The King Jesus Gospel – Scott McKnight on White Horse Inn

What is the gospel? Throughout the history of American Evangelicalism, many have tried to reduce it to a simple slogan, or something like “four spiritual laws.” But in reducing the gospel of Christ to a sales pitch, have Evangelicals altered the message? Does the good news that we proclaim have more to do with getting people to make a decision, more than it focuses on Christ’s person and work?

On a recent White Horse Inn episode, Michael Horton discusses these issues with Scot McKnight, author of The King Jesus Gospel.

Scott McKnight is one of my favorite dudes.  He has encouraged me and has helped to clarify the definition and application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ again and again.  Please read The King Jesus Gospel; it will help bring immense clarity!

Listen to the interview between Scott and Mike HERE.

 

Here’s a video intro. to Scott McKnight's new book:

Also, be sure to check out the following lecture giving by McKnight at a recent QIdeas – Did Jesus Preach the Gospel?

More Reasons Why Tampa Bay Area Needs More Healthy Churches…

A recent survey considered the 50 largest metropolitan areas (which includes suburbs) in pursuit of discovering the nations most stressful cities/areas. The team considered the following factors: divorce rate, commute times, unemployment, violent crime, property crime, suicides, alcohol consumption, mental health, sleep troubles, and the annual amount of cloudy days.

Read Bottom Line’s America's Most Stressful Cities in 2012 HERE.

Here’s the top five.  The Sunshine State doesn’t appear to be too happy!  Guess where Tampa wound up?

5. Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Michigan
Population: 1,918,288
Divorced: 11.4%
Commute time – minutes: 27
Unemployment: 15.7%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 1111.2
Property crime per 100,000 population: 4,152.4
Suicides per 100,000 population: 9.6
Cloudy days annually: 180

Standout factors: The Detroit metropolitan area is in the 100th percentile for violent crime and property crime. It also ranks in the 97th percentile for poor mental health days per month, though it is in the second percentile for alcohol consumption per month.

4. Jacksonville, Florida
Population: 1,374,303
Divorced: 12.3%
Commute time – minutes: 28.0
Unemployment: 10.4%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 557
Property crime per 100,000 population: 3,772.4
Suicides per 100,000 population: 13.9
Cloudy days annually: 139

Standout factor: Jacksonville is in the 95th percentile for divorces.

3. Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Florida
Population: 2,472,015
Divorced: 11.5%
Commute time – minutes: 33.2
Unemployment: 12.5%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 733.3
Property crime per 100,000 population: 4,678.3
Suicides per 100,000 population: 9.3
Cloudy days annually: 117

Standout factors: Metropolitan Miami is in the 97th percentile for property crime, and 95th percentile for violent crime, but is in the fourth percentile for alcohol consumption.

2. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nevada
Population: 1,908,008
Divorced: 13.2%
Commute time – minutes: 27
Unemployment: 14%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 763.4
Property crime per 100,000 population: 2,921.9
Suicides per 100,000 population: 18
Cloudy days annually: 65

Standout factors: Las Vegas-Paradise is in the 100th percentile for divorces, but it had the least cloudy days of the 50 cities analyzed.

1. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida
Population: 2,780,818
Divorced: 12.3%
Commute time – minutes: 28.3
Unemployment: 11.2%
Violent crime per 100,000 population: 500
Property crime per 100,000 population: 3,387.2
Suicides per 100,000 population: 15.5
Cloudy days annually: 127

Standout factor: Tampa is in the 97th percentile for suicides.

“Bloodlines” from Piper–free PDF download

For MLK Day, Desiring God is now offering Pastor John Piper's book, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, free to download.

Also…

Crossway traveled with John Piper to his hometown of Greenville, SC to revisit the world in which he grew up. This 18-minute documentary takes us through his experience of racism in the 1960's American South:

Bloodlines Documentary with John Piper from Crossway on Vimeo.

Community Groups and Grace Church

Grace Church just had their first Community Group meeting last night.  We’re kicking off our Community Group Ministry this month with 4 wonderful groups! 

What are Grace Church Community Groups?
Getting connected at Grace Church involves participation in both the Sunday morning Gatherings and a Community Group.  Sunday Gatherings are a time for worshipful celebration together, hearing the preaching of the Word, imparting the vision of Grace Church, and sharing in Communion.   Whereas, Community Groups are the primary way we, disciple one another, connect with one another, and live out the mission of Grace Church.  Community Groups are an essential expression of our church’s mission. 

Each Community Group will find their own rhythm - meeting regularly (either weekly or bi-weekly) to eat together, learn together, pray together, encourage one another, and be on mission together, living out the Gospel in real and tangible expressions.  Being a community-driven people means walking through life together, helping one another become fully-devoted followers of Jesus.

Why Community Groups?
At the heart of the Community Groups ministry is the desire to see a community of believers who worship Jesus, love one another, and embody the mission & vision of Grace Church to make disciples.  Community Groups will be the place where the seeds of the preached Word (from the Sunday Gathering sermon) take root and become real as we consider how we may "spur one another on toward love and good deeds" (Heb. 10:24).  In other words, our Community Groups will be a place where we encourage and challenge one another to live missional lives and to know Jesus deeper and in more personal ways.

The Practice of Living Missionally:
Our Community Groups will aim at connected our members to call of God to “live sent” – commissioned by Christ to follow his Great Commission for the church (Matt. 28:16-20). 

The church is a community of God’s people gathered for his mission; and community, centered and driven by the Gospel, is the vehicle through which God’s mission is carried out.   As Gordon Fee points out in Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, “God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather, He is creating a people among whom He can live and who in their life together will (tangibly) reproduce God’s life and character.”  We are to be on mission (i.e., missional) together!  It is the mission of the Gospel that is to shape our Christian community and activities. 

So our Community Groups will be encouraged to come up with outreach ideas for their group.  Here’s a list of some examples - 100 Ways for Community Groups and Individuals to Engage your Neighborhoods.

For more – Grace Church Community Groups

Christmas Cookie Drop

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to pass on a simple, yet powerful, way to reach out and show the love of Jesus the Christ this Christmas Eve.  (In the future, we hope to do this in a more strategic and organized way after Grace Church’s Christmas Eve service; but this year's endeavor will still bless the socks off many!)

Here's the deal...
Bake some cookies, brownies, cup cakes, etc., package them up, attach the Christmas greeting card (click here), and deliver the bake goods to someone working on Christmas Eve.  It could be the clerk at a convenient store, the firemen at a fire station, paramedics, hospital or emergency care facility employees, a gas station attendant, a bar tender, and, yes, even police officers! 

We will call it "The Christmas Cookie Drop" and it's a great opportunity for you and your family to love and serve others by representing our gift-giving God!  Perhaps this can become a new Christmas tradition for you and your family.

"...keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus, for He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’" ~ Acts 20:35

 

May peace of God be within you, upon you, and flow through you this Christmas season.

www.gracechurchofdunedin.com

Give the Gift of Church Planting – Ministry Update from Grace Church

December 2011 – Grace Church Ministry Update

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
~ Jesus, Acts 20:35

Merry Christmas to all the friends, supporters, and encouragers of Grace Church of Dunedin! 

Christmas is always a fun (and busy!) time of the year - family, friends, Christmas songs, claymation, Rudolph, stockings, eggnog, shopping, Adam Sandler's Hanukkah songs, mistletoe, Christmas lights, sparkling grape juice, etc.  In addition to all those jolly activities, the times of corporate worship during Advent Season are always some of my most favorite.

A lot of Christians talk about keeping Christ in Christmas and come up with great ways to remember the advent of our Lord; but have you ever considered how Christmas and church planting go together?  Yes, as Christians, Christmas is a special/sacred time to remember the gift of Christ; but it should also be a time of remembering why he came! 

What is “the reason for the season?”

According to Isaiah 9:6-7, Christ came in order to bring the Kingdom of God to earth; and with that Kingdom comes peace, redemption, and life as it should be. Verse 7 concludes with stamp of God's zealous promise to do it.  In the New Testament we learn that God's plan to "do it" is the through the expansion of the church, i.e., church planting (Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:7-8; 15:41; 16:5; Matthew 16:18)!

So, this Christmas season, may I encourage you to consider giving the gift of church planting.  There is still much Kingdom work to do; and the Gospel transforms lives and communities primarily through local churches.  As one leading missiologist, C. Peter Wagner writes, “Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven."

Of course, you can give to Grace Church!  We have a lot of preparations still to complete that can only get done through additional income.  Every dollar helps, no gift is too small to make a difference in building the Kingdom!  You can mail your donation to:

Grace Church
PO Box # 421
1350 County Road 1
Dunedin, FL 34698

You can also donate online here.

But, if not Grace Church, consider giving the gift of church planting elsewhere.  Here are some worthy church planting recipients, laboring intently to see lives redeemed and communities renewed:

• The Experience Church - a brand new church in downtown Clearwater.  (FYI, all the churches left downtown Clearwater a few years back.  To our enemy's dismay, these guys are headed back!  This is very exciting and worthy of our support!)
• SOS Ministries - an international church planting mission organization. (Where our very own, Paul Wonderly, serves!)
• Vision360 - an organization working hard and across denominational lines to see cities changed by more and more churches being planted!  (Hmm...sounds a lot like Grace Church!)

On behalf of the other Grace Church elders, James Gleichowski and Steve Lee, we wish you and your family a most blessed Christmas! We also hope and pray that your partnership in building the Kingdom through church planting will mirror the redemptive love of our Savior who went to where the people were, cared for them with compassion, and spoke to them the good news of the kingdom.

Please Pray:
We are dreaming big and praying big, believing God can use Grace Church in mighty ways.  Prayer is the number one means to any movement of God's Spirit. PLEASE be praying for Grace Church, our leaders, and our mission.

Thank you for praying for Grace Church!

If you have any questions about Grace Church or how you can help us with this church plant project, please do not hesitate to contact me.

grace and peace,
heath

 

 

www.gracechurchofdunedin.com
Grace Church is a community of changed people who are committed to serving
and renewing the greater Dunedin area through a movement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Robust Gospel, Robust Church

Scot McKnight addresses whether or not our Gospel is too small and how our message effects this next generation:

“My physician tells me that the way I live during this decade will shape the way I live in the next decade. Likewise, the way we preach the gospel in this decade will shape the church of the next. A more robust gospel now will mean a more robust church for the next generation.”

Taken from “The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel”

Christmas Misconceptions

Christmas. It’s all about family, candlelight church services, stockings, eggnog, shopping, mistletoe, Christmas lights…and widespread misinformation.

Huh?

Yeah, Christmas definitely takes the lead in “the holiday with the most folktales and urban legends” category. In fact much of our Christmas nativity story is filled with outright unbiblical ideas!

The typical story we hear repeated is:

“On the evening of December 25th, about 2000 years ago, Mary, who is urgently needing to deliver her baby, rides into Bethlehem on a donkey. Although it’s an emergency, all the innkeepers turn them away. So she delivers baby Jesus in an outside stable. Then angels sing to the shepherds. Afterwards, the shepherds join up with three kings on camels, find the baby Jesus and worship the quiet newborn.”

What’s the problem? Well, this story might be almost entirely wrong. The events surrounding the birth have been retold so many times and in songs, in plays, books, and movies that most people have a distorted view of the true Nativity events. The only accurate record is found in the Bible, so we’ll be comparing the rampant Christmas misconceptions with the Scriptures.

Christmas Misconception #1 Jesus was Born in a Stable
Was Jesus born in a stable or in a born? The Bible does not mention either of these places in connection with Christ’s birth, only a manger. Scripture simply reports that they laid Jesus in a manger because there was no room for him in the guest room (Luke 2:7). The Greek word used in Scripture is kataluma, and can mean guest chamber, lodging place or inn. The only other time this word was used in the New Testament, it means a furnished, large, upper story room within a private house. It’s translated guest chamber, not inn (Mark 14:14-15). There was a word for an inn (i.e. hotel) used in that day – pandocheion. Luke uses that word in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:34, so he definitely didn’t mean that there was no room in the local Holiday Inn!

According to Bible archaeology experts, Jesus was probably born in the house of relatives on the bottom floor, underneath the normal living and guest quarters. This is because all of Joseph's family, perhaps with their wives and children, would have been in the same house due the census Caesar had issued (Luke 2:1-3). Your typical home during the time of Jesus’ birth was two-stories. The first level was kind of like a garage, and yes, it would be normal to have a few of your prized animals kept in there. The second floor would have been the living quarters - “the inn.” In order to give Joseph and his very pregnant wife some privacy, everyone probably decided to let Joseph and Mary stay in the first level. It was definitely a bit rough, but not a stable.

Does this mean we have to throw out our cheesy little Nativity scenes? Maybe, maybe not. But I do make an effort to explain to my children how it really went down. For more about this Christmas misconception see Bible Study Magazine’s Away in a Manger, But Not a Barn.

Other Christmas Misconceptions:
Christmas Misconception #2 The Innkeeper Turned Mary & Joseph Away
Christmas Misconception #3 No Crying He Makes
Christmas Misconception #4 Mary, Urgently Needing to Deliver Her Baby, Rides into Bethlehem on a Donkey
Christmas Misconception #5 Three Kings, Riding on Donkeys, Come to See the Baby Jesus
Christmas Misconception #6 Jesus was Born on December 25^th

Other Resources about the Biblical Christmas Story:
Where do all those silly Christmas traditions come from? Do they represent anything? Check out “Stealing Christmas” by Jason Boyett page 83 in Relevant’s Nov/Dec ‘09 edition, you may be surprised how pagan (in origin) our activities actually are.

You can also see “Debunking Christmas” where Boyett shares some Christmas misconceptions and traditional. And here’s a good article by christiananswers.net entitled “What are some of the most common misconceptions about Jesus Christ’s birth?”

Oh come on now, don’t get your undies in a bundle! Just because we may have taken some of our Christmas traditions from pagans and get our facts wrong about the nativity doesn’t mean Christmas is ruined. Just know your Christmas facts!

Merry Christmas!

Inspiration for Grace Church…and Other Church Plants

I’ve been watching/listening to Mars Hill’s documentary, God’s Story, Our Witness.  It’s an encouraging account of the humble beginnings of Mars Hill Church, lead by Pastor Mark Driscoll.  As we begin to launch Grace Church of Dunedin, and as others consider planting churches, it is imperative that while we sacrifice much and labor at raising money, gathering all our supplies, constructing all our material, organizing our worship ministry, children’s ministry, Community Groups, etc., and as we make seemingly endless plans, we remember the church is God’s plan and, ultimately, his work! 

He will be faithful to “build his church” (Matt. 16:18). 

Thank Mars Hill for being a witness of God’s Story.  Here's a few segments:

 

Watch or listen to the full documentary here.

God is Creating a People Among Whom He Can Live

“God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather, He is creating a people among whom He can live and who in their life together will reproduce God’s life and character.”

– Gordon Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

Christianity as Community, not Individual Piety

“Christian ethics is not primarily an individualistic, one-on-one-with-God brand of personal holiness; rather it has to do with living the life of the Spirit in Christian community and in the world.”

– Gordon Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

The Importance of Authentic Community

Pick up Brad House’s book – Community: Taking Your Small Group off Life Support.

Disciples Following Jesus Making Disciples Who Follow Jesus

D.A. Carson claimed all believers were sent to participate in God’s mission, “Jesus specifies the mission of God though his final instructions before His ascension.”  Matthew recorded the words of Jesus, “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
 

 Carson concluded the following:

"The injunction is given at least to the Eleven, but to the Eleven in their roles as disciples. Therefore they are paradigms for all disciples… It is binding on all Jesus’ disciples to make others what they themselves are–disciples of Jesus Christ." ~ D.A. Carson, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Matthew

Therefore, following the disciple-making example and commissioning of Jesus, all believers are on mission to make disciples.

The Mission is God's

Mission…in biblical terms, while it inescapably involves us in planning and action, is not primarily a matter of our activity or our initiative. Mission, from the point of view of our human endeavor, means the committed participation of God’s people in the purposes of God for the redemption of the whole creation. The mission is God’s. The marvel is that God invites us to join in.  ~ Christopher Wright, The Mission of God

The Meaning of Marriage Webcast with Tim & Kathy Keller

On November 1, 2011, Penguin Books hosted Tim and Kathy Keller for a discussion of their book The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God.  Gabe Lyons and Bethany Jenkins conducted the interview at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.