 10, 1999)

You may have read this for Personal Foundations class. I really was helped by Crabb's books to get a realistic and sober and practical view on community.

Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (Paperback)
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  HarperSanFrancisco (October 25, 1978)

This is another one that you may have read in Personal Foundations class. It is a classic and I was helped by it to think practically, theologically and less idealistically about community.

I hope this is helpful.

I think I'll put this response on the blog tonight to see if we can get any more comments.

Grace and peace,

andy

Two Outstanding Ortberg Sermons without a Text

John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, is probably my wife Amy and my favorite preacher.  He is funny, winsome, biblically sound, practical, and clear.  I was at Willow Creek's midweek New Community service last week and people cheered when they announced John was coming back to guest teach again August 2nd.  He is deeply loved there by the people he taught for years. 

We have recently listened to two outstanding sermons by him.  You can find his sermons here.  He 3/05/06 sermon "An Ordinary Day with Jesus" is practical and thought provoking.  It is based on the adult curriculum of the same title. 

His next one on 3/12/06 "The Church on Monday Morning" is also incredible.  It is about the people of the church getting out and making a difference for good in the community.  It is inspiring!

In neither one does Ortberg focus on one specific text.  And yet his theology is good and it is practical.  Amy and I have been taught to focus on one text in preaching and we teach our students to do the same.  And here our favorite preacher isn't!  Cognitive dissonance - oh no! 

I would explain it this way.  In these two sermons, Ortberg briefly outlines the biblical principles that could be exegeted from many passages and focuses his sermon on fleshing out application.  You could look at them as long application sections of an expository sermon where the exposition is assumed! 

There is a place for these topical sermons but a congregation needs a steady diet of Scripture or they will depend on the preacher and his whims.  But if you want to hear good topical sermons, listen to these two.  They come highly recommended.   

How do you preach about helping the poor?

Here is an email from one of my students and my response. 

Hi Andy!

I hope that your summer has been going well and that you are enjoying visiting practicum students! I am doing well here at ________Church in ________, and I actually gave my first ‘sermon" this past Wednesday night.  The thing is, I have to give another sermon this upcoming Wednesday, and I am scrambling to gather information that would be helpful.  I am going to be speaking on the sheep and the goats parable, but not from a view of judgment, but rather, I would like to focus more on the "unto the least of these" aspect of it, to encourage action in the jr. higher’s.  I was wondering if you could refer me to any resources or if you have any notes on the topic that you wouldn’t mind sharing with me?  That would be great! But if not, that’s ok too! Thank you so much!

~Name~

Dear _______,

Great for you preaching!  This is not an easy passage to exegete but it is indeed an inspiring one for us to serve the least of these in our paths.  The good samaritan might be a tad simpler if you want to go that route.  You don't have the judgment to worry about explaining.    

For Preaching Ideas and Illustration Inspiration:

§ Tony Campolo has a heart for serving the poor.  Any of his sermons would probably be inspiring.  They are at his website here.  Maybe start with "Missions: Getting Beyond the Kingdom of Ticky-Tack."  These sermons might give you some inspiration or illustrations.  We will likely meet with him on Capstone.  It is not specifically on Matthew 25.   

§ John Ortberg's sermon on 3/12/06 "The Church on Monday Morning" is also incredible.  It is about the people of the church getting out and making a difference for good in the community.  It is inspiring!  You can find his sermons here.  It is not specifically on Matthew 25. 

§ The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne  is also a great new book by a young person.  We will meet with him on Capstone.

Biblical Study:

§ Here are a list of good commentaries if you have the chance to get to Taylor's library.  Here are some Links to Lists of Good Commentaries  One of the Matthew commentaries by Craig Keener would be great.  He married an African woman and has a deep passion for justice and simplicity.  We will meet with him on Capstone.  Also D.A. Carson's commentary is solid.  He clarifies that it is not that your good works get you into the kingdom of heaven but rather: "The reason for admission to the kingdom in this parable is more evidential than causative."

§ Ron Sider's short book  Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like The Rest Of The World? (Paperback)
by Ronald J. Sider would also give you some good stats and a good summary of the Bible material about serving the poor.

§ Here is my link to Bible study resources on the net.   

I'm glad you are preaching.  It takes a lot of time and it is easy to get discouraged in the preparation so hang in there! 

I would write out what you want to say in complete sentences so that you can basically read it.  Once you have it how you like it basically, then read it over to yourself 3-4 times outloud.  By the 4th time you will basically have it memorized and you will just need to glance down at it.  Writing it helps you have down exactly what you want to say and reading it a number of times helps you get ready to deliver it clearly.  Once you have studied hard, write strongly and passionately what you think.  This is your strength!  Call me on my cell if you need more help ________

Let you prayer be: "Lord I can't help but want to look good and impress people when I preach.  But more than anything, I want YOU to look good!  Please be glorified in what I say." 

I'm going to post my letter to you (without your name) on my blog.  Maybe someone else will have some good ideas.   

Grace and peace,

andy

Click on the category to the side entitled "Senior Capstone Trip" to find more posts about our January capstone trip to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.