Being Gospel-Centered, Community-Oriented, and Mission-Mobilized
Posted in UncategorizedThe gospel conference sponsored by Cornerstone, led by Pastors Jeff Vanderstelt and David Fairchild, has been a blessing and a source of renewing joy in my life. I can’t think of a time in my life when the beauty of the gospel, found in Jesus Christ, has been more precious to me or when the desire to live out its implications in community and mission has been stronger. What do you feel when you hear gospel truths like these: “Jesus did because we didn’t,” “Jesus rescued and redeemed what we wrecked,” “Jesus loved us first because we couldn’t love Him,” and “Jesus will always be faithful even when we are faithless.”
I know in the past my heart has been numb to statements like this, but now I can’t help but read those phrases and well up with unspeakable joy. Along with that the more I have come to understand the idea of the body of Christ as a community living out the gospel together in all of life, the more I have come to understand what Christ actually came to do. Christ did not come to redeem individuals so they could continue in their individualism, but Christ came to redeem a people so that they could come together as a people. However not a purposeless people, but he came to redeem a people on a mission to display, in a massive way, the grand, glorious, and infinite beauty of their redeemer Jesus Christ.
My soul has also been fed by this gospel conference with practical meat on how to actually start implementing this gospel-centered, community-oriented, mission-mobilized lifestyle. First, as the speakers demonstrated, its best to start with the thing “of first importance,” which is getting to know the gospel. This is accomplished as Sinclair Ferguson said by “expending our energies admiring, exploring, expositing, and extolling Jesus Christ.” Second, get to know your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who live in your neighborhood. This should not be hard because you all have one major uniting thing in common; you love Jesus Christ. Third, as those relationships forge and form into community, start to strategically and casually engage your unbelieving neighbors together. Get to know them in a deep and welcoming way by asking about them and listening to them. In doing this, make sure that you keep the main thing the main thing, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Understanding the practical nature of how to live out the gospel as a community in order to engage the unbelievers around us is very freeing, but it can be a freeing failure if we don’t implement the most important thing. And the most important thing is that we be a people consumed with and soaked in prayer. We must ask God to do all things before we can do anything, and we must ask God that we do all things for Himself or else we will do everything for ourselves. As believers in community, we must continually be praying that God would do the most important thing among us and through us and that is that He would glorify Himself by using us to bring people to saving faith in Jesus Christ. The gospel we believe in must be believed in through prayer. The communities that we live in must be lived in through prayer. The mission we live out must be lived out through prayer. Prayer is the plug that connects us to the power source of infinite energy and mobilizes us to be a people that have God working on their behalf instead of apart from Him.
by: Andrew Jacobson
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
just finished listening to day 5 Gospel conference today and came to the site to read blog. My husband and I are a part of a firm Bible teaching church in a wealthy area in Northern CA. We have practiced, gratefully, sacrificial giving, even 6 years of our lives in a foreign mission work and have come home to what feels like a self centered “church”. We gave up everything and are pretty poor i resources but no qualms. The various ministries of Cornerstone have encouraged us. We are not alone and God brought us to the place (back “home”) to impact..maybe the church. Seeking God, serving people, desperately dependent. So many ideas for my neighborhood! Diligence and perseverance. Love never fails, never!