Change!?!, Community, Missional
The Gospel….
Here is a quote from Scot McKnight’s book “Embracing Grace”… “A local church always performs the gospel it proclaims. This may sound odd, so let me emphasize the world “always”. A church always performs the gospel it proclaims because its performance is its proclamation. If you look at a church and what it does and how it operates you will see the gospel of that church. The important point to make here is that the deepest indicator of that church’s gospel cannot be limited to the pastor’s sermons or the Sunday school teacher’s teaching or the doctrinal statement’s affirmations, or the summer camp offerings, of the aesthetic expressions. The sure indicator of the gospel in a local community is how those Christians live.”
Now here is Scot’s definition of gospel… “The gospel is the work of God to restore humans to union with God and communion with others, in the context of a community, for the good of others and the world.”
Interested in knowing what you think!
25 Mar 2009 Martin Hutchison
Hello, Martin. Your post reminds me of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians –
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 (New International Version)
3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
I’m also thinking about Ryan’s most recent post regarding Alan Hirsch’s comments about what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ.
We can see the “gospel” that any given community teaches through the way its members live. But what do we say then about the false “gospels” being enacted out there in the communities we live in, in this country and for that matter, globally?
As we can so often create “God” in our own image so as to satisfy and accommodate “him” to our ideas of Church, ministry and justice – the most frightening part of this tendency is the ease with which so many fall for a message that is in essence, antichrist and therefore, anti-Gospel.
The heart is the greatest testimony of the extent to which we submit to teach and live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How we live is the extension of that ultimate reality.
Hi Daniel,
Great post! Thanks for sharing!
Your post also brings to mind Jesus’ comments in Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you: go away from me you evildoers.”
Amen, Martin! Amen, indeed. Thanks, my brother.