2023 Evangel Gathering - Friendship and Flourishing for Missions

42 • 2023 E vangel G athering • S acred R oots T hriving in M inistry : F riendship and F lourishing for M issions

d. SRSCs are designed to be read in community with friends, family, and coworkers. Every SRSC includes forty discussion questions.

III. Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Reasons This Generation of Church Planters Need the Spiritual Classics

A. Biblical reasons to engage with spiritual classics:

1. Hebrews exhorts us to remember and consider the lives of past Christians.

a. Remembering the cloud of witnesses helps our faith grow and encourages us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (Heb 11 and 12:1–2).

b. We are commanded to remember , to consider , and to imitate the faith of past Christian leaders.

c. “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith” (Heb 13:7). 2. Close friends of Jesus share an inner beauty because Jesus is the same in every age. Spiritual classics help us recognize and embrace this inner beauty.

a. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).

b. The Example of Pastor A. W. Tozer (d. 1963)

1) Tozer only had five years of formal education. He was working in a tire factory in Ohio when God called him to start preaching. He never had the opportunity to attend a Taylor University or The Urban Ministry Institute. 12

12 Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1999), 259.