Last Updated on October 4, 2025

This e-book is available for free in PDF format (link at the bottom of this page).

• I organize the tools into various categories, and I annotate them.
• It may be a bit overwhelming to see such a long document of tools, so at the beginning of the document, I include a list of ten tools to prioritize.
• I want to encourage our church to continually benefit from excellent tools that help you study the Bible and theology.
• You may want to add some of the tools I recommend to your reading queue, and in the future you may want to search this document when you are looking for helpful tools on particular topics.

Take up and read!

(If you share this free e-book with others, please share the link to this web page rather than to the PDF because the PDF link will change each time I update the PDF.)

Our member covenant says that we commit "to encourage fathers to bring up their children with a Christian education and enculturation." Here's a letter from all the pastors to our church regarding government schools and Christian enculturation.

Psalm 47 commands us to sing like we mean it. Specifically, it tells us to sing loudly. God expects his praise to be an orderly ruckus. Look at all the volume signals in this psalm: 

• Clap your hands! (v. 1)
• Shout to the Lord with loud songs of joy! (v. 1)
• God goes up with a shout and a trumpet blast! (v. 5)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! (vv. 6–7)

Why does God want his praises to be loud? Well, look at the psalm:

• Is he the fearsome Most High? (v. 2)
• Is he a great king over all the earth? (v. 2)
• Has he subdued our enemies and brought us into a glorious inheritance? (vv. 3–4)
• Does he sit on his holy throne ruling the nations? (v. 8)
• Does every military do his bidding? (v. 9)
• Is he a fortress for his people? (v. 9)

He is! That’s why we should sing like we mean it. So why don’t we?

1. We don’t feel like it. Praising God is not a “buffet-it-your-way” situation; it’s an obey-it-God’s-way situation. And he says to sing.
2. We aren’t musically inclined. Many of our children are not vegetable-inclined either. If music isn’t your thing yet, that’s fine. It’s just a place to mature. You’ll get there the same way your kids learn to eat their veggies. 
3. We aren’t prepared. Many of our songs may be new to you. To be ready to sing on Sunday, you’ll have to prepare. If we had been invited to sing at the presidential inauguration, we’d know the songs. So let’s be ready to sing to the King of the earth. 

A brief word to the men and fathers: Music in our culture has been feminized, so men don't like singing. This isn’t helped by the many, many church songs that sound like prom songs to Jesus (“Oh, how he loves us, how he loves us, how he loves us…Oh”). But men, we must reclaim singing. If we don’t, another generation of young men will grow up with fathers who don’t sing—not even at the greatness of God. Consider how that will hamstring their faith. 

So, for God’s sake, let’s sing like we mean it. 

Amen. 

Many of us have not sung hymns with four part harmonies ever, or for a long time. You may not know what part you should sing. Here's a quick guide to choosing a vocal part to sing based on your singing range:

First, use this video to find out your vocal range. Write down the lowest and highest note you can comfortably sing.

Second, see which vocal part your range best fits in:

• Soprano: C4–C6
• Alto: G3–G5
• Tenor: B2–A4
• Bass: D2–D4

Voila! Now don't forget to download Sing Your Part so that you can start learning your part for Sunday.

If you're just joining us, we want to ensure you understand who we are and where we're going. 

In April 2024, Andy Naselli and Tom Dodds proposed planting a church in the Stillwater area for the elders of The North Church. After their proposal was approved, they recruited Dustin Williams and Nathan Colestock to join them.

We held our first interest meeting in early September, where we explained our Mission and Vision, "Make disciples who glorify God in all of life for all of Stillwater." For more information, check out this article explaining our Mission and Vision and this article describing the kind of men we hope to plant with. We also talked through our Affirmations of Faith and Member Covenant.

Our second meeting was in early October, where we laid out our liturgy. Andy taught about the structure of our service and explained why we've chosen to worship this way. We also explained why singing Psalms and Hymns is crucial and how we plan to use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns.

At our third meeting, Andy taught us about our strategy by going through our seven priorities:

1. Teach Sound Doctrine
2. Proclaim the Gospel
3. Praise God’s Glorious Grace
4. Worship God Together
5. Pursue Holiness
6. Love God’s Good Design for Men, Women, and Families
7. Be Salt and Light

As we our church begins, we plan to have only a few programs and do them the very best we can. These will be:

• Weekly Sunday Worship Services. This is the main thing of our church.
• Sunday Equip Classes to help teach basic doctrine.
• Regularly sending helpful content to members.
• Quarterly Hymn Sings to increase musical competence. 

Then I shared why membership is crucial to the mission of our church and laid out how to become a founding member of Christ the King Church.

• If you are not already a member at one of our sending churches (The North Church, Cities Church, or Meadow Creek Church), schedule a pastoral interview. Please respond to this email and we’ll get a time set up together. 
  • If you or your child believes the gospel and would like to be baptized at our January 19th baptismal service, please email me to schedule a pastoral interview.
• We’ll publish a list of those who plan to be members in December. 
• We’ll covenant together as a church January 5, 2024. 

Please feel free to email me with any questions at all: nathan@christtheking.build.

Yes. At Christ the King Church, we're still using hymnals. Why is a church in 2024 planning to use hymnals? I promise we didn't find this idea in the church planting manuals. Let me make it sound even funnier.

Andy and I own hymnals digitally and highlight our favorite parts from our iPads and MacBooks. We've all been using an app on our phones to help us learn the songs. While planning services, I’ll be browsing the Google Sheet I made to help categorize the hymnal. So, the hymnal thing isn't from any Luddite impulse. We’ll have to lug these things up two flights of stairs each week! Why are we doing it? It's because we want to sing Psalms and historic songs together.

First, we want to sing Psalms and historic songs. It's a tragedy that the Psalter fell out of use among Christians. God wrote 150 songs, and his people have sung them for millennia. But we stopped singing them. Some are even embarrassed by the more robust of them (e.g., Psalm 3). Not us. We're coming to worship God the way he wants to be worshiped, and that includes the songs he likes.

“Any form of hymn or chorus singing that prevents the Church from learning all 150 psalms is profoundly wrong-headed.”¹

It's also a tragedy, though not quite so great, that we've abandoned so many historic songs of our faith. How many of us even know the Gloria Patri? As we join our voices with the great cloud of witnesses to worship God, we will sing many of the same songs they did. If we're going to see a reformation of Christian culture so that God's people stand out like a city on a hill, we'll need songs that don't sound like everybody else. Songs that aren't from the shallow modern age. Songs that stood the test of centuries.

Second, we want to sing together. We don’t want to listen to the ultra-talented sing in corporate worship. We want to ascend in praise together to the God of our salvation. Hymnals put songs in a range where the congregation can actually sing along. They often use predictable melodies that are easy to learn and remember. They even provide specific directions for what harmonies to sing. No one ever forgets to switch the slide on a hymnal (or gets them out of order).

We aren't against new songs. Our hymnal has a few of the best from our generation. We are excited to sing psalms and hymns together—to dive into the Treasury for a few decades and see how our souls are shaped.

In his recent article, Andy describes why and how our church plans to use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns. Give it a read, and buy your own copy of the Treasury. Then download "Sing Your Part," make an account, and join Christ the King Church in Stillwater in the app so that you can learn these songs right along with us.

God bless your worship!

1. Douglas Wilson, Cantus Christi 2020, vi.

When churches meet to worship God, they structure the meeting in a particular way. Some call the structure of a worship service an “order of service” or “order of worship” or “liturgy.” Every church has a liturgy. Along with many other Protestant churches over the centuries, we deliberately order our worship service in a gospel-shaped sequence:

1. Call to worship. God calls us together to worship, and we praise him in song, in reading Scripture, and in prayer.
2. Confession. We confess our sins corporately and then pause for a moment of silence for us to confess our sins individually. Then we receive assurance from the word of God that he has cleansed us through Christ’s sacrifice. Then we confess the faith by reading a selection from a creed or doctrinal statement. We also baptize believers and add them (along with believers who have already been baptized) to our church as they confess to follow Jesus and covenant with our church.
3. Consecration. We devote ourselves to God as he speaks to us and we respond. (Consecration refers to devotion or dedication.) God speaks to us as a pastor (or a man who meets the qualifications of a pastor) reads, explains, and applies God’s word. We humbly receive God’s word with a posture that is eager to trust and obey God because God’s word is profitable to teach us, reprove us, correct us, and train us in righteousness so that we may be equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16–17). We respond with renewed devotion as we sing and give an offering.
4. Communion. We commune with God and one another as we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper. We conclude by joyfully singing the Doxology to the tune of “Old 100th” while standing with hands raised.
5. Commission. God blesses us as he sends us out to glorify him in all of life.

If you are not familiar with the way we structure our worship service, then it may take some time to get accustomed to, and that’s okay. We want our liturgy to reveal and shape what we believe and value. We do not want it to become a mindless ritual. We deliberately follow the same basic structure to remove distractions so that we can focus on encountering God. Here’s how C. S. Lewis puts it:

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best—if you like, it “works” best—when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.

—C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1964), 12.

We plan to put in the hard work now to design the kind of worship service we think would most honor the Lord and build up our brothers and sisters. This may be new for most of the people present. But it will be way easier to make these changes at the beginning instead of trying to gradually implement them along the way. We will continually tweak it along the way but (hopefully) not in a radical and extreme way.

1. Cf. Scott Aniol, “Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs: Assessing the Debate,” Artistic Theologian 6 (2018): 13–18. Aniol concludes, “Since ψαλμοῖς, ὕμνοις, and ᾠδαῖς are each used as translations of psalm titles in the LXX and are employed interchangeably in the NT, the weight of the evidence seems to suggest that Paul did not intend the terms to designate clearly identifiable genre of corporate song.”
2. Cf. Matt Merker: “In conversations about the regulative principle of worship, many theologians distinguish between three key terms: elements, forms, and circumstances. Elements of worship are the activities that Scripture positively calls us to perform in our corporate devotion to God. The regulative principle is primarily concerned with determining which elements of worship are biblical. Following our Protestant Reformation heritage, we can summarize these elements under five headings: read the Word, pray the Word, preach the Word, sing the Word, and see the Word (summarized and depicted in baptism and the Lord’s Supper). Forms of worship refer to the manner in which we go about the elements of worship. … Should we read corporately or responsively? Should we sing in a major or minor key? Should we pray extemporaneously or prepare our prayers in advance? …Circumstances are the practical aspects of how a church organizes its worship gathering: when and where we meet, the layout of the chairs, whether we use air conditioning or not....What about baby dedications? This is a tricky one! You could make an argument for baby dedications as a form of prayer, since they usually involve praying for the child. I would observe, though, that a baby dedication feels a lot like a separate element of the service. The child is brought up front. The parents and congregation often say vows. It’s a special event. To be honest, as a Baptist, a baby dedication seems to me like an infant baptism without the water. It’s a ceremony, a ritual with its own choreography. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love babies, and I love the intention behind baby dedications! But if the point is to pray for the new children of the congregation, I would suggest that churches should do just that. Pray for babies, but don’t perform a special ceremony that might violate the consciences of believers who see no valid basis for such a practice in Scripture.” Matt Merker, Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People, 9Marks (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 81–83, 90.
3. Jeff Meyers explains, “By the end of the third century it [i.e., that greeting and reply] had become an almost universal practice in the liturgies of the churches. It was the greeting that signaled the beginning of the worship service. Aside from the obvious fact that it is more dignified and reverent than ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning,’ this salutation has a meaningful function in the inauguration of the Divine Service. When the minister says, ‘The Lord be with you,’ he declares his intention to lead the people in worship: he desires and prays that the Lord would bless the congregation as they worship under his leadership. The minister acknowledges that he will be the instrument by which the Lord is present with and serves His people during the service. When the people respond, ‘And also with you,’ they verbally affirm their pastor’s leadership as well as their desire to see him blessed as he performs his pastoral office.” Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2003), 173–74.
4. Jeff Meyers explains, “The salutation is normally followed by the votum. Votum means ‘prayer’ or ‘petition’ in Latin. The votum is a short initial prayer expressing our need for the Lord’s help in order to worship Him properly. The minister says, ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord,’ and the people call back, ‘Who made heaven and earth.’ These are the words of Psalm 124:8. By reciting this Scripture at the beginning of the worship service we confess that without the Lord’s assistance we dare not enter His presence.” Meyers, The Lord’s Service, 174.
5.  Cf. what I write in my commentary on 1 Corinthians: “We should be less dogmatic, however, regarding how frequently the church should celebrate the Lord’s Supper. The early church apparently celebrated the Lord’s Supper weekly (e.g., Acts 20:7), but in Scripture Jesus did not command his people to celebrate it weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. He said to follow his pattern ‘as often as you drink it’ (1 Cor. 11:25). Paul indicates in this passage that the Corinthians took it ‘when [they came] together.’ So there is latitude regarding how frequently a church celebrates the Lord’s Supper. I favor weekly celebration. The most common argument for not celebrating the Lord’s Supper weekly is that people would become so familiar with it that it would no longer be as special and meaningful. But that argument is not persuasive, for otherwise the church would not have weekly praying, singing, Scripture reading, or preaching. Why would we not want to eat and drink spiritually every week by celebrating the Lord’s Supper to nourish and sustain the church? The celebration would not need to be exactly the same each week. A church could focus on different aspects of the Lord’s Supper (see the six aspects listed in this Response section).” Andrew David Naselli, “1 Corinthians,” in Romans–Galatians, vol. 10 of ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 236n202.

In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, Jerusalem lay destroyed because God’s people compromised and hoped in other gods. Our situation is much the same. The church is in shambles because we have mixed ourselves with the secular paganism of America. God used Ezra and Nehemiah to rebuild the temple and the city and renew worship among God’s people. I believe he’ll do the same for us.

As I look around the world, I’m concerned by Christians sitting on the sidelines. In fact, we often give up ground to make peace with our enemies. The assembly of Almighty God retreats because we are afraid of conflict. Christians have “gone native,” and so our households, cities, and nation have fallen apart.
 
But our God loves to revive what seems dead. His power is made perfect in weakness. I believe it’s time to rebuild the ruins. That’s why we’re planting Christ the King Church in Stillwater, MN.

Our mission is to make disciples who glorify God in all of life for all of Stillwater. When our Lord left, he gave us clear instructions: "Make disciples" (Matt 28:19). We're taking our marching orders from him. We aim to make disciples who glorify God in all of life: in the living room and the board room, family dinners, and state dinners.
 
Our strategy is to build and fight. We want to glorify God by building...

• disciplined, healthy personal lives,
• households watered by Scripture that bear the fruit of godly offspring,
• schools that help parents enculturate their children to serve God with their whole self,
• businesses that glorify God by providing outstanding products and services,
• cities that reverence God’s name and honor his images. 

And, as we seek to rebuild the ruins of what sin has destroyed, we're prepared to fight against God's enemies who distort his image, oppress his people, and dishonor his name. We’re not embarrassed to call him Lord and won’t apologize for preaching the gospel.

I'm praying that when someone visits Stillwater in 60 years, it will be a stronghold of Christian culture where God’s people are reclaiming all of life for Jesus, the Lord of all. I want to see souls saved, saints challenged, marriages transformed, families healthy, children indoctrinated, and the joy of the Lord spilling into business and city politics.
 
Jesus is directing his saints to build the New Jerusalem. My name will be on the wall in Stillwater, and yours can be there, too.

Hanun and his brothers in the city of Zanoah left a grand legacy: they rebuilt 1,000 cubits of the Jerusalem wall (Neh 3:13). Eliashib, Zaccur, Meremoth, Meshullam, Zadok, Joiada, Melatiah, Jadon, Uzziel, Hananiah, Rephaiah, Jedaiah, Hattush, Malchijah, Hasshub, Shallum, Malchijah and many more stand beside them. These distinguished men left the comforts of Babylon to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem. They trusted God and his servant Nehemiah, so they built Jerusalem and fought God’s enemies (Neh 4:14) with a sword in one hand and a shovel in the other (Neh 4:17). Their names are immortalized in holy writ for our understanding and inspiration.

Today, the New Jerusalem is under construction. This new holy city is the bride of the lamb (Rev 21:9–10). The New Jerusalem is the church. Ultimately, the builder and architect is God (Heb 11:10), but God’s design is that all the saints grab a trowel and join in building up the body of Christ (Eph 4:11–12). In other words, God wants you to put your name on part of the wall of the New Jerusalem.

In 1900, Earnest Shackleton gathered a crew to board the Endurance bound to explore the South Pole. Legend has it he ran this ad,

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”

The kingdom of God needs the kind of men who want to join Shackleton. Men with vision, moxie, and stamina.

Vision. Building and fighting is the work of a man who hopes in what he cannot see. With eyes of faith, he sees order formed from chaos, riches out of poverty, and fruit from barren fields. The best warriors fight because they see peace won with blood. Craftsmen turn raw materials into masterpieces from faith-filled hope. Increasing vision means increasing faith. Men, don’t walk by sight (2 Cor 5:7), seeing only problems. Walk by faith in God who overcomes the world by our faith (1 John 5:4) whether or not it looks like it to us (Heb 11:1), and go take dominion wherever you see the opportunity.

Moxie. You can tame a wild stallion to be a useful war horse, but there’s no way to put the wild back into a tamed mare. Building and fighting requires men of valor—men with strength. Men who aren’t cowed by opposition and who sometimes break the rules (Ezra 4:17, cf. 5:2). Our egalitarian age rewards effeminacy among men. But God calls us to channel our ambition, drive, confidence, and competitive spirit to build God’s house. “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor 16:13).

Stamina. A Tesla can get from zero to sixty mph in about 2 seconds. Then it runs out of battery in 250 miles. A Chevy Suburban can go over 700 miles on one tank. Rebuilding what sin has destroyed isn’t a 0–60 mph task. It’s about range. Men, we need to be steadfast. Noah didn’t build the ark in a day. It took him about 100 years (Gen 6:32 cf. 7:11). Joshua didn’t drive out the Canaanites in a weekend. We must walk by the Spirit with patient obedience that keeps us at our post night after a long night. To increase your endurance, learn to rejoice in suffering (Rom 5:3).

Jesus promised to build his church (Matt 16:18), and he’s calling you to join the victory. The journey will be hazardous, and injury is inevitable (2 Tim 3:12). But glory, honor, immortality, and eternal life await those who are patient in doing good (Rom 2:7).

Grace and peace to you in the name of Christ the King. The culture around us aims to tear down society with folly, false teachings, and deception. But fear not. We serve an unchanging God, and His Word remains our anchor.

As pastors of Christ the King Church, we aim to equip believers to declare biblical truth with conviction, not fear. We teach sound doctrine (Tit 2:1).

How do we live in our crazy culture?

1. Arm yourself. Many Christians hesitate to engage the culture with biblical conviction. We must not be passive spectators but active combatants with the sword of God's Spirit. How do we do this? First, we must believe in God's promises. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31). We have no reason to fear with God on our side! We get to share the good news of God's word!
2. Love with truth. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Our love for the truth must fuel our love for people. We must love our neighbors enough to compel us to speak the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. After all, love is different from merely making someone feel good. Avoid sinful empathy as it blinds us to the eternal needs of souls.
3. Speak up. Silence is not an option. We should not retreat into our Christian bubbles. Will we face disapproval or persecution? Yes (2 Tim 3:12). We're surrounded by many who faced worse (Heb 11:36–38). The world needs us to break the "tolerant" silence. "Nice" keeps us comfortable, but courage compels us to speak. If we are ashamed of Jesus, he will be ashamed of us (Luke 9:26). Therefore, lay your life down by speaking up.
4. Act with kind, anxiety-free conviction. Kindness is a virtue that should never lead us to compromise our convictions. Since God is our only judge, we don't have to fear the judgment of others (1 Cor 4:3–4). Faith empowers us to live without fear—to have kindness without losing conviction. We are the light of the world to do all that is good and right and true (Eph 5:9). When our words and deeds shine the light of Christ, darkness is exposed (Eph 5:11), and sinners rise from the dead (Eph 5:14).