As I watched this incredibly challenging and encouraging video of Matt Chandler discussing where he’s at with his sudden fight with a brain tumor, I felt such simultaneous heartache and joy seeing this warrior of our faith stand firm in Christ. Matt has had such a huge impact on me from afar, I’ve never met him or even seen him in person, but his impact on my faith cannot be overstated. It’s humbling to hear his words, it’s encouraging to see him live it out and it’s incredibly moving to see the love and wisdom shared through his family.

For those of you who don’t know, Matt Chandler is pastor of The Village Church and fellow member of the Acts 29 Network. According to the latest updates Matt is doing well, is out of the ICU and results should be back from tests on the tumor in the middle of this week.

This has been a big week for many reasons, all of which I’ll blog about. But one of the simpler ones to blog about is my church‘s entrance into full Acts 29 membership. The A29 blog just published an article introducing us to the network. I’m really excited to be joining the network, there are so many pastors, worship leaders and friends here that I respect.

As far as worship music goes, we do things differently than most A29 churches I know. That’s fine for us and I don’t expect any issues with that. A29 is a pretty diverse organization with a lot of different kinds of churches. We are a Reformed-Charismatic church, reformed in theology, non-cessationist, holy spirit believing, gift empowered body of believers that sing our guts out to loud, thumping, worship music. We are a creative bunch, that use lots of video, “concert” lighting, text messaging Q&A, twitter to organize our home groups, podcasting, vodcasting, live loops…  We’re in downtown Phoenix, in a rough neighborhood that frequently has police helicopters circling our building during night meetings. My point is we aren’t your grandparent’s reformed church.

But then again…we are complementarian, we are firm believers of sola scriptura, we love Piper, Chandler, Driscoll, Keller and many of us are 4.5 point calvanists. (Not a typo, that’s 4 and a half) We practice church discipline, are introducing formal membership, preach the cross relentlessly and by that I mean the rugged cross, penal substitutionary atonement, propitiation and expiation.

We’re a crazy bunch of misfits for sure, but we have deep conviction about what we do and who we are in Christ. We’re excited to team up with the group of A29 churches here in Phoenix and share the gospel with the lost and hurting. I pray this opens new doors for our church and that we’re able to reach more people for Christ.