Month: August 2014

The Bride of Christ

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Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

-Ephesians 5:25

The Church – the people of God – is Christ’s beloved. He sacrificed His entire life that she might have abundant life. He didn’t do this because she was beautiful, lovely, or worthy. Instead, He died for her because He abounds in outrageous grace and love, and He continues to love her despite all her blemishes, no matter how big or glaring they are.

Every individual local church-even with all her failures-is a specific manifestation of the bride of Christ, and He loves and died for each of them.

It’s easy to hate on churches. Unfortunately, unfaithfulness often abounds, and they practically paint big red targets on their backs just asking to be criticized and tossed to the side. But if Jesus loved his people before they ever looked anything like Him, how much more should we as fallen, broken individuals continue to love His bride and fight for her good.

Thousands of churches throughout North America are sick and dying, and we could easily run away hoping to avoid getting caught in the wake. But instead, let us love the Church and the local church with the same grace, mercy and patience as Christ has. Let us be willing to lay down our lives that our churches might thrive again.

This blog, in addition to being a place to encourage and strengthen my own church, serves as a resource for this very task: church revitalization. My prayer is that through the posts and discussions on this blog, pastors and church members would be emboldened to sacrificially pursue renewal and health in their churches with the same passion as our Savior.

Recommended Resources -Fall 2014

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At the Gallery Church, we will be pursuing sacrificial investment in four major areas over the next year:

1. Passionate Participation
2. Devoted Prayer
3. Intentional Discipleship
4. Strategic Mission

Check out our Recommended Resources for some great tools for enhancing your understanding of why and how we should invest in these areas.

Sacrificial Investment

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Centuries ago, Christianity spread like wildfire through much of the known world in a relatively short amount of time. Significant physical and spiritual needs began to be met on an enormous scale. The Gospel and the fame of Jesus was made known to millions who had never heard of his name. By the grace of God, the church—though small and seemingly insignificant—made a huge impact. When did this revival occur? It actually came about in the earliest days of the church beginning in Acts 2:42-47. What characterized the church that God was blessing in such a huge way?

Sacrificial Investment

Beginning in Acts 2:42-47 and continuing throughout the book, we see the church invest sacrificially in three ways:

1. Cultivating Worship of God
2. Building up the Church
3. Reaching out to the World

God multiplied this investment numerous times over for his glory and the good of the world. The physical and spiritual needs of the church and the world at large were being met in ways previously unimaginable to the earliest disciples.

We live in a city that has overwhelming physical and spiritual needs, and God wants to use his church to meet those needs by multiplying their sacrificial investment.

At the Gallery Church, our leaders have spent significant time in self-examination to consider where God is calling us to sacrificially invest. So over the coming year, we are going to sacrificially invest through…

1. Passionate Participation
2. Devoted Prayer
3. Intentional Discipleship
4. Strategic Mission

… so that God would multiply it for the fame of Jesus and the good of our city. (Check out our fall goals here)

If you are part of Gallery, join us by investing in these ways. If not, consider how God is calling you and your church to sacrificially invest for the fame of Jesus.

Just imagine what God might do in our cities if we sacrificially invest as the church did in Acts.

The Community of Hope

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One of the deepest longings of humanity is that of reconciled, authentic community. Yet, everywhere one turns deep-seated chasms separate people across national, racial, political, and various other divides. Can anything bridge the gaps and heal the wounds caused by these divides? Gazing upon our world provides little hope.

Yet, hope does exist in abundance, just not in the world around us. Instead, it lies in one who entered our world—Jesus. He alone has provided  hope in our broken, corrupt world. Scripture says that Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross. Through his work and the free gift he offers us, we can have reconciled community with God through faith in Jesus. This reconciliation, this salvation, also brings us into reconciled community with others who have faith in Him. When Jesus saves us, he doesn’t leave us as individual Christians, but he makes us part of a community: the church.

Though full of broken people in constant need of grace and forgiveness, the church is the one community with true hope of lasting reconciliation, peace, joy, and love across all cultural, racial, and political bounds. Jesus and his Gospel are the one hope we have for true community.

And it’s that community—the church—that I have grown to love deeply even in light of her warts and scars. This community is the people Jesus loved to the point of death millennia ago. And it’s this community that I am seeking to love in the same way. Following Christ’s example, I long to love and strengthen the church for the fame of Jesus. This blog is devoted to that purpose, and I’ll accomplish that in three ways:

1. Scripture Reflections – Providing meditations and direction for small group discussion
2. Equipping Resources – Providing a wide variety of helps for living this Christian life
3. Church Revitalization – Providing research, insights, and reflections upon an ever-growing passion of mine and an ongoing, yet oft neglected need in churches everywhere

*The first two will primarily be oriented toward my congregation, but I hope they will be a benefit to all who read.