Where God's word is not heard, chaos and darkness close in again.
It is as if the word of God does laser surgery on our souls. It exposes our thinking and motives. It is the only mirror in which we truly see ourselves, for it is the mirror which reflects our hearts.
Persevering faith comes through the word of God.
In the church the risen Christ rules through the word of God. This is why the only skill required of church leaders is that they can teach...
The growth of God's kingdom is synonymous with the spread of God's word. The kingdom grows through the word as it elicits faith.
The community formed by the gospel for the gospel is the community in which God dwells by his Spirit.
But we need look no further than the Psalms to see how important emotion is in true faith. The Psalms are God's revelation of how we should respond to God's revelation and they express the full range of emotions.
It is the Spirit who makes Christ's words known to us, applying them to our lives and making them live.
All Scripture is God breathed says Paul (2T3:16). In both Hebrew and Greek 'spirit' and 'breath' are the same word.
Spiritual experience that does not arise from God's word is not Christian experience. Other religions offer spiritual experiences. Concerts and therapy sessions can affect our emotions. Not all that passes for Christian experience is genuine. An authentic experience of the Spirit is an experience in response to the gospel. I would add that it needs to come from a revelation of who Christ is.
It also means that Bible study and theology that do not lead to love for God and a desire to do his will - to worship, tears, laughters, excitement or sorrow - have gone terribly wrong. True theology leads to love, mission and doxology.
When we study God's word we should pray that the Spirit of God will not only inform our heads, but also inspire our hearts.
Mission centred living
Being gospel-centered means being mission-centred, for the gospel is a missionary word.
Chris Wright - a radical God-centred perspective 'turns inside out and upside down some of the common ways in which we are accustomed to think about the Christian life... It constantly forces us to open our eyes to the big picture, rather than shelter in the cosy narcissism of our own small worlds.'
We ask 'where does god fit into the story of my life?', when the real question is 'where does my little life fit into this great story of God's mission?'
In March 2003 the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in association with the Evangelical Alliance published a report entitled 'Imagine How We Can Reach the UK'. It was the first of a major research project involving hundreds of questionnaires and consultations with church leaders. The report concluded:
"The reason the UK church is not effective in mission is because we are not making disciples who can live well for Christ in today's culture and engage compellingly with the people they meet... Jesus had a 'train and release' strategy while overall we have a 'convert and retain' strategy."In the last twenty years it claimed we have produced plenty of creative evangelistic materials, but little to help Christians connect their faith to the whole of life. The report blames this on a sacred-secular divide: 'the pervasive belief that some things are important to God - such as church, prayer meetings, social action, Alpha - but that other human activities are at best neutral - work, school, college, sport, the arts, leisure, rest, sleep. As a result the vast majority of Chritsians have not been helped to see that who they are and what they do every day in schools. workplaces or clubs is significant to God, nor that the people they spend time with in those everyday contexts are the people God is calling them to pray fo, bless and witness to."
If someone was being sent as a missionary to a hostile context overseas, our attitude would be something like this: We would expect to pray often for them. We would expect progress in building relationships and sharing the gospel to be slow. We would be excited by small steps - a gospel conversation here, an opportunity to get to know someone there. We would thrive on regular updates from the front line. But the truth is that the lives of many Christians in work, and play, are just like the life of that far-flung missionary! They are lived out in tough environments where progress is often slow and many factors make evangelism extremely difficult. The challenge is to make news from the staff canteen as valued as news from the overseas mission field.
We have a ghetto mentality We think of church as the faithful few, backs against the wall. But in fact during the week we are dispersed throughout the world. We are already infiltrating the kingdom of Satan.
The Imagine Report concluded: "The Uk will never be reached until we create open, authentic, learning and praying communities that are focused on making whole-life disciples who live and share the Gospel wherever they relate to people in their daily lives."
Chapter 2: Why Community?
We are not saved individually and then choose to join the church as if it were some club or support group.
John Stott: The church lies at the veryt centre of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community. For this purpose, conceived in a past eternioty, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory.
Xhosa proverb: A person is a person through persons.
But the key defining relationship for Christians is our relationship with God. Who am I? I am a child of God, the bride of his Son and the dwelling place of his Spirit. And this identity is given to me by grace.
Peter writes to Christians facing persecution, calling them 'strangers' in the world (1P2:11). The word literally means 'without family' or 'without home' (paroikos). The Roman Empire was viewed as a family (oikos) with Caesar as its patriarch.
As leaders, we submit our schedules, priorities and key decisions to the community.
'Salt and light' - Jesus did not pluck these metaphors from the air. In the Old Testament salt is used as a symbol of the unbreakable nature of God's covenant-al relationship with his people (Lev2:13, N18:19, 2Ch13:5). Now Jesus calls his small band of disciples God's new salt community because of the old salt community has irreversibly lost its 'saltiness'. In an overt reference t the judgement of the exile, Jesus refers to the old community being thrown out and trampled under foot.
Here Jesus speaks of his messianic community as the light of the world. God's glory will radiate to the nations as they live under the Messiah's rule in obedience to his word.
Our identity as human beings is found in community. Our identity as Christians is found in Christ's new community. And our mission takes place through communities of light. Christianity is 'total church.'
Change your community... You don't have to mount a campaign for change - just get on with it and make community infectious. Create something that people want to be a part of.
Gospel and Community in Practise:
John Calvin said that the church is the mother of all believers 'she brings them to new birth by the word of God, educates and nourishes them all their life, strengthens them and finally leads them to complete perfection.' From 'Total Church'
'All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another. Before they are preachers, leaders or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers. This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus.' From 'Total Church'
People want a form of evangelism that they can stick in their schedule, switch off and go home from. Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of love.
Too much evangelism is an attempt to answer questions people are not asking. Let them experience the life of the Christian community.
Our commitment to one another despite our differences and our grace towards one another's failures are more eloquent testimony to the grace of God than any pretence at perfection.
Evangelism is a community project. Everyone has a part to play: the new Christian, the introvert, the extrovert, the eloquent, the stuttering, the intelligent, the awkward. I may be the one who has begun to build a relationship with my neighbour, but in introducing him to community, it is someone else who shares the gospel with him.
Join, attend, visit, participate: the missionaries approach to community life.
Three strand approach to evangelism: Building relationships, sharing the gospel, introducing people to the community.
7. Discipleship and training
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Every Christian is a disciple of Jesus because in the kingdom of God it is only Jesus who has disciples. It is legitimate to talk about Christians discipling one another as long as we recognize that we are describing the process by which disciples of King Jesus help one another to better disciples of King Jesus.
The gospel word and gospel community are central to the evangelistic process. It is the same for discipleship.
We ought to continue to 'evangelise' one another since it is the gospel message we exhort and encourage one another with.
It is in the family of God that I am able to care and be cared for love and be loved; forgive and be forgiven; rebuke and be rebuked; encourage and be encouraged. All of which is essential to the task of being a disciple of the risen Lord Jesus. Too often, however, churches are not contexts for making disciples so much as occasions for recognizing relative strangers.
Philip Yancey says: 'we often find ourselves with people we most want to live with, thus forming a club or clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.'
To be a community of light from which the light of Christ will emanate we need to be intentional in our relationships: to love the unlovely, forgive the unforgiveable, embrace the repulsive, include the awkward, accept the weird.
Sermons count for nothing in God's sight. We rate churches by whether they have good teaching or not. But James says great teaching counts for nothing. What counts is the practise of the word.
We should be teaching one another the Bible as we are out walking, driving the car or washing the dishes.
Informal but intentional.
In becoming a Christian I am a disciple, but that is an identity not an event.
Church discipline: Anyone who has a family will know that there is more likelihood of success in dealing with acute disciplinary issues children, if you have shown commitment as parents to creating an environment of care and discipline. Church discipline needs to become a daily reality in which rebuke and exhortation are normal. Without this, any form of confrontation will itself create a sense of crisis.
We cannot be content with a morality of negatives (do not get drunk, do not swear). We need to take responsibility for each other's godliness - not only at the level of behaviour but of attitudes and underlying idolatries.
