God's Mission and the mission of His people...

From a message by Michael Horton:

Our mission is qualitatively different from God's mission. God sends us on a mission, but it's a different mission than the mission he sent his Son on. It's different from the mission he sent his Spirit on. The Son could redeem the world. We can't. Again, loose talk—loose talk in the Church today about our redeeming activity in the world. WE should never, ever sully that wonderful word by saddling it to us as the subject of the verb. When it comes to redeeming anything, we are not the subject of the action. Jesus Christ is. Jesus is the unique, only, exclusive Redeemer of the world.

"Well, we're extending his redemption." No, we're not. There is no extension. He accomplished it once and for all. "Well, we are extensions of his incarnation." No, we're not. We're members of his body. I wasn't born of a virgin. I didn't suffer under Pontius Pilate. I wasn't crucified. I wasn't raised on the third day.

We preach not ourselves but Christ, and we are his ambassadors! Paul says, "Let's get that right. We are not the message. We're the messengers." So our mission is qualitatively different from God's. But because he finished his mission in his Son—his mission of redeeming—and he sent his Spirit to open the hearts of those to whom we speak, we have a mission that is guaranteed success.

"Christ in a Post-Christian Culture"

Recently the White Horse Inn broadcast two very helpful discussions on "Paul's missional approach in the first century." Michael Horton and the panel appeal to Colossians for insight into how Christians engage a culture that is increasingly post-Christian.

Listen HERE and HERE.

Mission: Getting the Gospel Out

I am preaching the final message in "The Gospel-Driven Church" series. The title is "Mission: Getting the Gospel Out."

Here is something I found in Chris Wright's book The Mission of God:

· We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?,” when the real question is, “Where does my life fit into this great story of God’s mission?”

· We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives, when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.

· We talk about “applying the Bible to our lives.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality – the real story – to which we are called to conform ourselves?

· We wrestle with “making the gospel relevant to the world.” But in this story, God is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.

· We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission that God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God wants for the whole range of his mission.

· I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should be asking what kind of me God wants for his mission.

"Three Strands to Mission"

The illustration above can be found in the excellent book Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

Tim has posted three very helpful articles on mission strategy. His thesis is that God, not us, is the ultimate mission strategist. In his third post he reasons that mission is not simply an activity of the church but ought to be the culture of the church.

Read the posts HERE.

Gospel and Community

Over the past two years I have thought, read, prayed, and talked a lot about the nature of the Gospel – its content and implications for life and ministry. This was a central component to the work of the Strategic Ministry Planning Team. If you read “By His Grace and For His Glory,” the report from the SMPT, then you know how often the material interacts with the Gospel. It is also what drove the recent sermon series “The Gospel-Driven Church” (both resources can be found at our web page). The Seven Pillars of Metro East Baptist are all understood in light of the Gospel. Our statement of purpose finds its rationale in the Gospel:
By God's grace Metro East will make known in word and deed the Lordship and love of Jesus throughout Wichita and the world for the sake of God's glory and the salvation of sinners.

One connection that is particularly moving and challenging to me is that between the Gospel and community. My experience in church is that God-glorifying, soul-shaping community is very elusive. We simply do not see much of it. That is my experience at least. We know what it is to have friendly acquaintances. We know what it is to spend time with people we like. But does our experience within the body of Christ resemble that which is described in the church of Jerusalem in Acts two or that which seemed to exist in the church of Thessalonica? Are we connected to a community of Christ-followers who love God and His Word, pray and worship together regularly, eat together frequently, take care to watch over each other’s needs, and experience the fruit of conversion?

Titus 2:14 tells us that Jesus Christ gave himself for us "to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." Commenting on those words, Sinclair Ferguson writes that “Christ wants to create ‘a people’, not merely isolated individuals who believe in him.” The church is not a club or support group that Christians join. Rather, when God saves us by His grace He also adds us to the church, His people, the body of Christ.

I am reading a book called Total Church by two British pastors: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. It seems that God put this book in front of me at just the right time. It is proving to be an excellent follow-up to the other work in which I have been involved over the past two years. Particularly challenging has been the book’s emphasis on the inseparable link between the Gospel and community.

Regarding the priority of community in the body of Christ the authors write:
“By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those others who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity. To fail to live out our corporate identity in Christ is analogous to the act of adultery: we can be Christians and do it, but it’s not what Christians should do. The loyalties of the new community supersede even the loyalties of biology (Matt. 10:34-37; Mk 3:31-35; Lk 11:27-28). If the church is the body of Christ then we should not live as disembodied Christians!"

We talk a good game about community but our priorities often betray us. The fact is, community is costly. People hurt us. We get disillusioned when our brothers and sisters disappoint us. It is even worse when a pastor disappoints us. But being in community always involves sacrifice. It involves a kind of death whereby we lay down our rights for the good of others. It means we serve without demanding to be served. It means we lovingly absorb many of the hits we take along the way. Timmis and Chester write, “In our experience, people are often enthusiastic about community until it impinges on their decision-making. For all their rhetoric, they still expect to make decisions by themselves for themselves. We assume we are masters of our own lives.”

One of the points that Total Church makes well is that community is essential to effective proclamation of the Gospel. The authors write:
“God is a missionary God and God’s primary missionary method is His covenant people…God made us as persons-in-community to be the vehicle through which He would reveal His glory…Israel’s priests represented God to the people by expounding the Law, and represented the people to God through sacrifice and intercession, so the nation as a whole has a priestly role of making God known to the nations and bringing them to the means of atonement…

“The center is no longer geographic Jerusalem. Now it is the community itself among whom Christ promises to be present to be present (Matt 28:20). The community moves out across the globe, all the time drawing people to its Lord through its common life…

“The church, then is not something additional or optional. It is at the very heart of God’s purposes. Jesus came to create a people who would model what it means to live under His rule. It would be a glorious outpost of the kingdom of God: an embassy of heaven. This is where the world can see what it means to be truly human.

“Our identity as human beings is found in community. Our identity as Christians is found in Christ’s new community. And our mission takes place through communities of light.”