In just
a few short months we will be finishing our present season in the Middle East.
By April, God-willing we will be on the ground in Dearborn, MI, taking the
first steps of what we're calling the Dearborn Initiative [see: https://www.convergemidamerica.org/give/dearborn-initiative ]. The
Dearborn initiative is all about the plan and work toward a church-planting movement
spanning from the Midwest to the Middle East. Our
mission is to plant CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH in Dearborn, MI to engage in city-wide,
Christ-centered, Gospel-driven worship, community, and discipleship, leading to
church multiplication locally and regionally, while recruiting and equipping
immigrant leaders to return to their homelands in the Middle East as indigenous
missionaries globally.The full version of the vision statement for Christ
Community Church, goes like
this:
Our Vision & Deepest Desire is to
glorify God by Connecting,
Igniting, & Transforming:
Connecting people
to God and together around God’s purposes,,
Igniting a
passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the church and world,
Transforming lives
and communities, locally and globally by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I want
to highlight the second aim: “Igniting a passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ
in the church and world.” This comes out of a deep and growing conviction of my
heart. In the past decade of my life, God has in many ways pounded into my
heart a passion to see God’s people embrace an single-minded pursuit of
truly gospel-driven lives and ministries. I have served
the Lord in several capacities over the last 10 years: as pastor of a small
church; as a Bible teacher at a Lebanese Baptist school; and alongside a young
church plant in Tyre. Also, as a missionary I have had the privilege of being a
guest in many pulpits, literally, from coast to coast across the USA. Something
that has left a deep impression upon me has been either the clear communication
and evident application of the gospel of grace through and
to every aspect of a church’s ministry (and therefore its people’s lives) or
the complete lack thereof.
D. A.
Carson reminds us that in the New Testament “[t]he gospel is regularly
presented not only as truth to be received and believed but the very power of
God to transform (see 1Cor 2; 1Thess 2:4; Rom 1:16-17)…. One of the most
urgently needed things today is a careful treatment of how the gospel,
biblically and richly understood, ought to shape everything we do in the local
church, all of our ethics, all of our priorities.” [D.A.Carson, “What is the Gospel? –
Revisited,” in For the Fame of
God’s Name, 165.] Do you regularly experience the gospel as
"power" in your life, in the life and ministries of your
church? This is our hope, our prayer, and our goal with the Dearborn
Initiative to plant Christ
Community Church. It is our goal because it is the same goal of those who
encountered the living Christ in the pages of the New Testament. We want to see
a passion ignited (and re-ignited) in God’s people to live truly gospel-driven lives. This is not simply a desire to
see people receive and believe the gospel – although that certainly is the
right place to start. More than that, we want to see God’s people thinking
deeply about the content and implications of the gospel message and see how
that message and its implications should shape our choices, our lifestyles, our
relationships, our priorities, our use of possessions, our worldview, and the
goals we set before ourselves.
There
are endless examples of how we are to apply the gospel so that it shapes
everything in our lives and ministry. How does the fact that Jesus initiated a
relationship with us out of love, showing grace toward his enemies (me being
one of those enemies) affect the way I respond to my wife when we have an
argument? Am I eager and ready to extend her grace and seek her forgiveness?
How does this gospel truth shape the way I respond to complete strangers like
the guy last month who “flipped me the bird” as he raced by me in his truck
because I failed to respond quickly enough to his motioning me to take a left
turn in front of him at a four-way stop? (I still wonder what he must have
thought when he saw "Faith Bible Church" on the side of the church
van we were driving as he gave us the universal sign-language). Or I think of
one situation I was in back in our youth ministry years when we had to figure
out how this truth of the gospel was to be applied to the manner in which the
church elders should handle a situation where two teenagers from families in
the church engaged in premarital sex. These situations are real-life examples
where I’ve had to work through how the gospel must be applied and there are
infinite others and the need is daily. The gospel message or the “truth of the
gospel” as Paul put it in Galatians 2:14, speaks to all these situations and
infinitely more. The Gospel truly has the power to “shape everything we do in
the local church, all of our ethics, all of our priorities.” And I look forward
to embarking on this power-filled journey with you. -jts
Well said, and lived, Swifts. Excited for you guys!
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