This sermon was originally shared at New Hope Community Church in Dayton, Ohio on January 24, 2016.
This is only a test.
This sermon was originally shared at New Hope Community Church in Dayton, Ohio on January 24, 2016.
This is only a test.
Why does the Church of God Movement exist today?
There’s no more important question for us to answer, and answer well, because how we answer this one question will define how we go forward from here. Jonathan began the process of putting together a purpose statement for the movement, and I appreciate his willingness to press into the fact that identifying a purpose will necessarily require us to speak about what makes us distinct from other church denominations or movements.
But nowadays distinctives scare us.
I don’t know if we’re afraid of offending people, or we’re afraid that by saying we are distinct from other groups in the church sounds like we’re dividing the body of Christ, but the idea makes a lot of people squeamish. Distinctives don’t have to divide us however. In fact, the body metaphor itself helps us see where distinctives are good. I want the parts of the various systems of my body to be distinct from one another. If they’re not then I have a serious problem. The key is that all the parts and systems must be working together for a singular goal, the overall health and growth of the body at large. To that end, its important for us to ask this second question as we seek to identify our purpose for the next chapter of the Church of God. Continue reading
It is not the job of other people to be God’s missionaries. It is our job, because we are God’s people!
David used these two sentences to end his post how the Church of God has as a part of our identity the call to be a missionary church. David’s post highlighted the fact that God has worked through people to be a blessing to the world for his sake since the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. I would argue that it goes even further back than that. One of the significant threads that runs right through the whole of scripture is God’s design to use men and women as his representatives in the world. And it’s by going all the way back to creation that I believe the Church of God must find our roots for being just what the title of these posts call us to be, A missionary CHURCH.
“Seek first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness…”
Throughout this series, we’ve been looking at the significant beliefs that make up the DNA of the Church of God. In his book, Vision for the Church of God at the Crossroads, Gilbert Stafford makes the bold claim that while it’s true other groups in the wider church consider themselves Gospel churches, or Bible churches, or born-again churches, or holiness churches, or unity churches, or Kingdom of God churches, or missionary churches, it’s the equal commitment to all seven attributes that makes the Church of God unique.
If this is the case, then I would like to suggest that it is the fact that we are a Kingdom of God church that actually holds all seven together. When we neglect the Kingdom of God, I believe we tend to separate the other six elements out, as though they function independent of one another. Continue reading
I can’t remember the first time I heard it, but I know I’ve heard it a lot since.
“I’m a Christ-follower.”
I understand what people are doing when they say that. It’s an attempt to avoid the cultural baggage of the term “Christian,” a term that has come to mean all sort of things to people outside of the church which fall far short of the vision of the Kingdom of God we find in Christ. That being said, I’ve never been able to embrace “Christ-follower” as an alternative. It seems to me that it fails to communicate the reality that when a person puts his or her faith in Jesus as Lord, something radically different happens to their very being which changes them. Their identity, which does come from following Christ, is changed at the core of who they are. It’s as if in that moment, they are born all over again into someone new.
This belief, that as Christians, we are born-again is woven deep into the history of the Church of God. Having grown out of the revival and camp-meeting background of the 19th century, the Church of God has been a people who have held up the importance of that moment of rebirth. We call people to remember the day when their life changed forever and they were reborn in the Spirit of God! Sure, some are more dramatic than others, but it’s a part of who we are to believe that there is a day in our past to which we can point as our “second-birthday.” Continue reading
As I finished David’s post about what it means to say that we are “a Bible Church” I realized I had my work cut out for me. His post was clear and spot-on really, and I wasn’t sure what I might have to say to add to his thoughts. But the task has been given to me to kick the can down the road so to speak, and so I needed to find some way to consider the Bible as a central component in the life of the church, while moving us forward.
To say that the Church of God is “a Bible church” seems to point to the reality that in some way there must also be churches that exist that are something different. That’s not to say that they don’t read, teach, or believe the Bible, or that they are unChristian in their approach to scripture. Rather it is simply to highlight that various parts of the global body have been organized differently around this book, and if that’s the case then it seems logical to assume that there are certain challenges that arise from either decision. It would serve us well to consider these challenges. Continue reading
Last week, David posted about the story of a possible shooting spree in a Georgia school that was averted by the calm, loving actions of Antoinette Tuff. Against all odds Tuff offered compassion and empathy to a young man who arrived at the school that day, intending to do serious harm to others and to himself. Tuff has been touted as a hero.
And she should be.
Her actions prompted David to ask the question, “What would our lives look like if we were to live by the love of Christ, an attitude of nonviolence, and daily spiritual preparation?” These are important questions for Christians to ask, and I share what I sense to be a current of optimism beneath their surface. It suggests that embracing these practices would lead to something better for ourselves and others. But something about these questions haunts me as well, and I wonder how we might answer them if Tuff’s story was different.
Continue reading