Reigning with Christ on Daily Mission

To say that the heart of the gospel is Christ crucified would not be wrong (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal 6:14). To say that the heart of the gospel is the resurrection of Christ would not be wrong either, for by it our justification comes (Rom. 4:25; cf. 1 Tim. 3:16). To say that the heart of the gospel is the ascension of Christ would not be wrong, but you may receive a funny stare from a confused onlooker. The reason, of course, is that the ascension of Christ is an often overlooked element of the universally huge, wonderfully true, gospel of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Perhaps you’ve glossed over this verse before: “And when [Jesus] had said these things, as [the disciples] were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). To give another perspective on this event, Mark shares that, “The Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to [the disciples], was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mk. 16:19).

The anticipation of the Old Testament, as well as the resounding message of the New Testament, is that Christ is King. This is not an empty saying. It means something. The writer of Hebrews says that, “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet” (Heb. 10:12-13). The verse alluded to here in Hebrews is found in Psalm 110 (which just so happens to be the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament!). Jesus uses the same verse to vindicate his ministry, claiming that David was writing about him (Matt. 22:41-46).

The Exalted King in the Old Testament

The theme of an exalted King to come is all over the Old Testament. Isaiah says that this King’s “temple” will be established “as the highest of the mountains; and shall be lifted above the hills; and all nations will flow to it” (2:2). Later Isaiah says that this son would be given and “the government shall be on his shoulder… Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (9:6, 7). Fast forward to the time of the Babylonian exile and we find Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The dream showed a stone that struck the feet of the statue which symbolized the coming nations of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The kingdom “stone” broke the entire statue so “not a trace of [the kingdoms] could be found” (Dan. 2:35). The stone grew into a great mountain that would fill the earth. Jump over to Daniel 7 and we see the vision of the son of man who comes up to the Ancient of Days and “to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14).

Verses like these are what we find as the back story to Christ’s ministry on earth, and the overwhelming consensus of the New Testament writers is that all of this is now true. Peter affirms it an Acts 2, and the rest of the Bible sets its context inside the end of the ages (1 Cor. 10:11) that happened in A.D. 70 with the destruction of the Temple. Because the Old Covenant has passed away, the New Covenant has come, and with it her newly crowned King. The millennial reign of Christ as King is now. Jesus has all authority on heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18).

Now, lest we see this as irrelevant for us who serve as God’s ambassadors and vice-regents, pay close attention to what Paul says in Ephesians as he affirms what has just been laid out above: “[God] worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (1:20). Notice the connection: Resurrection, then Kingdom. The resurrection of Christ is intimately connected to the ascension of Christ and both serve as events confirming that the kingdom of God has indeed come.

But please do not miss what happens next, because this is crucial for the Christian and his implementation of the Kingdom of God in his life. Paul uses nearly the same language to describe our union with Christ: “[God] raised us up with [Jesus] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). The context of Ephesians 2:1-5 has to do with resurrection language that is employed when describing our salvation. We were dead, but God made us alive. And not only did he make us alive, we are now reigning with Christ in his perfect Kingdom.

Seated with the King

Where have we heard that before? You guessed it: Revelation 20. When you participate in the first resurrection (the rebirth; cf. Jn. 5:25), you are blessed because death has no power anymore—it has been broken by Jesus’ death. Not only that, you reign with Christ. You have been (past tense) seated with the King.

This is where you and I come in. It is time we see our lawn mowing, dish washing, gardening, and work as Kingdom business. I heard a pastor recently describe some of his extracurricular activities as having “nothing to do with the Kingdom.” I beg to differ. Whatever you do, do it for God’s glory because God’s glory is now on full display (1 Cor. 10:31). It will fill the earth (Is. 11:9). All of this is about dominion. And dominion is about man ruling the earth on behalf of Christ. We seek justice in the Church, the Family, and the State. We labor not just for souls to be saved, but for society to be transformed. Certainly this cannot happen apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the souls of men, but the Kingdom truly affects everything. When Christ issued his decree as the King of the Universe, it was a decree to make disciples. What is a disciple? Some who is baptized (a part of the visible Church) and obedient to the word of God. (That’s why Jesus told us to teach the nations to observe everything that he commanded).

To the stay-at-home-so-you-can-build-a-home mom: diapers are about the Kingdom (for how else are we to leave a legacy for generations to follow?). Fathers: your work to provide for your family absolutely matters. It matters that you contribute to society with the sweat of your brow. Parents: train up your children in the knowledge of God. Farm the land; build business and do economics; do accounting to the glory of God. Why? Because you reign with Christ. And Christ is in the process of putting all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25). The “subdue the earth” command Adam forfeited, the Second Adam recovered. That’s why the ascension of Christ matters. That’s why you matter.

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Rev. Jason M. Garwood (M.Div., Th.D.) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @jasongarwood.

Community Hunger

Broken families, broken relationships, and an epidemic of loneliness has created a ravenous hunger for community in this generation. But our flesh can seek our idea of community more than we seek Jesus. Our souls, it seems, are ready to settle for a sit-com style of friendship instead of striving for the spirit-led family of God purchased and created by his Son’s death and resurrection. In  Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the difference between spiritual community, true biblical unity, and emotional community.  He identifies the common sin of loving the idea of community that we have invented in our minds more than we really love the community.

Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community. They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere. . . . Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial…Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

6 Misunderstandings About Community

Our desire and attempts at filling our need for community has clouded our understanding of community itself. As I help folks start and grow gospel-centered communities in Portland, I have come to notice a consistent stream of misunderstandings and false expectations. Though we desire it, we have forgotten what it means to be the people of God in daily life. Here are the top six misunderstandings I have encountered as we have started communities throughout inner Portland.

1. Community Is Not “Everyone is My Best Friend”

If you have one intimate friend (usually a spouse) you are blessed.  Many people come into a church or small group with the expectation that everyone will be their best friend.  Those unrealistic expectations are selfish and harmful to community.  Come into community with one goal—to serve.

2. Community is Not A Spiritual/Morality Club 

You don’t pay membership dues to get into community. Jesus has already done that. It isn’t a group of generally moral people trying to do good for others. No, community is a made of people who were dead in their sin, but who God raised to new life with Christ. The good we do is with humility and an understanding of grace.

3. Community is Not A Book Club

Scripture is vital to Christian community. We devour the words of God and look to understand the character and actions of God in the Bible. But Christian community cannot be reduced to simply a reading and understanding of the Bible. Christian community practices and obeys Scripture. That happens in real life and in real time.

4. Community is Not A Meeting or Event.

You might find community present in a meeting or an organization but those things can never create it. Vibrant community happens when people invest in one another outside of formal gatherings. It is not a time, building, or place; it is a people, family, and movement. Don’t settle for a two hour meeting in a living room as “community.” Allow that meeting to spill over into daily life. Share meals, call one another, bless each other, and try to make disciples.

5. Community is Not Easy

In Matthew 10, as Jesus sent his disciples out to do his works, he didn’t say: “Now be nice to each other and you’ll see the sick healed and demons flee and hearts transformed.”  He said “Don’t go alone; be careful!  I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves, expect to be imprisoned, expect persecution, expect to stand before politicians and princes, expect to be rejected by brothers and fathers, expect strife, but stand firm to the end because my Father will give you everything you need!” (personal paraphrase).  Paul, Peter, and James all say we should expect it to be hard. Paul tells us that we will be tempted to blame each other but to remember, you’re fighting sin not each other (Eph 6).

If we want unity it won’t feel like unity most of the time. Often we will feel like we’re barely hanging on to each other. Real unity, real community comes at a great price. We surrender our “rights” for the sake of Christ and one another. We come together on a journey of dying to ourselves and living to Christ, and that is hard. Furthermore real community requires forgiveness, and reconciliation in a society that prefers to quit and ditch relationships as soon as we begin to hurt each other. In gospel-centered community, we rely on God’s grace, mercy, and love for us to confront the hurts and sin in each others’ lives. We forgive because God forgives. We reconcile because he made us agents of reconciliation. We love those in our community, because we are adopted brothers and sisters in Christ.

6. Community is Not “Everyone Gets Along”

If you ask most Christians what unity is their first response has to do with everyone getting along and just “loving each other.” But Jesus doesn’t root our unity in some feel-good idea of everyone getting along and being sweet to each other. Jesus roots our unity in himself, his Spirit and what God has done in all us. Our unity comes from our common Rescuer and Lord.

The Bible assumes we’ll have lots of conflict, so the Scriptures constantly remind us about the basis of our unity and gives us practical tools like repentance and forgiveness, for walking it out. Paul didn’t sit around and ask the Holy Spirit, “What esoteric thing do you want me to write about today?” Instead, Paul wrote to churches to respond to the things they were going through and frequently wrote about practical ways for these churches to keep pursuing unity. Many of Paul’s letters address very specific things attempting to divide the church.  Every one of Jesus’ messages to the churches in Revelation deals with something trying to divide them.

You show me a family that doesn’t fight and I’ll show you a family that is just coexisting or is under the rule of a tyrant. Healthy relationships are hard and there’s always conflict. We’re sinful, selfish human beings living in a sin-filled world. Our only hope in these conflicts is the gospel of grace.

7 Elements for Gospel-Centered Community

Gospel-centered communities are groups of people that love to include Jesus in everything they do. It never feels forced, but a meal with friends often drifts towards conversation about the person and life of Jesus. If community can be characterized by anything, it will be characterized by who Jesus is and what he has done for us. His life, work, and character is woven into the language and practice of every authentic expression of community. The good news of Jesus is what makes the community, builds it, and motivates it.

There are many signs that a community is built on the foundation of the gospel. As we labored to start multiple communities in Portland, the healthy and thriving ones always have these characteristics and qualities. These are not seven easy steps or a how-to. In fact, the how-to is to make the gospel central and to pray in dependance for God to do his work. These are the consistent elements I see expressed when communities are established in the gospel. They are also the seven elements that war against our own selfish desires for independence.

1. Generous Hospitality.

In Matthew 25 Jesus describes his spirit of hospitality, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.” Authentic community involves lots of food! It involves taking the time and space to incorporate others in your life. This is often found at the kitchen table and this is nothing new. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus was often on his way to a meal, coming from a meal, or at a meal. Authentic communities are regularly sharing meals with one another and those outside the community. Their generous hospitality is noticeable from the outside and others desire it.

2. Influence Earned by Serving

You know you have found gospel-centered community when you find selfless giving and constant blessing toward each other and those outside the church. Jesus told us the world will know us by our “love for one another.” It’s true. When Jesus is the center, community is characterized by humble service to Jesus as Lord and King.

3. Accountable and Repentant

Community will bring everything into the light. By that I mean, we are honest with who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going. It means the community will not let us live a lie or false identity. The Scriptures, truth of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and unbelief in gracious and merciful ways. In repentance, communities return to the gospel and are reminded of their identity in Christ.

4. Led by qualified leaders.

Christian community has leadership. The leaders carry the tremendous weight of caring for the believers, and equipping the body for service and mission. You will know you are in the community when the leaders are the servants among the community who are training and releasing everyone else into the world. They will be characterized by humility, hospitality, faithfulness, self-control, prayer, and belief in the gospel.

5. On Mission

Any expression of gospel-centered community will be on mission seeking the good of their neighborhood, nation, and globe. Make no mistake about it, the mission is making disciples. Jesus-centered community proclaims the hope and truth of the gospel to the lost and broken. The presence of Jesus Christ is the most attractive thing to the human heart—and the presence of Jesus is found in its most potent form in a group of people that love him and love each other well. This is what Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Community grows and multiplies. Gospel-centered communities send their best people out into new areas of mission and service. However, life is added to community, not subtracted. It has been like this from the very beginning. The command was to spread and be witnesses of Jesus from “Jerusalem to Samaria to Judea to the ends of the earth.” And it did. In a world without Twitter, YouTube, satellites, or pamphlets churches sprung up in houses and temples in three continents in only a few years. Your Jesus-centered community has the same potential and calling.

6. Active in Culture

Christian community will be in the public square where goods and ideas are exchanged. Their activity will be defined by love, grace, and truth. They will have jobs, create art, and seek the good of their city through social justice. They will do these things, not from a point of power and greed, but from a point of service and empowerment by the Spirit.

7. Diverse

It will be made up of rich and poor, men and women, young and old, black and white, immigrant and native, married and single. You will welcome everyone and you won’t be made up of “people like me” and “at my stage of life.” Instead you embrace those who are different from you. There will be no way to describe you other than to say, “Christian Community.” Christianity is unlike any other religion, even in its inception it was completely diverse. Up to that point in history religion was connected to race, status, and origin. In fact, your outside differences will tell the story of God’s work to create you into a people.

Story of Community

I met Mark (name changed) at a poker game. It was a mishmash of people and he was obviously nervous to be around so many new folks. He was an introvert like me and we connected. He was going to law school and was the smartest guy in the room. The next time we hung out, he was eating dinner at my house. Our missional community was getting together for a meal and sharing stories of what God had done in our lives. He had just heard the gospel from the guy who hosted the poker game and he was beginning to make sense of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The next day we shoveled fertilizer together at the elementary school as part of a neighborhood wide clean-up project. He wanted to know how to pray to Jesus. Mark was part of our community and began spending lots of life with us. I baptized him a year ago. As we spend time together and grew in understanding of the gospel, he shared that he came to our city as a refugee, not as a student. He was running from home and the destructive life he had there.  As he read the parable of the prodigal son, he couldn’t help but identify with him. “I messed so much stuff up,” he would say. At the age of twelve, he gave his life to drugs. It truly stole his life. No friends, no community, and ultimately his family gave up on him. Yet, at 26, Mark was a new man in Jesus. His words to our church before he was baptized, “Before Christ I was headed no where, I didn’t have any friends and did a bunch of bad stuff. Now I have a community and a life to live.” Three months later, he took an internship at an Indian reservation in another state seven hours away. He took a stack of books and planned to finish reading the Bible (he read two thirds of it in his first months following Jesus). We prayed for him and talked as often as we could and were planning on having several of the guys in the community taking a weekend trip to hang out with him.

At 11:00 pm on the fourth of July, we got a phone call from Mark. He was in trouble and we left immediately. It was the longest seven hour drive of our lives as we tried to piece together the short and chaotic phone calls we had with Mark in the early hours of the morning. We couldn’t figure out if he was in real danger or hallucinating. There was a stretch of four hours when we heard nothing from him. As we pulled into the town we found him surrounded by three police cars in a diner parking lot. He had spent the night outside running from terrifying and accusative hallucinations. He was barefoot and his pajamas were torn to pieces. His hands and feet were scarred and bleeding. But he was alive and he recognized us. The police allowed us to take him into our care. We cleaned him up, packed his bags, cleaned up his apartment, and brought him home. The coming days and weeks were hard, but he had a community around him who gave him a place to stay, took him to the hospital, fed him, and spoke the truth of resurrection to him. We paid his debts for him and cared for his heart. Mark’s words when he was baptized were true, “Before Christ I was headed no where, I didn’t have any friends and did a bunch of bad stuff. Now I have a community and a life to live.”

Love for the Church

If you are a leader, I pray you will be known for you love of the community of God and that you will excel at pointing to God’s love for it. Don’t allow cultural expectations and the idolatry of community to take your eyes of the gospel. Keep the gospel primary and never stray from it. Pursue community that is unashamedly centered on Jesus.

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Brad Watson serves as a pastor of Bread & Wine Communities in Portland, Oregon. He is a board member of GCDiscipleship.com and co-author of Raised? and Called Together. His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples. Twitter: @BradAWatson

A Question of Comfort

MY THREE-YEAR-OLD CHARLOTTE WOKE UP AT 4 AM LAST NIGHT.

When the babysitters had put her to bed, they hadn’t flipped on her “night-night light.” A train horn in the blackness startled her to tears. When I plugged in the tiny bulb, soft yellow light engulfed the room. The darkness was gone and she cuddled back to sleep. One of the most impacting facts I’ve ever learned is that physical light always goes into darkness; scientifically, darkness never comes to light. Darkness cannot overcome a candle; it must wait for the flame to flicker out. But when you flip a light switch, beams instantly fill the blackness. If we may spiritualize the image a bit, light goes into—and pushes back—darkness.

Consider Jesus’ familiar words: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Living out our faith in an unbelieving world is one way that God draws people to glorify Him. Conversely then, if we do not live out our faith in the darkness, we remove one way people can glorify God.

A LONG LINE OF LEAVING OUR COMFORT ZONE

Many followers of Jesus have what we’ll call a “low indecency tolerance”: if anything looks like it might, potentially, one day, maybe be sinful, we avoid it. Of course there’s some wisdom in that: it’s right to approach anything that incites our sin with wisdom, accountability and close community. And we’re by no means saying that true mission always includes going to a bar. But alcohol is an easy example of a broader idea: anything God doesn’t label sin, He can use for His mission.

We’re 130 percent certain that hairs are bristling on the back of some reader’s neck right now. But consider a couple other ways God sent people out of their comfort zones for His mission. These may seem normal after 2000 years of hindsight, but each was far more controversial in its day, than crisp cigars and aged bourbon are today.

The apostle Peter grew up believing anyone outside his own race was evil, as was eating certain foods. But in a trio of rooftop visions, God redeems Peter’s legalism: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” God didn’t just expand Peter’s palate; He destroyed racial tension, and for the first time, God’s mission extended to non-Jews: “truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Later, Peter and Barnabas got scared kosher when legalistic Jews arrived at a Gentile feast. And Jesus’ disciples were scolded for not fasting correctly, while Jesus Himself hung out with the “wrong people” in the eyes of religious leaders, and was rebuked for healing, driving out spirits, and feeding on the Sabbath.

WILLING TO BECOME ALL THINGS?

From Sabbath, circumcision, and bacon, to drinking, gambling, and music, history proves legalism as one of religion’s darker sides. Some Christians in Paul’s day tried to force meal restrictions and even circumcision on those to whom they were on mission. But the Apostle took a different path, becoming “all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” First Corinthians 9 shows that Paul didn’t always reject legalism. At times, he gave up freedoms and submitted for the sake of those with tighter rules. We can’t swing the pendulum of selfless discomfort to one extreme and ignore the other.

But as we follow Paul as he follows the example of Christ, we might say, “To those who hang out in bars, I became one who hangs out in bars, in order to win them from their drunkenness. For those who are religious, I became religious, that I might save them from their self-righteousness. For those who get drunk every Saturday, I go to the frat parties—not to get drunk, but that I might bless and care for those who are. For those who add rules to God’s grace, I follow the rules in order to free them from trying to earn their salvation.” And so on. There are hundreds of places God sends us on everyday mission. Many are out of our comfort zone, in the proverbial darkness, and on someone else’s turf. But whoever they are and whatever their turf is, that’s where we go and make disciples.

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and to order, visit everydaymission.net.)

Evangelism After Christendom

Evangelism is something many Christians are trying to recover from. The word stirs up memories of a bygone era—Christendom—where rehearsed presentations, awkward door-to-door witnessing, a steady flow of tracts, and conversions in revival-like settings were commonplace. As American culture becomes increasingly fragmented and secularized, these forms of evangelism create an impediment to the gospel. Wave after wave of rationalistic, rehearsed (and at times coerced and confrontational) evangelism inoculates, if not antagonizes, the broader culture. The gospel is slowly associated with forceful Christians who are information-driven, looking to get Jesus off their chest. As a result, evangelism is viewed as an attempt to recruit converts, not love your neighbor. In response, Hollywood has taken up its own evangelistic message in documentaries like Jesus Camp and Philomena and films like There Will Be Blood, Saved! and Believe Me. The public has been disaffected by our evangelism.

Learning A New Language

What should evangelism look like after Christendom? To answer that question, we must recognize that twentieth-century American evangelism worked because the culture was largely familiar with Christianity. It included many assumptions, such as the brute fact of absolute truth, the existence of heaven and hell (or God for that matter), and a widely held notion that sin keeps us from God. We can no longer assume this understanding. The cultural shift away from Christianity has resulted in a loss of theological vocabulary. People don’t understand what we are saying. It’s as if we are speaking a foreign language.

Many Christian teachings and assumptions are fuzzy, even questionable to those outside the faith. Calling people to “repent and believe in Jesus” is typically misconstrued as “stop doing bad things, start doing good things (like Jesus did), and God will save you.” This, of course, has nothing to do with the gospel and leaves us disconnected from our culture. There is a considerable gap between the gospel communicator and the receptor culture. This gap is filled with all sorts of things that prevent effective gospel witness, including theological misunderstandings, politicized Christianity, bigoted religion, and unbelievable forms of evangelism. How can we cut through the cultural confusion in order to communicate a clear, winsome gospel message? Like missionaries in a foreign country, we inhabit a new mission field. We need to relearn the language, discover redemptive analogies, and reacquaint people with the true Christian story.

How the News is Good

A fundamental question in evangelism is often overlooked: “How is the gospel good news to those we evangelize?”

Not what is the good news, but how is our news good for others? Christians are often proficient at rehearsing the information of the gospel, but we often lack the ability to relate the gospel to the lives of others. If we are to overcome obstacles to evangelism, we must be able to answer this question: “What does the death and resurrection of a first-century Jewish messiah have to do with twenty-first-century people?”

How does the gospel transform the self-righteous do-gooder, the skeptical urbanite, the distant spouse, the successful professional, and the strung-out addict?

Getting to a Believable Gospel

We need to recover a believable evangelism, one that moves beyond the cultural and personal barriers we have erected in contemporary evangelism to rediscover the power of the biblical gospel. What makes the gospel believable? Rather than a one-size-fits-all message, we need to hold the gospel up to the light and see its various gospel metaphors—justification, union with Christ, redemption, adoption, and new creation—in light of various cultural identities and longings. These metaphors can function like redemptive analogies. If we listen to people long enough, we will uncover deep gospel longings, that manifest uniquely in secular culture, and call people to turn and put their faith in only one who can fulfill those longings. Here are a few examples.

1. Seekers of Acceptance

One of the greatest needs people have today is to be accepted, to know they are welcome and won’t be rejected. This is particularly true in entrepreneurial or honor and shame cultures. People who are driven to perform well in school, work, and family life are often seeking acceptance from themselves or others. Though they may try to deny or hide it, these kinds of people often carry a sense of shame, a fear that they will be found out, rejected, and judged when they fall short. Urban professionals worship in the temple of the city, students bow before the almighty “A,” and families strive to live up to a cultural dream. Eventually people fail to find acceptance through these things, no matter how successful they become.

To those seeking acceptance, justification promises perfect acceptance before a holy God through his unique Son, Jesus Christ. Justification can bring tremendous relief and joy to those seeking acceptance.

2. Seekers of Hope

The metaphor of new creation can be especially compelling for people who are longing for a new start in life. People whose lives have been littered with failure, scarred by abuse, humbled through suffering, darkened by depression, or ruined by addiction need the hope of becoming a new creation.

To those seeking hope, new creation exiles the old life and welcomes a new life through faith in Christ, shedding a bright ray of hope into the heart of the hopeless.

3. Seekers of Intimacy

Our search for intimacy in relationships never ends. Even the best friendship or marriage isn’t enough for our insatiable demand to be noticed, loved, and cared for. We all want a place where we can be ourselves and know that we are accepted. We want relationships that are secure, where we feel safe to share our innermost thoughts and darkest struggles. This is especially true of the person practicing serial monogamy, stuck in a broken marriage, or the celibate, lonely single.

To those seeking intimacy, union with Christ promises entrance into the most intimate, loving, unbreakable, fulfilling relationship known to humanity, bringing deep healing and joy to those seeking intimacy.

4. Seekers of Tolerance

Many people seek tolerance. Some don’t know the difference between classical and new tolerance.¹ That alone can be an illuminating conversation that deepens mutual respect and admiration between people. Others will not like the exclusive claims that Christianity makes. However, before scoffing at their perspective or trying to crush their worldview, ask questions to get on the inside of their perspective and appreciate their views. They often have good reasons or difficult stories attached to their objections. Respectful dialogue can go a long way in over-turning bigoted impressions of Christianity. In fact, it will open doors that would otherwise remain closed.

To those seeking tolerance, the atonement offers a redemptive tolerance that gives progressive people an opportunity to experience grace and forgiveness in a way that doesn’t demean other faiths, which can be very liberating.

Different Perspectives, Same Eternal Gospel

These gospel metaphors offer different perspectives on the eternal gospel, which when applied to the deep longings of people, awaken belief, hope, faith, and love. Gospel metaphors account for the depth, complexity, and power of the gospel, helping us answer not just the “what” of the gospel, but the “how.”

In order for our evangelism to be believable, it must be biblical. So when we communicate the gospel of grace, we must necessarily draw on biblical truths, stories, and images. If we stop there, however, we will fail to communicate effectively how the gospel is good news for others. Like good counselors, we must listen to others well to know how to effectively communicate the unsearchable riches of Christ in a way that speaks to their unique life story.

^{1. Old or “classical” tolerance holds the belief that other opinions have a right to exist. The new tolerance is the belief that all opinions are equally valid or true.↩}

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Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

Be a Storyteller

What do you do when you get together with friends? You start with a story. What do you do when you return from vacation? Do you pull out the agenda from the cruise and walk them through a list of what you did? No, you share stories. How do you explain your childhood to your kids? Stories. It is difficult to separate storytelling from the fabric of relationship. We like to tell stories and hear stories. Sharing them is the foundation of relationship. Yet we often fail to share the story of Scripture in the same natural way. If story is the way we share  how our day went, why is it not the form in which we clarify the gospel? If story is the way we instruct our children in the way they should live, why don’t we become storytellers to instruct disciples in the way of obedience. We like stories as illustrations in sermons to clarify meaning, but fail to see the story of Scripture as the place to find meaning. I want to call us back to narrative. I invite us to become gospel storytellers. Scripture is nearly two-thirds narrative. It is the story of God. We ought to share it.

Stories are Where We Go for Meaning

“What is the meaning of life?” is the timeless question. It is the question asked in Micah 6:8: “What is required of man?” It is Aristotle’s question: “How should a man lead his life?” Historically, humanity has answered this question through philosophy, science, religion, and art. The first three have failed us or been disregarded. No one reads Plato outside of homework and cramming for exams. We are tired of science’s polished, empty answers. Religion is a place of hypocrisy, ritual, and superstition. The world of cynics has rejected all but the art and story is the dominant art form. In Story Robert McKee:

“The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source for inspiration.”

Many of the stories we hear and tell fall short as the meaning of life. As a society, we are beyond the myth of human progress. We have far too many evils to remind us we aren’t getting better. The depravity of the world is our base assumption and our human hunch is that life was not supposed to be this way. Stories try to explain the way forward through this mess. However, void of the gospel story, our neighbors hears some variation of this plot: you can fix your problems, if we are creative, courageous, and smart enough. The meaning of life in contemporary stories is: you are the center of the problem and the solution. The story, or life, is about you. However, the gospel is the story of God for you, for your life. The story of a gracious and just God who goes to great lengths to save and redeem those who don’t deserve it. The story of God gives humanity a new identity, meaning, and purpose.

Stories are Where We Turn for Guidance

Kenneth Burke said, “Stories are equipment for living.” We model our own life choices on the stories we believe are best or the stories we wish to avoid. We hear how things worked and didn’t work in the years before and make adjustments. We learn from how our older siblings stories and model our own lives after them. Not only do my parents and teachers have a major affect forming the way I wanted to live, but so did Huck Finn, Bill Huxtable, the Box Car Children, and the group from Saved by the Bell. These stories and characters instructed and formed my proper view of living. They taught me how to live adventurously, with integrity, and even how to ask a girl out on a date. They did this, because I connected with the characters. We witness what they witness, we experience what they do. Stories are shaped in the reality of the world. They reflect what is true of us and our surroundings. As we listen to a story, it informs how we live. How does the story of the Bible inform how you live? What would it look like to have life shaped by the gospel story and bring others into that story?

Stories are the Glue of Community

Stories form and hold groups of people together. They are the folklore shared, the background, and the history of our greatest triumphs over our most challenging days. The inside jokes, the shared experiences turned lifelong memories, and anything that follows “remember that one time” binds communities together. The stories a community shares are the stories that define it. If the story is one of independence and self-reliance, the community will be shaped by this. If the common story is one of pleasure and riches, it will be defined by this, too. If the community’s story is one of hope, grace, and love, it will be characterized by hope, grace, and love.

The Good Story

Robert McKee, the self proclaimed story guru of the twenty-first century, writes, “A good story tells the world something it wants to hear and it’s the artists job to figure out what it wants to hear.” The gospel is that good story. It is the story of what the world needed but didn’t deserve being given by God through Christ. It is the story of true acceptance, adoption, belonging, gifts, overcoming the destruction and devastation of this world. Eugene Peterson explains this well:

Stories are the most prominent biblical way of helping us see ourselves in ‘the God story,’ which always gets around to the story of God making and saving us. Stories, in contrast to abstract statements of truth, tease us into becoming participants in what is being said. We find ourselves involved in the action. We may start as spectators or critics, but if the story is good (and the biblical stories are very good!), we find ourselves no longer just listening to but inhabiting the story.

The gospel is a story not a list of facts. It is the story about God redeeming, rescuing, and recreating his creation. The story of God taking it upon himself to save us from death and bring us to life. The gospel is the true story and only trustworthy account for what has been done to redeem the world. The story is good news. The gospel is the compelling story that doesn’t fall flat on meaning. The story that satisfies our longings for purpose and joy. It is the greatest story because it instructs us in how to live with faith and in close relationship with God. Furthermore, it creates a community. The story of God makes a new people characterized by grace, because the story is about grace. The community is centered on God because the story is about God. This is a story the world must hear.

Sheryl’s Story

Her family tree mostly produced problems. Its fruit wasn’t peppered with convicts or crazies, just disappointments: neglected homes, broken promises, and abandoned children. The residue of family pain was silent relationships. She knew at an early age that everything would be uphill for her and no one was going to carry her. Whatever she gained would be by her sweat. Whatever the costs, she would pay. She was raised religiously in what to do and how to do it. She knew the right things to do—but was never told the story.

One evening, she came to our home for our community’s weekly meal and story time. We shared and engaged the story of the early church (Acts 2). We shared the story of God’s adoption of us and the creation of the church. It was story-time. In the middle, Sheryl asked, “I’ve never heard this story, but is the church a family? All I’ve heard is God wants us to do stuff for him and live right, this story sounds like God loves us like children.” My wife explained, “Church is family. We are a family. Even when we are not together we are the family. But all good families get together, catch up, share stories, and live life together.”

Sheryl was raised to know the right things to do and the bullet points of theology. She was never told the story of the gospel. The story she had believed was one of self-reliance and moral behavior. She found meaning in it and had accepted this story for her life. But it wasn’t the true story. We had the blessing of sharing the story of God with her. Unfortunately, most of the people we live around and work with don’t know the gospel story, either. They may know some of the points, or some of the characters, but they haven’t heard the story. Like Sheryl, they need to hear it and engage. Be a storyteller to them!

Become a Storyteller

How do you become a gospel storyteller?

• Begin by knowing it as a story. Read it, listen to it, and engage it in conversation with us. Place yourself in the narrative, not as the hero but as the everyman.
• Ask of the story? If this were true, how would it change my life, community, city?
• Participate in the Story-Formed Way created by Soma Communities.
• Speak it. The best way to learn is to share it and try!
• Share your life story and how it is really part of God’s story.

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Brad Watson serves as a pastor of Bread & Wine Communities in Portland, Oregon. He is a board member of GCDiscipleship.com and co-author of Raised? and the forthcoming Called Together. His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples. Twitter: @BradAWatson

Exporting Love

The chief export of a local church should be love. Churches do many things, but the main thing we are to express to God, to one another, and to the world is supernatural love—because God is love. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). Boil all Christian activity down to one word and it’s, simply, love.

Since our God is love, we are to be people who are known for love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”(Jn. 13:34–35).

“God so loved the world that he gave us” Jesus (Jn. 3:16). And we love because he loved us first (1 Jn. 4:19). Love is the superstructure of the gospel. The cross of Christ is the supernova of God’s love for sinners. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

It’s Pretty Simple

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is—the greatest duty of God’s people, his reply: robust love for God and real love for others.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”(Mk. 12:30–31)

Love God. Love neighbor.

That’s Christianity.

It’s really not that complicated. Our pesky flesh just gets in the way.

We can try and contort Jesus’ words, like a good Pharisee, with questions, “Well, who is my neighbor? How should I love my neighbor?” Jesus makes it pretty clear. Love your neighbor like you love yourself. We are to have counter-cultural love for the culture—nothing less than loving our neighbors like we love ourselves.

And we are to have gospel-formed love for our brothers and sisters. “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). We are to do good to everyone, and especially those in the Church (Gal. 6:10).

This is a difficult way to live. But not impossible. This kind of love is not beyond the Kingdom of Christ. This is the Great Commandment, not the great impossibility. To walk in the Greatest Commandment requires great power, great ability—given from the Holy Spirit. What’s the first fruit of the Spirit again?

What Are We Exporting?

Our first priority is loving God. Always. Our chief task is not to put on a slick Sunday service, or to assimilate people into community groups, to serve the poor, to defend doctrine, to write books, to preach sermons—our first and greatest aim is love. (Then good works will follow.)

And if we aren’t careful, we can get caught up in the good things and forget the main, the best thing.

The church at Ephesus received a letter from Jesus, commending their sound doctrine—but rebuking their lack of love.

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” (Rev. 2:4–5)

Every church should take an assessment of their ministry manifest and ask, “What are we exporting?” What is our church churning out? More love or more or more pride? More gospel or more Oprahisms and Osteenifications?

Solid doctrine is a good thing. So important. But churches with stellar doctrinal statements die every day. Lampstand status requires love.

The Ephesians didn’t lose their love for Jesus and others because of sexual immorality, drugs, Netflix, or Jim Beam—it was the good things, overtime, that wore them down. Like the slo-mo drag of the ocean, they lost their bearing. Caught in the motions of Christianity and they were no longer caught up with the risen Christ.

Stay The Course

Let’s not assume we aren’t there, or that we aren’t a weekend away from being there.

• Does our church really love Jesus, the person? Or are we bored with him?
• Does our church really love one another? Or are we a lame event?
• Does our church really love the lost? Or are we a city in a bunker, instead of a city on a hill?

This is too vital to not consider. Where are we today?

Let’s stay the course. Let’s do the two firsts that Jesus mentioned to the Ephesians.

The love we had first. The works we did at first.

We never move on from there. There’s no advanced Christianity. This is it. Love for God, love for neighbor. Word and deed. Hear and do.

We remember Jesus; we get reignited by his volcanic love, and then we act accordingly. The Way. The Truth. The Life.

We love because he first loved us.

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J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He and Natalie have two kids, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders. Jeff’s first book, Gospel-Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, is set to release this November from Kregel.

Prioritizing Church Attendance

Let’s just face the facts. Today, many Christians do not think attending church is that important. In the past, Christians believed that actively being a part of a church body was absolutely necessary to one’s faith. There used to be an understanding in Christian families that unless one was deathly ill or there was a family emergency, you just never ever missed church. So what has changed and caused so many people to view the church as a disposable good instead of as an intricate part of one’s spiritual life?

Why We Don’t Attend Church: A 40-Hour a week job, but no time for God

Pastor Kevin DeYoung is right. Our lives really are “crazy busy.” There is no doubt about it. Whether you are a college student, a newly-wed couple, or have a family of seven, we live in a day and age where the mentality is simply: go, go, go! This is one of the main reasons why church attendance is viewed as optional. Most people work 40-hour a week jobs in the United States, and so once the weekend hits the mindset of rest and recovery sets in. Trust me, I get it. Everybody wants some downtime. But why do we think that rest and recovery should take place outside of the confines of the house of God?

Recently, Trevin Wax wrote an article titled: “Are You A Part-Time Church Goer? You May Be Surprised.” Wax explains various reasons why people miss church in today’s society. There are 52 Sundays a year. If you only attend 25-30 Sunday services, you are a part-time church goer. Congratulations!

Do you recognize what is clearly wrong with this? Our jobs, which of course we must have to be able to support ourselves and our families, are seen as absolute necessities, while church attendance is simply seen as a dispensable activity. Brothers and sisters, this is not how it should be. Of course, the mindset of just attending church, getting your church attendance ticket punched, is absolutely wrong as well. Pastors and church leaders should preach against this mentality as well. However, think about this for a second. Just like you gather with your biological family, shouldn’t you also desire to gather with your spiritual family?

Why We Need The Church: A Biblical Case

I know the arguments that are going to be raised about what I have said thus far. People are going to say: “Does he really believe that attending a local church, going to its building, and doing this once or twice a week is what the Bible is suggesting?” Well yes and no. Kevin DeYoung explains, “I know we are the church and don’t go to church (blah, blah, blah), but being persnickety about our language doesn’t change the exhortation of Hebrews 10:25.” I couldn’t agree more.

Fellowship with your spiritual family is a sign of maturing in the faith as a disciple. Hebrews 10:25 says, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Have we really become so “new-agey” in our thought that we now think that we have matured past the need to attend church? Lord, let it not be so.

Gospel-Motivated Church Attendance

There is no doubt that what we need to recover in the life of Christians today is a gospel-motivated church attendance. What might this look like? Well, in my opinion its demonstrating the fact that when the church gathers on the Lord’s day, she proclaims the gospel, meditates on the gospel, and rehearses the gospel. By doing this, lives will begin to fundamentally change. It really is just that simple.

When the gospel is at the center our focus shifts. We no longer view church attendance as something we just need to check off, but as an intricate part of our spiritual lives. Instead of serving the god of individuality, we will be serving the God of Scripture. The gospel changes everything. However, we must first let the gospel change our low views of the church, and recognize that the house of the Lord is absolutely vital to the Christian life—to the life of a mature disciple. Should not the good news of Jesus Christ dying for our sins motivate us enough to enter into God’s house on Sundays? I would say so.

We are all at different points in our spiritual walks with the Lord. No matter what point you are at on your journey, I hope that you will come to see the importance of attending church. Do not be so narcissistic and self-consumed to think that you do not need the body of Christ. That is simply a sign of spiritual immaturity and a straight-up lie from the Devil.

I am not trying to guilt anyone into attending church regularly either. However, I am issuing a challenge to those who consider themselves Christians. If you consider yourself to be a part of the bride of Christ (Rev. 19:7-9, 21:2), tell me why would you separate yourself from the body of Christ (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:17)? Logically, that makes no sense at all.

So Christians, live in light of the fact that you have been redeemed and do not have to earn your acceptance before God through your church attendance. The community of Christ needs you because it cannot function without all of its body parts. This is not condemnation, but rather an exhortation. Attending church is a blessing that should not be taken for granted.

—

Matt Manry is the Director of Discipleship at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is a student at Reformed Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He also works on the editorial team for Credo Magazine and Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He blogs regularly at gospelglory.net.

Adopting a Missional Posture

Mission is why we exist as disciples. God’s love inspires us to be missionaries to the world around us. Emil Brunner says, “The church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning.” Mission begins at home, serving in our local church, and reaching our community. As disciples, we have been sent as missionaries to share the gospel in our present culture and to fulfill the Great Commission. The church is rooted in the concept of the missio Dei, which recognizes that there is one mission, and it’s God’s mission. The missio Dei is a Latin theological term that can be translated as mission of God. The word missio literally means sent. The church is not an end in itself; the church is sent into the world to fulfill the mission of God.

God is a Missionary

Understanding what it means to be a part of the mission of God begins with understanding that God is a missionary God. The very being of God is the basis for the missionary enterprise. God is a sending God, with a desire to see humankind and creation reconciled, redeemed, and healed. God’s mission can be seen throughout the pages of the Bible and history. Nowhere is the mission of God better understood than in the person and work of Jesus Christ. John 3:16 tells us, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Many Christians and churches teach and preach that missions are something we support or do, such as sending or supporting missionaries in other countries. This was the case twenty to thirty years ago. However, in the twenty first century the mission field has come to us.

We live in a post-Christian world where people simply don’t know the gospel anymore. Therefore, we are all called to be missional disciples and share in the mission of God. Ed Stetzer says, “Being Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound.”

Jesus: The First Missionary

Being a missional disciple is simply following the way of Jesus. Jesus Christ was the first and greatest missionary. The Bible tells us that he came from heaven to earth to die for a lost and dying world. The following scriptures reveal how the mission of God was fulfilled through Jesus Christ and how we are called to continue and complete the missio Dei in our culture.

• “Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’” (Jn. 4:34).
• “I can do nothing on my own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 5:30).
• “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6:38).
• “I know him; because I am from him, and he sent me.” (Jn. 7:29).
• “And he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (Jn 8:29).
• “We must work the works of him who sent me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work.” (Jn 9:4).
• “And Jesus cried out and said, ‘He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me. And he who beholds me beholds the one who sent me’” (Jn 12:44-45).
• “For I did not speak on my own initiative, but the Father himself who sent Me has given Me commandment, what to say, and what to speak” (Jn 12:49).
• “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Jn 13:20).
• “And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (Jn 17:3).
• “For the words which thou gave me I have given to them; and they received them, and truly understood that I came forth from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me” (Jn 17:8).
• “As thou didst send me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (Jn 17:18).
• “Jesus therefore said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent me, I also send you’” (Jn 20:21).

Sent on a Mission

As the Father sent Jesus, he also sends us into our time and culture. Mark Driscoll says, “It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and his gospel as Jesus was in his own time and place.”

We have been chosen by God to live in this time and place in order to fulfill the mission of God. Acts 17: 26-27 tells us that God has determined the exact place and time where we should live so that that men may find him. It is truly awesome to realize that you have chosen by God to be his representative to this world. It is both a great privilege and great responsibility.

Paul describes our calling in the following way, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

Being missional is God’s way of showing the love of his Son Jesus through his church. Christians must strive to always be like Jesus, our perfect example. Jesus said, “The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). This scripture beautifully embodies the task of Christian ministry. To be a disciple is to be a servant. We are to serve and give our lives for others. Serving is the example that Jesus gave; therefore, we should follow it.

As the church we are called to care for a lost and dying world that is in desperate need of a Savior. Too many times we compartmentalize the different ministries of the church. We have viewed social ministry as something we do on one hand and evangelism on the other. God is calling the church to rediscover the biblical model of holistic ministry.

Jesus met both the physical and spiritual needs of the people he ministered to. As the Body of Christ on earth, we are his representatives to a lost world. Therefore, what we do and say are of eternal importance. Being missional disciples is not an either or situation. It means that we care about people’s souls and their bodies. It means that because we care about the gospel we should care about social and environmental issues. Being missional disciples brings all of life together under the banner of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Dr. Winfield Bevins is the Director of Asbury Seminary’s Church Planting Initiative. He frequently speaks at conferences and retreats on a variety of topics.  He has a doctorate from Southeastern Seminary. He has written several books, including Our Common Prayer: A Field Guide to the Book of Common Prayer. As an author, one of his passions is to help contemporary Christians connect to the historic roots of the Christian faith for spiritual formation. He and his wife Kay, have three girls Elizabeth, Anna Belle, and Caroline. Find out more at www.winfieldbevins.com.

Killing the Lone Ranger

Disciples were never meant to travel alone

In our present culture there is huge emphasis upon the individual. The post-modern mantra of “that’s good for you, but I’ll find my own truth” pervades every corner of our lives. It also has impacted and informed current day discipleship processes. Discipleship has become a process that is done to us—we attend a six week class at church and are pronounced “discipled”! Or, we are smart enough to know the right (intellectual) responses to doctrinal questions (that reinforce our denominational biases) and people think we are doing well as Christians. Perhaps, like me, you have been brought up in the church and have "learned" what prayers will get people saying “Amen!” or can lead worship in just the right way to make the congregation feel “tingly.” It is possible to do all these things and not be a disciple of Jesus. Let me say that again to reiterate that statement’s importance:

It is possible to say the right things, pray the right things, lead the right way, have just the right words to say . . . and not be a disciple of Jesus!

Now, I am not stating that prayer, praise, and rich biblical knowledge are bad—they most certainly are not . . . unless they are done with the wrong motivation. Discipleship is not a Christian conveyor belt through which we travel to achieve a better Christian status.

Discipleship is a deepening relationship with Christ Jesus with whom we travel through life in faith. Many Christians have started their journey of faith with 100% sincerity that the Christian life is for them. They started off enthusiastic about living for Jesus and got stuck into church life, maybe even being so touched by Jesus that they vibrantly shared their faith with anybody who would listen. Then they’ve been "discipled" into believing certain things and behaving in certain ways. For many the process of discipleship has removed their passion for Jesus and enthusiasm to share their faith and helped them to "settle down in faith."

Sadly, for others a dry non-relational discipleship process has not been enough to stop some from "forsaking their faith" when life has got hard or the church has been lacking in the grace that Jesus had shown them. It always saddens me when I see people turning from their faith in Jesus. It saddens me that often our programs have turned people off Jesus. But, more so, it saddens me that often we have judged these lost souls as not able to persevere (we love the parable of the sower), or worse—we state that they never had a real faith if they have "so quickly turned away." I believe that the problem is not always with the person who has left the church (although at times it is).  I believe that it is more to do with the fact that the church has not created faith communities that are conducive to growing disciples who reach maturity of faith. It is this point that I wish to stick on:

The church needs to create discipleship communities where disciples can thrive and mature in faith!

Disciples were never meant to travel alone! When we look at Jesus’ model of discipleship we never see him holding a class, handing out notes, and asking people to bring them back completed. Jesus intentionally chose twelve key people and called them to be his disciples. What are some of the keys we can find from how Jesus made disciples?

Jesus Created a Community of Disciples

Jesus called twelve men together to learn from him. He formed a band of brothers who traveled with him; questioned him; listened to him; watched him preach, pray, and perform miracles; they argued with each other (about who would be the greatest in the kingdom); they ate with him (often); they went through some terrifying experiences with him (stormy seas and a garden arrest!). Jesus invested his time, energy, experience, and spiritual life with them. Whenever Jesus went somewhere, they went with him. They served Jesus and each other. They prepared for festivals with him, and went to parties with him.

In thirty years of church life, I have rarely experienced this form of closeness with a group of Christians. There have been inklings of it once in a while. I spent six month on a YWAM Discipleship Training School (I was actively searching to grow as a disciple at a time when my church was not engaging in making disciples) and lived in a huge house with over fifty other people.  During this time I spent every waking minute (almost) with other members of the DTS. It was a great period in my life and I still look back on it as a period of massive spiritual growth in my life. I could put this down to the amazing teaching sessions I attended (although I think this was a minor facet in my discipleship at that point). I believe that I grew spiritually because I became part of a community of believers who were looking out for me, loving me, listening to me, correcting me, encouraging me, praying for and with me, crying with me, barbecuing with me, joking with me, walking on the beach with me, eating with me, and more besides—all of this with Jesus at the center of it all! During this time I shared my life intimately with about eight of these people and (I believe) added spiritual value and discipleship to their lives.

Gospel and Missional Community: A Basic Theology

Discipleship needs community, but community is not enough. A discipleship community needs to be on a mission with the gospel together. Here are three emphases I want to articulate:

1. We will glorify God together (gospel)
2. We will gather and grow in Christ together (discipleship)
3. We will go out in the Spirit’s power together (mission)

All of these center and depend on God in all his Triune glory.

Christian community begins and ends with God! In the Trinity we have the original community. Father, Son and Holy Spirit work together perfectly to fulfill their plan of redeeming the world and restoring humanity into a right relationship with the father again. The Father sent the Son on a mission. The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to carry on that mission through the Church. And we are that Church!

Our community (Church) needs to relate to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God-centered community, like other styles of being the church needs to maintain a relational balance in relationship with our Trinitarian God. Discipleship that does not relate to all three members of the Trinity will be unbalanced and unhealthy. Our God is a Trinitarian being so we need to be Trinitarian people in thought, word and in deeds as we journey together.

The other emphasis is on a very small word with big implications. That word is “we.” Disciples are not lone rangers. We do not do church or mission alone. In Luke 10, Jesus sends the disciples out in two's. Nowhere in the Gospels do we see Jesus sending the disciples out alone. Discipleship is a community thing because it is a relationship thing. We disciple each other—I need you and you need me! I am discipled by the strongest and the weakest members of my community. This is an amazing truth to grasp. We often think that we need to be discipled by someone who knows more than us—I have found that God uses the weak things to silence the strong. God does not just give revelation and wisdom to "leaders"—he shares himself and the riches of his grace with every member of the Church. This can be a very humbling experience for us. We need to expect that God will speak through every member of our communities. We need to create communities where we expect that God will minister and speak through a child or through a new convert, as well as through the mature disciples. This not only encourages our faith, but it will encourage new disciples’ faith as they see how God uses them. This encourages them to have an expectation that God will use them to play their part in the discipleship of other people. What a joy to hear and see young disciples of Jesus discipling others.

The emphasis on gospel, discipleship, and mission is also important in ensuring that our discipleship is balanced. Where we lack in one area there will be imbalance in the discipleship process. If we do not emphasize the gospel we will create disciples who do not depend on God, and who are not looking to see his purposes fulfilled. Discipleship very easily becomes about us when we do not look squarely to the cross of Christ and its far-reaching implications.

If we do not seek to grow as disciples together, we will not value the need to meet together and to grow in faith. The result is that faith and Christian community become low priorities for us and we may not have any commitment to the community of believers. This is counter-productive to the relational discipleship process.

If we do not look out in mission, we run the risk of being disciples without purpose—we become a closed club for the spiritually initiated. Disciples without a mission are like mountaineers without a mountain to climb—we learn how to be disciples by following Jesus into mission just as the first disciples did. Essentially, it is Jesus who disciples us (albeit often through his church). Mission is the disciple’s mountain upon which they will grow in their understanding of how to follow Jesus’ teachings in the reality of their particular life contexts

We need to disciple within the context of gospel-centered communities centered on God and going in mission together. Community offers us accountability to grow in faith in a loving and supportive environment as we share life together in the spiritual and practical experiences and conversations we have.

May we be a people who follow Jesus to the God the Father in the power of the Spirit to make, mature, and multiply gospel-centered, discipling, missional communities and churches.

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Stuart McCormack has worked as a shelf stacker, bingo caller, archivist, youth minister and is currently living out his calling to missional living in the secular workspace as a Targeted Youth Support Worker/Mentor. He co-leads “Vintage,” a missional community which is part of Kairos Network Church based in Harrogate North Yorkshire.  He is husband to Jenna and father to Noah, Bella, and Sophia. In his spare time he tweets @missionalrev and blogs at www.missionalrev.wordpress.com

New Book: Make, Mature, Multiply by Brandon D. Smith

Today, we release the newest book from GCD Books—Brandon Smith’s Make Mature Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus. You can buy a digital copy from the GCD Bookstore for $3.99 or get paperback for $9.99. Here’s an excerpt from the editor’s preface: As a new Christian, I was told that being a disciple of Jesus could be summed up in his own words—“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk. 8:34). While this statement is certainly a foundational truth of being a disciple, is this it?

In one sense, yes. Jesus could have stopped there and we could aim to model our lives after the self-sacrifice and humility he displayed on the cross. There would be nothing wrong with that. But he didn’t stop there. Scripture gives us more. Much more.

The good news of the gospel is not only for self-application; it is for proclamation. It’s meant to be shared. A disciple follows Jesus, invites others to follow him, and then trains them how to repeat the process. Simply put, disciples are called to make, mature, and multiply disciples.

First, we are called to make disciples. This means that we evangelize, we share the good news. Making disciples is about telling strangers, friends, family, and anyone else who doesn’t know it yet that Jesus Christ is their King, their Savior, their God.

Next, we are called to mature disciples. So we don’t tell people about Jesus and move along. We don’t say, “I’m glad you believe! Enjoy yourself.” Maturing disciples is teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded (Matt. 28:20). It’s the process of sanctification—being made holy, becoming more and more like Jesus. We rely on God. We devour and dwell on the things of God found in the Scriptures. We pray. We kill sin in our lives. We serve others. We take “WWJD?” seriously by remembering what he actually did. These are but a few characteristics of a mature disciple. We model these things and we teach others to model them.

Finally, we multiply disciples. Mature disciples don’t keep the good news of the gospel to themselves. Mature disciples, by the Holy Spirit’s power, take Jesus to others. We are evangelized to evangelize. We are loved to love. We are forgiven to forgive. We are served to serve. We are redeemed to point to the Redeemer. We complete the cycle of discipleship by making disciples who make disciples who make disciples who make…

This is not a perfect process, but it doesn’t have to be. Jesus was and is perfect so that you don’t have to be. You can’t save anyone, but you can show others the One who can. The Holy Spirit is with you (Jn. 14:25-26; 1 Cor. 10:13). My prayer is that this book will help you become a fully-formed disciple of Jesus who makes, matures, and multiplies fully-formed disciples of Jesus.

These chapters have been adapted from articles that originally appeared at GCDiscipleship.com. We like to think of this book as a “best of GCD” compilation. I speak for every contributor in this book when I say: we hope you see the glory of Christ on every page, and that you are so captivated by the beauty of the gospel that you can’t help but take it to the ends of the earth.

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GCD Store: All Digital Formats (Mobi/Kindle, ePub/iBook, and PDF)

Amazon: Paperback

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Brandon D. Smith is Executive Director of Gospel-Centered Discipleship and serves in editorial roles for The Criswell Theological Review and The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. He is proud to be Christa’s husband and Harper Grace’s daddy. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85

Does God Care About Productivity?

Does God Want Us to Manage Ourselves Well?

I would argue that the call to be productive (Genesis 1:28) also implies the need to learn how to be productive. Yet, this is a slightly different question from the first, because one could presumably say “Yes, God wants us to be productive, but he doesn’t want us to fiddle with things like workflow systems and productivity tips and tools.”

The Importance of Intentionality

But what we see in the Scriptures is that productivity doesn’t come apart from our deliberate intentionality. We are called to be intentional in the way we live our lives. Note again, for example, Ephesians 5:15-17, the core New Testament passage on productivity:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. [Emphasis added.]

We are not to breeze blindly through life, taking whatever comes. We are to “look carefully” how we walk. You don’t just walk through a store with your eyes closed, buying whatever you touch, and expect it to turn into a wardrobe. And neither should you do that with your life. Likewise, we are to “make the most” of the time. The time doesn’t make the most of itself; we are to take deliberate action to take back the time from poor uses and turn it to good uses.

Further, a concern for good use of our time is an important characteristic of the Christian that the Bible expects us to have. Consider Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” I like how the New American Standard Bible puts this: “Teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.” In other words, even our growth in wisdom and our ability to manage ourselves is something we do for God, and to present to him.

We saw in the previous chapter that a concern for time management should actually lead us right up to God. What we see here is that love for God should also lead us to be concerned with time management. As Peter O’Brien has said, “those who are wise will have a right attitude toward time.”

An Affirmation of Personal Effectiveness

The Scriptures, interestingly, get even more concrete on the issue of personal effectiveness. Notice how in Ephesians 5:15 Paul placed walking as “wise” people in parallel with “making the most of the time.” We are to walk “not as unwise but as wise, making the most of the time.”

Paul isn’t simply saying here that the wise make the most of their time (though he certainly is saying that). He is actually connecting his exhortation to the central OT theme of wisdom.

As most commentators point out, Paul is referring us here to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament as central to aiding us in discerning the Lord’s will for our actions and making the most of our time: “Paul commends to the believers the vast Old Testament teaching about wisdom, especially as represented by the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. There they can find ethical insight into God’s will.”

In addition to pointing us to the wisdom literature generally, his exhortation here connects up with several specific passages. One of those passages is Proverbs 6:6-8, where we are also told to “be wise”:

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.

In other words, Paul’s command that we walk “as wise” people hooks up with Proverbs 6:6, where we see that managing yourself well—like the ant—is an essential component of wisdom.

What we see here is that in commanding us to walk as wise people, Paul is not simply commanding us to be wise in spiritual things (though that is there; cf. Proverbs 11:30). He is also calling us to be wise in relation to how to live in this world—and, specifically, to be wise in how to lead and manage ourselves, just like the ant.

Knowing how to get the right things done—how to be personally effective, leading and managing ourselves well—is indeed biblical, spiritual, and honoring to the Lord. It is not unspiritual to think about the concrete details of how to get things done; rather, this is a significant component of true Christian wisdom.

Productivity and Discipleship

What we see here is that there is no distinction between learning how to be productive and learning how to live the Christian life altogether, for both are about how we are to live in this world for the glory of God.

The way we go about doing our email, handling appointments, running meetings, attending class, running the kids to where they need to go are not something distinct from the everyday life of sanctification that God calls us to, but are themselves a fundamental part of it. We are to “be wise” in them just as we are to be wise in the things like directly pertain to salvation; and, indeed, the way we go about them is an expression of our Christ-likeness and sanctification.

Thinking Christianly About Productivity

It makes sense for there to be a Christian perspective on prayer. But on getting things done? How can that even be?

The brief answer is that, as Christians, our faith changes our motives and foundations, but not necessarily the methods we use.

For example, a Christian doctor and non-Christian doctor will likely go about heart surgery in the same way, using the best practices of the field and their training. Both will also seek the good of the patient, rather their own ends. But the Christian has an additional motive— loving God and seeking to serve him. This is a difference that is fundamental, but which can’t necessarily be seen.

That’s not always the only difference—sometimes there are variations in our methods (for example, the Christian doctor will likely pray before the surgery)—but it is the main difference.

The other change our faith makes is that it puts our work on a different foundation. We look to God for power to do all we do, including our work, and act not out of a desire to gain his acceptance but because we already have it in Christ.

With the specific issue of productivity, then, we will likely utilize the same best practices as non-Christians in things like processing workflow and getting our email inboxes to zero. But when it comes to the motive and foundation of our productivity, the gospel brings in some radical transformations.

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Matt Perman formerly served as the senior director of strategy at Desiring God Ministries in Minneapolis, MN, and is a frequent speaker on the topics of leadership and productivity from a God-centered perspective. He has an MDiv from Southern Theological Seminary and a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. Matt regularly blogs at What’s Best Next and contributes to a number of other online publications as well. He lives in Minneapolis. Follow him on Twitter @mattperman.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman available on Zondervan. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher.)

Pursuing Not-Yet-Believers

It Sent Shock Waves Throughout the Campus

As you might imagine, seminaries are full of Jesus-y people, from suit-clad conservatives to library-dwelling linguists to edgy liberals who buck the system by (hold your breath) wearing flip flops to class. Our grad school was filled with religion majors, pastors and interns, and private school teachers. Everyone was religious; most were active in some form of church; many spent spring breaks and summers in overseas missions or student ministry camps. So imagine the bombshell when a student realized he’d never actually known Jesus. Students and professors alike were stunned, then celebratory. In this instance, the student was a son of a prominent pastor, a rising star in the student ministry world, and someone who knew—and could teach—the Bible better than most of his peers. Apparently it happens more than you might expect: God redeems people who are already in seminary. And praise Him that He does!

The shock is understandable: we can easily assume that because someone is part of a Christian school, group, and church, they must be redeemed. But as today’s verses point out, their religion may be misleading. Whether you attend a seminary or Christian school, are involved with a Christian organization, or are simply part of a local church family, you regularly find yourself in some of the most forgotten places everyday mission happens: within “Christian” circles. Today we consider two elements of mission inside the Church: seeing it as an everyday mission field and getting other Christians to join you in everyday mission.

Fruit and Foundation: Marks of Faith

Today is not a license to look under every rock for false prophets and fake Christians. Only God can know the condition of souls for sure, so we approach today with great humility and much prayer. But it should spark an awareness: how many in our own circles look and act redeemed, but are deceived, even intentionally? As we pursue everyday mission in Christian circles, today’s verses offer two concurrent marks of redemption: fruit in our lives, then the foundation of our hearts.

When rightly rooted, our lives flourish with good fruit. In Luke 3, John the Baptist rebukes many who come to be baptized for a poor view of salvation. To put it in a common term today, John calls those who view Jesus as mere “fire insurance”—whose so-called salvation makes no impact on daily life—“a brood of vipers.” His charge is that those who are truly redeemed will bear fruit. The following verses are examples of this fruit: those who were selfish become generous; those who stole become honest (and in Zacchaeus’ case in Luke 19, display the gospel by reconciling brokenness they caused); those who trusted their own ability turn to God for provision. Galatians 5 explains the difference between fruit of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. Romans 5—7 give marks of the “old man” versus the “new man.” Seen throughout the Bible, redemption leads to fruit.

On the other end of the spectrum, good works—which look like spiritual fruit—can stem from misguided motives. An early song from musical duo Shane and Shane encapsulate well the mystery of not-yet-believers existing in Christian groups: “Your child is busy with the work of God and taking him for granted / Got a lot to do today; kingdom work’s the game I play / Lord my serving You replaced me knowing You.” Religious acts, having the right answers, doing the proper things, and even looking repentant or wise can give the impression that we must be children of God. Those Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7 preached, did great works, and even performed miracles “in your name.” Yet He still never knew them. Anything but Jesus is a failing foundation of faith. Winds of truth expose our misplaced footholds, and “great [is] the fall” of even our greatest attempts. Good fruit is only good if its roots are in the right foundation.

Pursuing Not-Yet-Believers in Our Churches

Due to theological misinformation or indignant misunderstanding of salvation, mission in our churches can be tricky. Claiming that someone might not be a Christian is a bold claim, and can cause ripples. But if people in our churches and Christian circles lack fruit, we have to lovingly pursue them: it’s our responsibility as brothers and sisters who love them more than their opinion of us. Even if they are believers, they need discipleship in areas where disbelief or idols pull them from obeying God. If they are not redeemed, they need loving relationships and intentional discipleship even more. Either way, the gospel needs to redeem at least some area of their life.

Do they exhibit patterns of sinful or unwise behavior? Do they put other authorities over the authority of God? Do they seem unrepentant or uncaring toward their sin? Do they lack the desire to grow in spiritual concepts and practices? Matthew outlines a process to address such questions35. While this passage is often misunderstood, “discipline” has the same root as “disciple”: the goal of loving confrontation, humble rebuke, and gentle questions is stated throughout this passage: that the brokenness in “your brother” would be restored, to God and community. And while the final step of this process is often interpreted, “cut them out of your life,” we see in Jesus’ a far different view of “Gentile[s] and tax collector[s]” (v. 17). He didn’t throw them away; He pursued them, loved them, demonstrated the gospel to them, and sought their redemption. In other words, He encourages us to act the same toward sinners in our churches, as sinners outside our churches. . . .

As much as we acknowledge her beautiful brokenness, we believe in local churches, and their biblical leadership, place in God’s mission, and unity amongst their members. Churches are full of sinners who need to be redeemed, and sinning saints who already have been. Just like you and us. We cannot plead this point enough: let us be wise, humble, and prayerful, both as we pursue God’s mission toward those in our churches, and as we pursue mission together alongside others in them.

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

On Mission Through Submission

Jesus Submits to the Father

As Christians, we all want to be used by God. We want to be able to use the gifts and abilities he has given us for his glory. The question we may ask ourselves is how are we to be used by God? We seem to either not know how to begin or after having begun we don’t know how to keep going. This struggle can become frustrating because nothing seems to be happening. It can also lead us to try and make things happen, which leaves us begging God to bless what we have done rather than doing what God has promised to bless. Whether we are frustrated or trying to make things happen, we are rendered less effective or totally ineffective because our focus is off God’s mission and on ourselves.

Jesus did not try to make things happen outside of submitting to the will of the Father. He was faced with the ultimate call to lay down his life and he “set his face like flint,” toward that which the Father commissioned him to (Is. 50:7, Lk. 9:51). Had he tried to do things in any other way, had he tried to manufacture the Father’s will, or had he given into Satan’s offer for the burden of his call to be lifted, he may have saved himself, but no one else. He leaned heavily on the Father as Hebrews 5:7 tells us and through his obedience he purchased salvation for all that the Father gave him. Jesus’ dependence on the Father kept him on mission and allowed him to save and send out disciples who are also commissioned through submission.

I have experienced this frustration and given into this temptation to make things happen. They only lead to feelings of stagnation and confusion. Throughout my experiences, I have always believed and affirmed that God defines what it is that he actually commissions and equips us to do. That, of course, means that it might not be what we think, what we would like it to be, or when we would like it to happen. “God reserves the right to interrupt your life,” as one of my mentors always says. Yet, I was not always living according to my belief of how God commissions and equips. I was not always submitting to God. That was until I had an opportunity to begin a year-long internship at my church to help discern my call to ministry.

The Church Submits to Jesus

Scripture defines the church as the “body of Christ” among other things. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). Theologically, that concept of the church being the body of Christ is rich and has several implications, but at the very least it means that the church is a representation of Christ.  We see this in how both Paul and Peter describe believers being built together as the church for works of ministry (Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Pt. 2:4-5). These works of ministry are commissioned by Christ for the church to perform and empowered by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19-20, Jn. 14-16).

Ephesians 5, which is usually referred to for how we look at marriage, offers insight into this issue of submission to Christ via the church. Paul wrote: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Eph. 5:22-24).

While we often look at this text from the standpoint of how the relationship of Christ and the church gives us a picture of marriage, we should also look at what it is saying about submission in the church. When Paul says, “Now as the church submits to Christ,” there is no command there; it is an assumption that the church is submitting to Christ. He refers to those that are submitting to Christ as the church; therefore, believers should be submitting to the church (i.e. being a part of the church, submitting to the leaders and serving) in order to submit to Christ.

Scripture also calls us to submit ourselves to God through offering up our lives. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). As we offer our lives as a living sacrifice, we are commissioned through submission.

We see this as Paul calls the church in Thessalonica to respect those that are over them in the Lord, “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess. 5:12). Therefore, submitting to the local church or the body of Christ is in fact part of our submission to Christ. Through submitting to the local church we are all commissioned to offer our lives to Christ in accordance with our gifts, for the edification of the church, and for our own growth in him.

In Acts 13, the Apostle Paul, when he was still referred to as Saul, was with Barnabas and others at the church in Antioch. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:2-3). Even the Apostle Paul here is submitting to Christ via the local church and it is in that setting that the Holy Spirit sends them out to do God’s will.

On Mission through Submission

When we live according to our nature, which is corrupted by sin, we do not desire to submit to anything or anyone and society affirms in us that fear and dislike of submission. Yet in our attempt to not submit, we end up being slaves to anything other than God and his will. Our lack of submission to God and his church leave us as slaves to sin (Rom. 6). The gospel frees us from thinking that we need to live according to any story for our lives that society, our nature, or any other voice may tell us. We are freed to live according to the story of God, which is sovereign over any other story. In Christ, we are free to submit to God and his church. Submission to God and his church calls us to humility, vulnerability and to be like Christ:

• Humility–Submitting to the leadership of our local church and to God develops humility in us. We open ourselves to those who are over in us in the Lord to evaluate God’s call on our lives along with us (Heb. 13:17).
• Vulnerability–Opening ourselves up to correction, encouragement, and service in the church leaves us feeling incredibly vulnerable. However, it is in that place of weakness that God works in us as he increases our dependence on him and our trust in him (2 Cor. 12:9).
• Christ-likeness–To submit to the church is to submit to the body of Christ and ultimately Christ himself. To submit to Christ is to do what Christ himself did, which was to submit to the will of the Father (Phil. 2:5-11).

So as we seek to understand God’s will for our lives, let us be like Christ. We could say that to understand God’s will for our lives, we have to actually submit to God’s will. Our misconceptions about submission are proved gloriously wrong as we humbly bow before Christ and open ourselves to what He would do in and through us. As we do this, he shows us that though the world, our sinful nature or Satan may call us to submit to things in sinful ways that harm us, Jesus calls us to submit to him for our greatest good and his glory.

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Nick Abraham (DMin student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) lives in Navarre, OH with his wife and daughter. He serves as an Associate Pastor at Alpine Bible Church in Sugarcreek, OH. He is a contributor to Make, Mature, Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus and blogs at Like Living Stones.

Create and Restore in Work

Recently at City Seminary, which is put on by City Life Church, we studied the doctrine of a Creator in a material world. As I thought more about God as creator, his purpose in creation, and the value of creation itself, it inspired me to think about how this might affect my job.  Honestly, there are some days where I struggle to find purpose in my job. If I do find purpose, I tend to only think in terms of self-fulfillment, or having my needs met.  There is a far greater, deeper, and glorious truth about the purpose of our work, and it's found in the doctrine of creation. I will follow the outline we used at City Seminary, that we believe creation was created by a triune God, ex nihilo (out of nothing), and goes to Christ.

Triune God Creating

As I meditate on a triune God creating out of an overflow of love, community, and deference within themselves, it inspires me to do work together. I can defer to those who are more skilled than I am, and enjoy seeing them create and work. There is beauty in community accomplishing goals. Working at our jobs can be an expression and exercise of this communal, deferring act of creating. How would my co-workers respond, when instead of trying to stroke my ego, I defer to them and praise them for their skills? Doing this expresses the love of the Trinity in a tangible way and is fundamental for being on mission to make disciples in our workplaces.



Ex-Nihilo (Out of Nothing)

God created a masterpiece out of nothing. Though at times our jobs seem mundane and meaningless, we serve a God who created everything out of nothing. We can trust that he, as Creator God, can take the mundane, and paint a masterpiece for his glory. Rest in his sufficiency to work wonders, and not our own skills. Our creativity at our jobs reflect this aspect of God. How can we make our workplaces a more creative, and better place to work? Think how God might use your skills to create out of the mundane.

 God regularly uses the mundane in redemptive history to accomplish his mission (Matt. 1:18-25 - Mary was an ordinary girl who carried the Savior) and it should be no surprise he uses the mundane as we live on mission in our workplaces.

Purposeful (To and For Christ)

This aspect affected my thoughts profoundly. The purpose of my job isn't found in my needs being met, or my own self-fulfillment, nor is it merely meaningless and mundane. Rather, my job has purpose because it's going somewhere. It's not climbing the corporate ladder, but going to Christ. It's also for Christ (Rom. 11:36). It's not a stagnant job, but, as with creation, it is on a path of renewal, by the Spirit, towards Christ, as he carries and upholds it. My job has telos (goal) because creation does (Rom. 8:18-25).

Ultimately, this is an expression of loving God and loving others well (Matt. 22:37-40). At our jobs, churches, any place of influence, how we work matters, because through it, we can bless others and glorify God. What if we ceased to only think of our jobs as ways to generate income, and instead a way to also create culture, and bless God and others? (Gen. 1:22, 28; 2:15; Matt. 28:18-20).

Practically, this means that by working well for our employers, or working well on projects, we mirror a Trinitarian God who creates and is interested, or better, who is acting in this world to redeem and restore. Our excellence then drives others' attention to God’s final work in redemption and re-creation in the new heavens and earth.

Create and Restore

At City Life, we have a phrase we use called “create and restore.” This is an excellent way to view our workplaces; as places to create, but also places to restore. As disciples of Christ, in an ever increasing transient culture, we can mirror the Trinity's valuing of creation as we value and see our workplaces as places to create in and bless, instead of places to coerce or conquer. 

As Hugh Halter says in Flesh, we must not over-spritualize ministry, and over-secularize our jobs. If this doctrine of creation begins to swallow up our view of our work, we will no longer use our work as a way to create our own god, but instead use it as a way to mirror, and glorify the Trinitarian God who creates out of an overflow of love.

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Collin Seitz is an almost 30 years old, grateful husband to Allison, father to Hudson and Hannah, learner, and most importantly disciple and lover of Christ and His Kingdom. He enjoys a nice cup of Oolong Tea, reading, playing basketball, and watching his kids grow up. He and his family are currently a part of City Life, and he is a church planting resident there. He blogs at For Christ, City, and Culture. Twitter: @Collin_Steitz

Mission in Everyday Life

Compartmentalization vs. Integration

Jesus’ activity is helpful as we consider our own. It’s especially helpful to see that most of what Jesus did, He did with others. Yes, there are glimpses of Him traveling and praying alone. A few times He sent everyone ahead and caught up later—once via an evening stroll on the sea. And we see Him pray in solitude. But not always. More often, Jesus traveled, worked, ate, drank, and even prayed alongside and in the midst of His disciples, the outcasts of society, and those in need. And while this is easy to miss, if He did these things with others then He did them with folks who weren’t Christians. Because at the time, that was His only option.

What’s the difference between Jesus and us? One, we’re not God. But two, Jesus integrated ministry and mission into daily life, while nearly everyone we know—including ourselves—defaults to the opposite. We compartmentalize ministry into certain times and activities, separate from the rest of our lives. If we’re not careful, “mission” is relegated to a Saturday morning time slot. We do nice things, check our watches often, then wrap up and go to Chili’s. Saturday morning we go do mission, Saturday at noon we go to lunch. Or we have a certain evening for our Bible study group to come watch a movie, but if a co-worker asks us what we’re doing, we make up an excuse and try to take a rain check. We have Christian friend nights and not-Christian friend nights. And so on. This easy mindset rejects the fact that we are missionaries, and relegates “mission” back to something we either do or don’t, or something we merely do then stop doing in order to do something else.

Mission is not alone; it follows the pattern of Western life: we have work or school hours, social time, a church block, our weekend chunk of time, and so on. When we started The City Church, we introduced people to new identities God gives us in the gospel: in Christ, we are disciples of God, members of God’s family, and missionaries to God’s world. Before we knew how to flesh those out well, many folks became very busy, planning separate events each week for each: discipleship nights, then family nights, then mission nights. We followed the compartmentalization we were used to. When friend and missionary Caesar Kalinowski was in town, he noticed that this separation made us too busy: we were doing many things—some good—but it was wearing us out.

Redeeming Everyday Moments

What’s the solution to compartmentalized, overly-busy mission, in the midst of our compartmentalized, overly-busy lives? Our intentionally cheesy answer that is to ask, with bracelet-wearing church kids of the 1990s, “WWJD?” Jesus didn’t compartmentalize; He didn’t try to fit ministry in between His “job.” He didn’t even seem to have specific events for one type of people, then other events for others. From rich to poor, from the Hebrew Law’s “clean” to “unclean,” and from doctor to fisherman, Jesus integrated people, life, ministry, and mission. He redeemed the everyday, normal moments of His life and used them for God’s mission. As we try to do the same, we can likewise redeem everyday moments and integrate mission into our ordinary lives.

What things do you do every day of the week? What classes do you take or teach every week of the month? What events do you attend you do every month of the year? There are normal, ordinary, sometimes even boring moments in our lives that can be redeemed for God’s mission. Here are just a few of the most common, redeemable moments:

• We eat about twenty-one meals a week: sometimes less, sometimes a few more than we should
• Many commute to and from work or school, or take children to and from school
• Lots of people do yard work or other chores on Saturday mornings
• Depending on where you are in the nation, you might play in your yard many evenings, or go for a stroll around your neighborhood
• Every fall, fans find themselves in front of a TV from Thursday until Monday, between college football and pro games
• If you don’t like football, you end up on the couch for your favorite reality show, comedy, or drama
• You likely eat out, at least occasionally
• You do something like going to the gym, getting your hair cut, oil changed, or car washed, or having nails done or tattoos redone
• You have hobbies: whether movies, train-spotting, music, hiking, surfing, baking, or even gaming, many can involve others
• Someone in your home goes to the grocery store, at least once every couple weeks—and other errands require you to walk, ride, or drive as well
• Many families go on at least a vacation or two each year

Mission in Everyday Life

Everyone in your mission field does at least one of these things, just like you. Each of these moments—and so many more—are chances to weave mission into everyday. Carpool to work or school, or walk or take public transportation. Invite neighbors over to watch the game you’re both planning to watch. Meet your coworkers for breakfast, even if once a month. Set up play dates for your kids’ classmates, with both Christians and those who aren’t. Would you ever consider vacationing with another family?

Just like Jesus did, we each travel, work, eat and drink, and hopefully pray. Each day is filled with ordinary moments and activities, which we often do alone, or with a certain “type” of friend. But even the simplest of activities are opportunities for worship and mission: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” When can we integrate life and mission? Rather than segregating people into different time slots or adding things to busy schedules, everyday mission happens when we redeem everyday moments.

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

Converging Marriage and Mission

DIVERGING STREAMS?

Many married people reading this are well versed in two streams of Christian thought: the first stream is that we are God’s people sent into God’s world to carry out God’s mission. From Abraham on, God sends his people into the world–not to be enveloped by the world, but to live–as St. Augustine put it–as the “city of God,” living among the “city of Man” and seeking its good. The other stream is that marriage is the best reflection of the Trinity, and of God’s love for and pursuit of his Bride. Orthodox theology for the past 2000 years has affirmed Paul’s words in Ephesians 5, that the blessed relationship between a husband and wife is the clearest picture of “the mystery” of “Christ and his church.” We’ve heard both those streams; we know both principles; we even believe and strive to live out those truths.

The problem is we often hear, know, believe, and live those streams separately from each other, while God designed them to be one strong, flowing, unified river. We try to live as missionaries and as couples as two distinct compartments of life. As Paul Tripp has said: “But they’re not naturally divided. That’s why you don’t have a huge discussion in the New Testament of the tension between ministry and family. It’s just not there. We have set that up, because we naturally look at these two things as separate dimensions.” Here’s the truth for every Christian couple: marriage is the clearest picture of the gospel in the world today, and your marriage is one of the best forms of evangelism in the world today. We can no longer keep our marriage and our mission in separate, parallel streams–they must converge.

How can God use our marriage for his mission? We can learn much from the Bible’s brief glimpses of one couple, Aquila and Priscilla, in Acts 18.

After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. Acts 18:1-3

GOD’S MISSION THROUGH YOUR IDENTITY

Aquila and Priscilla were not pastors and didn’t have seminary degrees. They made tents for a living, working a culturally-normative profession. Yet they saw themselves as ministers of the gospel by opening their lives to Paul. We see at the end of 1 Corinthians that they hosted the local church in their home. Later in Acts 18 they go with Paul on mission for the gospel. In some circles today, Christians refer to “tent-making” as the honorable use of a “secular” job for ministry. For this couple, tent-making carried no great honor; it was simply their job, and a means of God’s provisions, as they lived their lives for the gospel. They were a married couple with a normal life, who used their marriage and life for God’s ministry. Whoever you are, and regardless of your job, city, or profession–or marital status–you are a minister of the gospel.

The God who saved you “by grace through faith” now has “good works, prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10). “God. . . through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). If you're married, you're probably busy. Whether you’re paid by a church or by Starbucks, FedEx, an ISD, or the government, and whether we’ve been married one week or fifty years, and whether you have ten kids running around the home or are empty-nesters, and whether you deal with the normal messiness of life or struggle with deeper issues, you’re still (primarily) God’s people sent on God’s mission to God’s world. That’s your identity in Christ: you’re a minister of his gospel.

GOD’S MISSION THROUGH YOUR HOSPITALITY

As part of Aquila and Priscilla’s gospel ministry, they opened their home to the Apostle Paul. He didn’t just crash on their couch for a few nights, but moved in with them. Their home was also the meeting place for the local church. If you look at the normative life of the early church in Acts 2, you know that folks didn’t just wander into their home at 10am on a Sunday, stay for an hour, then go to Chili’s. Instead, “day by day, [they attended] the temple together and [broke] bread in their homes” (Acts 2). The church was likely in Aquila and Priscilla’s home a lot.

There’s an old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in which Ray’s parents purchase a new couch, and won’t remove the plastic wrap for fear of getting it dirty–that’s a great picture of how many of us view our homes. Today we often view our homes as a “refuge” or “retreat” from the difficult world “out there.” That thinking misses part of the point: our homes, like everything God gives us, are gifts to steward for the sake of God's mission. Aquila and Priscilla had a home, and used that home as a generous blessing to others.

Aquila and Priscilla lived as God’s ministers, and in doing so, they used their home as a ministry. In the familial mess of opening your home, doors open for deep conversations. In denying the comfort and convenience a home can provide, others are blessed and cared for.

GOD’S MISSION THROUGH YOUR DECISIONS

Put yourself in Aquila and Priscilla’s shoes. You’re new to town, and you're only there because you got kicked out of your last town. If the local church needs a place to meet, would you volunteer your home? Paul shows up and asks to live with you. While your first impression today might be excitement: “The most famous Christian in the world, the guy who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, the greatest missionary of all time, wants to live with ME?!” We must see the other side too. Paul was also one of the most persecuted, most wanted, most despised persons of his day. “Inviting him in” was a massive danger to yourself!

When we think of “hospitality,” we often mistake it for what the Bible calls “fellowship.” At times it’s easy–or at least, easier–to open your home to other followers of Jesus. But true, biblical hospitality is opening your home to strangers, caring for the hurting and the least. Biblical hospitality means blessing folks who could never bless you back. It is initiating with others and loving people because God first initiated and loved us.

The rubber meets the road in marriage and ministry through the decisions you make each day. Those decisions display what you and your spouse value, love, pursue, and fear. Your decisions display what you and your spouse worship. And those you’re ministering to will watch your marriage and learn from it. How you use your home as a couple is one of those daily decisions.

GOD’S MISSION THROUGH YOUR STEWARDSHIP

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:9: “if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If Jesus hasn’t risen, and there’s no hope for the future, then we should be more pitied than anyone in the world. The reason our lives should invite pity from people who don’t know Jesus is that our lives should look strange, illogical, and crazy. People should think we’ve lost our minds. Is that true of the decisions you and your spouse make? What values and priorities do your neighbors see in your marriage? What goals and pursuits does the world around you see in your life?

If God is using our marriages for his mission, it looks completely illogical. For example you might be able to afford the best private school in town, yet send your kids to the less-esteemed, local public one because your family places obedience in mission above an educational reputation. It makes no sense to deny a higher paying job, for one with better hours–but you pursue mission by dwelling with your family and mission field longer. Might we give up a club, hobby, organization, Xbox, or even one of our many Bible Studies, to free up time, money, and energy for those God sent us to? Might we even “cold-call” our neighbors and invite them over for dinner? Would we let them see our imperfections, and bless them without expecting a return? This is the call to display the weird life of gospel implications in marriage.

The key to each of these–living as a minister, opening your home and marriage, and living a counter-cultural lifestyle–is seeing yourself as a steward of your life, possessions, and even family, rather than an owner. Here’s what Aquila and Priscilla understood: everything we have is a gift from God. Everything we have is his; everything is given to us to use and cultivate and use on his behalf. We are the servants in Matthew 25, and one day our Master will look at all he entrusted us with. Will our master be pleased or disappointed in our stewardship?

GOD’S MISSION THROUGH YOUR PROCLAMATION

Our marriages, like everything else God gives us, are gifts from God to steward well for his purposes. Do we take his gift and make it about ourselves? Do we trade his purpose and mission for our selfishness and safety? Do we take marriage–the best display of the gospel to the world–and hide it away rather than using it to proclaim the glory, grace, and goodness of God?

Aquila and Priscilla were so sold out on God’s mission that they later moved to Ephesus with Paul. They stayed there when Paul continued on, and as a “husband-wife team,” directed their ministry into a young convert named Apollos (Acts 18:18-26). The scriptures that speak to this point in history show that that, as a couple, Aquila and Priscilla “discipled” this young man for a season just as they had opened their lives to Paul and the church at Corinth. And like Paul, God used Apollos to produce great fruit and bring himself great glory through the known world.

A CONVERGENCE FOR SAKE OF THE GOSPEL

By their actions, decisions, lifestyle, and their words, Aquila and Priscilla were a couple who proclaimed the gospel. What would your city be like if it was filled with couples devoting their lives and marriages to helping others understand the gospel of Jesus? What would your church be like if it was filled with families who opened their homes to life-on-life discipleship? What would it look like to see our marriages as gifts from God, for the sake of his mission, rather than our own selfish desires?

It is difficult. It battles everything in us that wants comfort, convenience, privacy, and silence. If we deny ourselves for his mission, we should be pitied--if Jesus didn’t raise from the dead. But he did! And in doing so, he transforms both our marriages and our mission; he gives us the only reason for living this way; he becomes the only reason for “intentionally illogical” decisions. In Jesus’ death, resurrection, and call on our lives, his mission and our marriages converge into a story that’s bigger than our own–the writing of which took a greater sacrifice than we’ll ever be asked to give.

In our marriages, we have the opportunity to put that story on display every day. Will we continue to live as married people, who separately, occasionally in our busyness, pursue ministry? Or will the gospel transform our time, priorities, and relationship, and unite those diverging streams into one, as we live out our new identity and converge God’s mission and our marriages?

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Special thanks to Ross Appleton for the foundational concept this article is built on.

Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben. For related resources, including a FREE eBook by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr, visit everydaymission.net

How Productivity Advances the Gospel

Two Types of Wisdom

The first kind is the wisdom that helps us live in this world. It is the wisdom of how to do our work well, how to be a virtuous person, and how to be effective. This wisdom is good (Ecc. 2:13), but it is unable to take us beyond this life and show us the way to God (Ecc. 3:16-17).

The second kind of wisdom is the wisdom that leads to eternal life. That is the wisdom Proverbs has in view when it says things like “blessed is the one who finds wisdom” (3:13) and “she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (3:18). This is the wisdom that consists in how to know God and live a life that is pleasing to him in a spiritual, eternal sense.

Often we downplay the first time of wisdom (how to live in this world) in light of the second type. But the Scriptures do not do this. As we saw earlier, when Paul commands us to “make the most of the time” and “walk as wise” people (Eph. 5:15-17), the first kind of wisdom is actually an essential part of his meaning. His command that we “walk as wise” is hooking up with Proverbs 6:6-8, which commands to be wise in the skill of living in this world.

Now it’s time to see that this is not the only type of wisdom Paul has in mind. Interestingly, Paul’s command that we be wise also hooks up with Proverbs 11:30, which says “the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise.” So both types of wisdom—knowing how to live well in this world and pointing people to Christ—are the way we “make the most of the time.”

Here, then, is the question we need to ask: How do these two types of wisdom relate?

We can go further than simply saying that both are commanded. Even deeper than this, we can say there is actually a critical relationship between the two (which is what we would expect since Paul is alluding to both as involved in “making the most of the time”—that is, our productivity).

Advancing the Gospel Through Ordinary Life

This goes to the heart of the apostle Paul’s vision of the Christian life. Paul’s vision of the Christian life is not, as D. L. Moody allegedly said, about “getting everybody in lifeboats,” with everything else amounting to re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Rather, Paul sees an essential and profound connection between the arena of our everyday lives and the advance of the gospel. This is evident in Ephesians 5:7-17, which provides the fuller context in which Paul commands us to “walk as wise” people who are “making the most of the time.”

It would take too long to go into all the exegesis, but Peter O’Brien nails it in his commentary on Ephesians when he shows that Paul is essentially saying that through living in a Christ-honoring way among unbelievers in the world—in the context of our jobs, communities, trips to the grocery store, and everything else we do in everyday life—the light of the gospel shines through our behavior, with the result that some people come to faith.

That’s what Paul means when he says “take no part in the unfruitful [that is, super unproductive!] works of darkness, but instead expose them” (5:11). The meaning of “expose” here is not “rebuke unbelievers when you see them sin.” Rather, the meaning is that by living a gospel-driven life you are walking as “light in the Lord” (5:8) and exhibiting the “fruit of light” (5:9), and that this light illuminates some unbelievers by causing them to see the futility of their ways and glory of Christ.

The result of living our Christian lives—wise in all respects, in terms of how we manage our time and our jobs as well as making sure to speak up about the gospel—is that many people around us will come to faith. That’s what Paul means when he goes on to say “but when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible” (5:13). That is, when anyone is illuminated by the light of your Christian walk, they become “light in the Lord” (cf. 5:8) just as you did. J. B. Philips gives a good paraphrase of this passage:

It is even possible (after all, it happened to you!) for light to turn the thing it shines upon into light also.

Paul's point is that the light has a transforming effect, and in Ephesians 5:13-17 he has described for us the process by which darkness is transformed into light. It is among the chief ways that “he who is wise wins souls” (Prov. 11:30).

This is the same exact thing Jesus is saying in Matthew 5:16 when he says “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” How do they glorify God? There are only two possible ways. First, and I think chiefly in view by Jesus here, is that some will glorify God by becoming believers as the witness the example of your gospel-drive (that’s part of the “light” that shines) good works.

The second way some will glorify God is by, on the day of judgment, being put to shame by seeing they had no basis on which to reject the Christian message (which Peter is probably alluding to in his allusion to Matt. 5:16 in 1 Pt.2:12).

Either way, it’s not boring to be around Christians and it will always have some type of impact. Otherwise, as Jesus said, you are sort of missing the point of your life. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything” (Matt. 5:13).

In other words, the Scriptures make a connection between making the most of our time (productivity) and the advance of the gospel.

Hence, the true effect of being productive and “making the most of the time” as Christians will be the transformation of our communities, cities, societies, and nations for the sake of the gospel. Being productive in our lives is not separate from our task to transform the world through the light of the gospel; it is an integral part of it.

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Matt Perman formerly served as the senior director of strategy at Desiring God Ministries in Minneapolis, MN, and is a frequent speaker on the topics of leadership and productivity from a God-centered perspective. He has an MDiv from Southern Theological Seminary and a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. Matt regularly blogs at What’s Best Next and contributes to a number of other online publications as well. He lives in Minneapolis. Follow him on Twitter @mattperman.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman available on Zondervan. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher.)

New GCD Book: everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present

Today, we release the newest eBook from GCD Books--Jeremy Writebol’s everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present. You can buy a digital copy from the GCD Bookstore for $4.99 or get a paperback from Amazon for $6.17. Here’s an excerpt:

Where are you right now? Take a moment and look around...

As I write, I am sitting in a café on Bitting Avenue. I can smell the aroma of roasted coffee. I can hear the patrons of the shop discuss their lives, what they will see on TV this evening, the rise and fall of the economy, and who will win the Super Bowl. I feel the warmth of a heater turn on as it is an unusually cold day. Light streams in from the front windows and illuminates the orange walls to bring a warm, homey ambiance to the room. Latin American guitars and beats fill my ears as the music from the café stereo plays. The apple-carrot coffee cake I am eating has a sweet, buttery flavor to it. The padded chair where I am sitting keeps me comfortable but awake. Right now, I am in a place. There are specific and unique events happening in this space that are not occurring simultaneously anywhere else in the universe. This place is special. This place is one of a kind. This place is the only place where I can be in the world right now.

This is not true of God. The Bible tells us that God fills heaven and earth (Jer. 23:24). It says that the highest heaven is not large enough to contain God (1 Kgs. 8:27). Nor is there a single place in the entire universe where a human can go and God not be present (Ps. 139:7–10). The word "omnipresent" sums up this spatial reality of God. He is present everywhere, all the time, in every way. He is not limited by anything and is fully present wherever he is, which is everywhere. Maybe we should venture down the path of comparison. We’ll start with God. He is immense and infinite. He alone can be spatially present everywhere all the time. You and I, on the other hand, can’t even exist in two places at once. This comparison can be helpful to put us in our place.

But we need more than just a reminder of how ant-like we are. We need to see the importance of our limitation and the uniqueness of our specific place. We need to see that we are inferior to God in our inability to be everywhere present. And yet the places we inhabit, and specifically our presence in those places, has deep importance. Maybe we do need to be put in our place. What if being "put in our place" isn’t about being humbled to insignificance but elevating our vision to see dignify the places we inhabit; to see that our presence is valuable and deeply important. We need to talk about God’s space and place.

The Creation of Place

As I sit here at the café, I am privy to some special things: color, taste, smell, feeling. I can see two musicians meeting with a local artist to discuss album cover designs. Various cars drive by in front of me. Occasionally, I see a biker, although the winter cold prevents this from happening too frequently. This is a very unique place. It is a very creative place.

Who made it? Why was it made? If we ignore the Biblical story, we don’t have great, cosmic answers for these questions. But if we look at the opening pages of Scripture, we have a fascinating drama unfolding before us. The first words of divinely inspired writing from the pen of Moses declare that in the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). Location is created. All of a sudden there is the creation of "place." Place alone, however, is boring. We have heaven and earth. Two categories, two ideas, but not really specific realities. The story continues to unfold.

God doesn’t just make categories; he creates places. The earth is filled with vegetation, inhabitants, colors, creatures, textures, liquids, solids, atmospheres, environments—places. The specific place called the Garden of Eden is unique. There are places within the Garden. A river flows through the Garden. The middle of the Garden has specific and diverse vegetation. Four rivers diverge from the main river on the outskirts of the garden. They flow to places with specific names and specific features. Some of those places have gold, some have precious gems. Each distinct. Each unique. Each a special place.

God, who cannot be limited by place, creates multiple locations. He makes places. Each of them are as unique and varied as he is. All of them created good. All of them beautiful. All of them reflecting and imaging his creativity and his diversity. Why does he make these distinct places? He makes them for himself. He creates all the diversity of place and location, with all its varied colors and dimensions, to display his varied and multi-colored glories. The song at the end of the Scripture story sings praise to God because he has "created all things and by [his] will they existed and were created" (Revelation 4:11). The everywhere-present God makes places because he can’t help himself. Place is an overflow of his creative glory. Worship is our response.

Does Place Matter?

Why does all this matter? Since showing up at this specific café, I have noticed the flow of traffic in and out of the store. The aromas that exist in this room now are especially different than the ones that were here a few hours ago. The sounds are new, different, exciting. The musicians are playing their guitars and harmonicas now. It is a new and different place than the one that existed an hour ago. This place is unique and one-of-a-kind again.

Place or location is created by God for his glory. That means that everywhere we go, every location we inhabit, every neighborhood where we dwell is made for God. It shows us a multi-faceted and creative God, a God who is so unique and innovative that one specific location alone could not reflect his glory well. Each place sings the glories of God. Each location tells of his wonders. Each address displays his majesty. Does place matter? On every level, it inherently must.

The way the glory of God is seen at the Grand Canyon is different than the way his glory is seen on Bitting Avenue. The majesty of God takes on a different view in Mumbai, India than it does in London, England. The worship of God sounds different in the jungles of Ecuador than it does in the high rises of New York City. Yet each place is made by his will and for his glory. Each place has a specific role to play in declaring the glory of God, and no one place holds a monopoly on the display of that glory.

This isn’t to say, in some sort of pantheistic way, that God is in everything or that we each have to find our own way of expressing him wherever we are. Just as a diamond will refract light differently in different places, so God’s glory is seen differently in different places. Some places reveal it better than others. We cannot dismiss the broken and dark places of this world. They do not reflect the glory of God well. It is difficult to see the mercy and justice of God in the slums of Rio or the prisons of Iran. Not every place seems like it is God’s place. This is why there must be restoration. If every place is made by God, for God, then the broken places that do not reflect God’s glory must be restored. It’s for this reason that every place matters.

If all things are created for his glory and if all places should uniquely reflect the varied glories of God, then we are called to see our places (including our workplace) as places of worship. Our specific place becomes uniquely important to our lives because it is from this place, and this place alone, that we can magnify God and bring glory to him. I look at my friendly café and I wonder: “How is God’s presence displayed here? How is this place reflecting his glory? Where do I see his fingerprints of majesty? Does the coffee, the conversation, the art, and the atmosphere reflect anything of God’s nature and glory?”

Take a moment and look around (once again) at the place you are inhabiting as you read this sentence. How does this place glorify and magnify God? How does it reflect his multi-faceted nature? What do you see?

God has created this very place where I am writing. He has created the very place where you are reading. He has created it by his will. He has created it for his glory. Now, you might challenge that statement because you know some architect drew up the design for this building and a contractor came in and had carpenters, builders, electricians, and plumbers actually make this place. But under God’s authority, using the agency of humanity, he created and holds all things together (Col. 1:15). Place matters because God made it matter. You might feel indifferent to this place right now because it isn’t where you want to be or because it is somehow broken and in disrepair. This place might be a comfortable, quiet place for you right now. It might be a place that doesn’t belong to you; you are a visitor in it for only a season. Whatever the situation, because God has made it and made it for his glory, you are suddenly in God’s place.

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

Why Do We Neglect Our Neighbors?

I recently spoke at a large, vibrant, multisite church. While speaking about reaching the younger generation, I asked a couple of questions. First, I asked those in each service to raise their hand if they grew up in a Christian home. Without fail, 80-90% raised their hands, most with understandable joy and enthusiasm for their heritage.

Then I asked the second question: “How many of you recall a time in your childhood when your Christian family talked about reaching out to your neighbors with the gospel?” About 10-20% reticently raised their hands.

Too many of us raise our children in our neighborhoods as if we were atheists. I have asked these two questions in seminary classes, on college campuses, in youth meetings and in large conferences. The response has been the same without exception. For too long many of us have affirmed a practicing atheism, thinking we can magnify Christ among other Christians while virtually ignoring him when among non-Christians.

Too many of us raise our children in our neighborhoods as if we were atheists.

Can we truly say the gospel lies at the center of our lives and our families, if we raise children from birth to adulthood and they can’t recall a conversation about the spiritual need of their neighbors?

Why Do We Neglect Our Neighbors?

The reasons for neglecting our neighbors is multifaceted. One reason is tied up with institutional Christianity, which discourages believers from taking initiative apart from a church building. A second reason, and perhaps the most crucial is this: we have lost wonder over the story and glory of God. Failure to worship God leads to a failed desire to bring our neighbors to worship him with us.

Failure to worship God leads to a failure to bring our neighbors to worship him with us.

We need to recover the gospel in a way that sets God’s glory in the center of all of life. The Bible is unambiguous at this point: the center Scripture is not us, but God, who alone deserves our greatest wonder and all glory. Genesis begins not with us, or even with creation, but with a Creator God who creates for his own glory. John’s Gospel does the same, focusing our attention on Christ. Romans does the same. While creation reflects God’s glory, he finally and most clearly reveals himself to us in his Son, Jesus. Thus, the central character of the biblical story is the Redeemer who works a story of redemption.

The Bible is taught, even in conservative, Bible-believing churches, in a way that ironically encourages believers to do little that requires sacrifice for the gospel (if you can call investing in your neighbors for Christ a “sacrifice”). We turn the Bible into a collection of moralistic stories (David beat Goliath, so you can beat the giants in your life) in which we are the center and the story is designed to help us. Such an approach gives us many heroes, from Joseph the victimized who overcame abuse, to Ruth and Boaz who offer a great encouragement to those seeking romance. In this approach, Jesus matters, but he becomes just a little bigger hero than all the rest. Of course the Bible does offer help with overcoming abuse and in relationships. That help is called the gospel.

No, there is one hero in Scripture. But it’s okay I suppose if we slip up on that at times, because after all, Peter did. At the Transfiguration when Peter saw Jesus with Elijah and Moses, Peter suggested building tents for all three (Luke 9:33). The Father quickly made it clear that Jesus alone was to be revered: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). Not even Moses or Elijah compare to Jesus.

We remove Jesus from the central place he deserves when we give lip service to his lordship in church services while neglecting his lordship in our neighborhoods. We need a revolution in our understanding of Jesus. He is the One who initiates, sustains, and will consummate all things. He alone sits on the throne.

For Us and Our Neighbors

What does this have to do with reaching our neighbors? When we consistently hear that the gospel and the Bible as a whole have to do with us, we have no motivation to go to our neighbors, let alone the nations.

But the gospel compels us to reach out locally and globally, from our front porch step to the ends of the earth. The gospel stands at the center, not only of our church life, but the entirety of life. This is why Paul places the gospel at the center of discussions on giving (2 Cor 8), fleeing sexual temptation (1 Cor 6., see especially verse 20), in marriage (Eph. 5:25), and as the basis for humility (Phil. 2). In other words, the gospel is for us, for our every sin and every success.

Jesus is the center of history. He is the center of the Bible (Luke 24:44-48). He is to be the center of our lives. We need his gospel as much as anyone else. We should preach the gospel to ourselves daily, reminding ourselves that life is not about us but about Christ, situating our great depravity under his marvelous grace.

We should preach the gospel to ourselves daily, reminding ourselves that life is not about us but about Christ, situating our great depravity under his marvelous grace.

Why should we care about our neighbors and the nations? We were made as worshippers to glorify God. We are also sent as God’s ambassadors to others. Awe of God will lead to witness about God. If the gospel really is good news, then we can’t help but share it. Wonder over at God’s love for us in Christ compels us to love others enough to tell them about our great Savior.

In Your Neighborhood

This is why my family moved into a neighborhood filled with unchurched friends. It’s why you’ve been placed in your neighborhood. Gospel work in our neighborhood has been slow, but we have seen some fruit. Along the way, we’re learning to involve our children in care for our neighbors. We’ve also had the opportunity to take our children all over the world, so they can see the work of the gospel in other places. Although most of us wont have the opportunity to travel the world, we can lead our families in traveling the neighborhood right away! Get out and meet your neighbors. Invite them over for dessert. Make some play dates. Think of ways to serve the neighborhood, and look for opportunities to bring neighbors along towards the wonder of Christ.

The gospel is simply too big, too amazing, too life-changing for us to take it, shut it up in our homes and our church buildings, and live as if we were atheists. The gospel propels us to spread a wonder over God’s grace and glory among neighbors and the nations.

What are you waiting for?

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Alvin L. Reid is husband to Michelle and father to Josh and Hannah. He is a professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a popular speaker and author. He has written numerous books on student ministry, evangelism, missional Christianity, and spiritual awakenings. Follow him on Twitter: @AlvinReid.

*Check out Dr. Reid's new book from GCD Books, Gospel Advance: Leading a Movement That Changes the World.

10 Ways to Kill Community

I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but there are some flinching verses in the New Testament when it comes to the necessity of being in Christian community. Being ‘in Christ,’ being a Christian, means that we are with Christ’s people. A gospel-centered life will always involve the company of the gospel, the redeemed saints of God. A life that is worthy of the gospel will bob in the wake of a gospel community.

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27).

According to Paul, a life that is in step with the gospel is a life in sync with the Christian community, being gospel-focused together. If we are serious about the gospel, we will be serious about community. There are ten community killers that we must avoid. One from Hebrews 10 and nine more from Colossians 3.

10.  Don’t Meet with Other Christians

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Heb. 10:24–25)

The author of Hebrews couldn’t have been clearer: “Don’t neglect meeting together.” The Christian life is a community life. It’s with the Church. To truly walk with Jesus is to walk with Jesus’s people. Consider the New Testament books. Every New Testament letter, except four (1–2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon), are written to churches. We can’t obey the New Testament, or practically understand its context, without the community. We are to live in community not just for ourselves, but also for one another. To stir up others and have them stir us to love Jesus and spread the fame of his name. Our American default is, “What will I get out of this?” Here’s the answer: What you get is loving and serving others.

Community is so essential; I think eternity depends on it. Hebrews 10:24–25 is one of the classic community passages—and for good reason. But have you notice the eschatological impetus in the text? “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24–25). There are two important questions two dwell on. Who are the ‘some’? And why talk about the ‘Day’?

Who are the ‘some’? It’s those who have made a habit of not meeting and being with other Christians. Two groups of Christians in the verse: Christians that meet together; Christians that don’t meet together. This is a warning in Hebrews. Eventually, it’s those who have abandoned the Church, distanced themselves from community, and therefore they have abandoned Christ. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). Unbelievers, goats in sheep’s clothing, eventually stop grazing among the people of God.

Why talk about the ‘Day’? In a stellar passage about encouraging one another, why address the Day of the Lord, judgment, and wrath? The writer of Hebrews also does this earlier in his letter:

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” (Heb. 3:12–14)

He warns about falling away and holding fast till the end—which can be curtailed by the communal command “exhort one another.”

The writer of Hebrews is saying, “Commune together, encourage each other, so you don’t fall away.” What about once saved always saved? Yes, amen. The Spirit seals all of those who are truly in Christ. But the Bible says nothing about, “Once professed always protected.” Profession, in a sense, is proven, revealed in obedience to Christ, the fruit of regeneration, “holding till the end.” We are here to help each other stay the course for that Last Day. Community isn’t just to help you get through the week—it’s to get you through Judgment Day.

9. Lie About Yourself

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Col. 3:9–10)

Community thrives on honesty, light, and love. Paul urges us not to lie to one another because he knows we will be tempted to hide the truth about how we are doing and what we are doing. But remember, we have a new identity in Christ. We aren’t our sins—we are Christ’s. Once we believe that everyone one of us is in being renewed, and none have “arrived,” the motivation to lie to will fly away.

8. Focus on Differences

“Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11)

Community isn’t conformity. Unity isn’t uniformity. We are all very different people. A lot of men in my church are obsessed with killing animals. I love eating animals. I’ve gone hunting with them; it was a lot of getting up early to see a whole lot of nothing. But do differences in hobbies mean we can’t have community together? Do we have anything in common? You better believe we do: Christ. We are all different members of the body of Christ. Some are hands, feet, toes. You think the feet are interested in gloves? Think the hands are into shoes? No! But they know they need each other. Don’t major on the minor differences. Christ is all, not us, at all.

7. Have a Prickly Heart

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” (Col. 3:12)

It’s one thing to show up to someone’s house, and a horrible thing to be a cactus while you are there. Are you compassionate toward others or crusty? Gospel-centered people aren’t allowed to be cranky people. It’s out of step with the gospel of joy. “Jerks for Jesus” shouldn’t be a thing, and sadly, that is how many Christians live. Peer into the gospel, and let it clothe you in the composure of Jesus of Nazareth.

6. Don’t Bear with Others

“Bearing with one another." (Col. 3:13)

Bearing with one another isn’t, “Yes, they are ridiculous. I’ll be the bigger person.” Rather, it sounds like, “I love this person and I want to serve them like Christ has served me. I can do more than put up with them, I’ll endure with them, and carry their burdens with them.” Jesus calls us his friends, he laid his life down for us, he loves us, and now we lay our lives down for each other—because we love each other (John 15:12–13). Selfishness won’t do this.

5. Don’t Forgive

“If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Col. 3:13)

When we are living in gospel mode, we will be quick to forgive because the bloody cross is always in our sight. Christians aren’t allowed to hold a grudge—that is anti-gospel. Forgive others from that soil outside of Jerusalem, muddled with the blood of Jesus, remembering that God has no grudge with you—therefore, we must forgive.

4. Be Unloving

“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." (Col. 3:14)

The gospel is love in action. “For God so loved, he gave.” Love is more than a sentiment; it’s always a sacrifice. Gospel-laden community will be filled with the brand of love spelled out by Paul: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

3. Be Thankless

“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.” (Col. 3:15)

If you don’t have a disposition of thanks for the body of Christ, indifference isn’t far away. Distance is around the corner. Community isn’t a hamper on your schedule, it’s a helper. Community isn’t the gospel, but it is one of the gospel’s multitudinous and glorious gifts of grace.

2. Don’t Care About the Growth of Others

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Col, 3:16)

Our spiritual growth isn’t just for us, it’s for the community. Community is for the well being of everyone, not just one—not just you. Christian community isn’t just about doing some Bible study; it’s coming together to say, “I want to help you grow. I want to be a part of developing the best you possible. Jesus is calling me to you. And I need you to do that for me, too.”

1. Don’t Let Christ Be Your All

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." (Colossians 3:17)

If your life is all about Jesus, you will be about the things that Jesus is about—and Jesus is about his Church. Always and forever. When Jesus is our all, we will want to give our lives for the people that Jesus gave up his life for, his redeemed people. Holding back our lives from people in the church is one of the most anti-Christ things we could do. Rather, in word or deed, couch or coffee, potluck or grill out, prayer list or accountability time, let it all be done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

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J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He is pursuing his M.Div. at Southern Seminary. He and Natalie have one precious children, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders.