AAEVS - Putting Together a Christ-centered Community (Part 3)

Unrestrained Love/Respect

This is not hippy, wishy-washy love that is nice and rosy but the love that, as John Piper put it, “joyfully meets the needs of others.” By “Unrestrained” I don’t mean affection that goes outside of moral or etiquette boundaries, but brotherly love that is not kept back by a form of stoicism; The kind of stoicism that says, “I must not express love to anyone in word or action because that would be awkward or shameful.”

However, love will physically look different person to person, one may expect words and another may expect gifts. Gary Chapman in his book series, “The Five Love Languages” categorizes five different expressions (or “languages” as he called them) of love in this order: 

AAEVS - Putting Together a Christ-centered Community (Part 2)

Edification/Holiness

This is the primary goal of the church. All the other seventeen elements are summarized in this one aspect, which is God's desire for us to be like Him. Because we are bought with a price, we have no right to live for ourselves but for the glory of Christ; which is not a killjoy but a higher pleasure. (Here is an article from Desiring God: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-beauty-of-holiness-and-the-miracle-of-sanctification)

In God's providence, He has brought us together as Grace Covenant Church to be sanctified by the truth so that we would be a testimony to the world of the Trinitarian arrival of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. The Spirit intends for us to build each other up in the word of God, so that we could be used in His service. He moved Paul to express his prayers to the Ephesians about His expectation of churches everywhere of all ages to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let's expound on them and see if we could get some practical applications for our Church Community. (Eph 1:16-23, 3:14-21)

AAEVS - Putting Together a Christ-centered Community (Part 1)

“Our vision is for our church to be a group of covenanted believers, a community of saints. We desire to display God’s love to one another through encouragement, accountability, exhortation and discipline. We want to support one another and seek to alleviate each other’s needs whenever possible.” ~ Community Paragraph 2

"And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." ~ Acts 2:42

We have gone over most of the section on the Kingdom of God. Hopefully those posts have shown the necessity of a Kingdom-oriented vision. Now we come to the section on Community, probably the hardest concept to put into practice. Because it is against a individualistic mind-set in our culture that glorifies individuals that are concerned for themselves and do what is right in their own eyes. Also, not many people are concerned about a Church Community to begin with; There are few Christian books out there that talk about a community centered on Christ and Him Crucified. Therefore we need wisdom given by the Holy Spirit to discern how to practically construct a community according to Biblical standards.

Bible Reading Does Nothing For Me?

This is an old post that I've read from "Berean Wife" For those who don't know who she is, her husband did a lecture on "The English Bible Before 1611" at our conference on the English Bible. This parable has helped me gain a motivation to read through the Scriptures even if I don't see the benefits of it. It doesn't have to apply to just reading the Bible. It applies to prayer, participating in church, evangelism, giving, etc. For the sake of time, I will keep the formatting.

A Few Things...

After thinking about it, I decided that I will skip over the paragraph on ecumenical fellowship and go on to the section on Community; Mostly because my applications had only our church's leadership in mind. So to make up for the lost time, I'll share with you two things,

One: Sermon Clips from Doug Wilson on Holiness and Worship.

http://www.canonwired.com/sermons/sermon-clips/holiness/

http://www.canonwired.com/featured/definition-of-worship/

AAEVS - Our Focus and Our Strength (Part 2)

Seeing that we are dependent on His grace to advance the Kingdom in ourselves and the world around us, we must walk in the power of His Spirit. Which means we must submit as Joshua Harris puts it, “to the direction, agenda, values, and priorities of God’s Spirit, as illuminated through Scripture.” (Not Even A Hint, Page 56) So what is it like to be in the Kingdom according to the Spirit? Let’s expound a little upon Paul’s description of Kingdom Life in Romans 14:17,

Righteousness: Which is not our righteousness but Christ’s. We live out this righteousness through the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin and encouraging us to trust and obey gladly.

Peace: The Holy Spirit assures us that we are justified by His grace, having no condemnation. He tells us that God is in control of History, and that our Kingdom labor is not in vain.
    
Joy: The Spirit reminds us that since we are saved by grace and that Christ is victorious over His enemies, which will be recognized in the end, we should be full of joy.

AAEVS - Our Focus and Our Strength (Part 1)

"Our vision for the kingdom of God is not dependent, however, on us acting on our own. This kingdom is the project of the Almighty Lord. He has revealed to us that it will be overwhelmingly successful in history—in this church-age dispensation—and in human culture. God has ordained that it transform the world. We desire, therefore, to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that His power working through us will advance kingdom purposes." ~ The Kingdom of God Paragraph 3

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." John 15:5

"Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;/Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:/Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;/Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,/And He must win the battle." ~ A Mighty Fortress is Our God by Martin Luther

Here we are at the second section of the series on the Elders' Vision Statement. We've gone over the paragraph about having a Kingdom-oriented perspective by which we arrange our decisions and activities around. Since then, you may have thought of areas that we could put in subjection to Christ. Perhaps you are motivated to expand the Kingdom into every area of life. But a problem arises, there is sin present within us and within the pre-Christian world that opposes the work of Christ. That fact can make our Kingdom vision look rosy and unrealistic. If we are not careful, we could get discouraged to the point that we become hardened and stagnant. However, we can glean some things from this paragraph in the Elders' Vision; we cannot of ourselves fight our indwelling sin and the pre-Christian world, we must put our trust in God’s promises and call upon Him to aid us in our battles. We must let the Holy Spirit speak to us through His word and be our strength in our war against sin.

The Apostles' Creed set in Music

This is a video of Christ Church (or Doug Wilson) in Moscow, ID singing the Apostles' Creed. (This song isn't exactly word for word with the Creed but it's pretty close. It starts on 0:05)

http://www.canonwired.com/featured/apostles-creed/

Our Identity

This is a article I made for our church's website for our pastors to review. I'm now showing it to those in our church who are gifted in these things. It is made to answer the concerns of those whom we affiliate with and church-seekers who have negative connotations of what "Primitive Baptists" are. I would appreciate your feedback. (in passing when I ask questions at the bottom of the posts, I really do expect a response)

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Note: We encourage you to read the whole article before forming an opinion about who we are and what we do. Our wish is that you would not be repelled by a word that today has negative connotations. But rather that you would understand and appreciate our heritage of Historical Baptists who firmly believed the sovereignty of God in salvation and desired a purely, New Covenant church in faith and practice.

Our Identity

For those who are curious to know who we are, Grace Covenant Church is only our public title, our full title is “Grace Covenant Church - a Primitive Baptist Congregation.” Before August 2011, we were known as "the Gadsden Primitive Baptist Church."

 By "Primitive," we do not mean that we handle snakes or that we do not have modern technology, in the 1830's the word meant "Original" (See Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary). During that period, the Baptists were divided over issues regarding practice as well as doctrinal issues. Those who held to the original doctrines and practices as the Bible teaches were known as "Primitive Baptists." The Baptists split and the word "primitive" since then become attached to the Old School Baptists; they faced many disagreements and transitions, but they held on and still today are holding to the Doctrines of Grace and the practices of the New Testament. It is a remarkable testimony of God’s preservation of churches that dare to believe and practice the teachings of Scripture.

Why then did we change our name?

The reasons for this are straightforward. In our community, the word "primitive" today often conveys undesirable connotations that, we believe, may hinder the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Common definitions of the word from a variety of disciplines include: "characteristic of an early state, esp in being crude or uncivilized; denoting or relating to a preliterate and non-industrial social system; of, relating to, or resembling an early stage in the evolutionary development of a particular group of organisms; showing the characteristics of primitive painters; untrained, childlike, or naïve" (from www.Dictionary.com) These are, for the most part, ideas we do not want associated with our church or with the gospel of the grace of God.

However, the word “primitive” can still convey to some extent Webster’s idea of “original.” With that in mind, we sincerely wish to retain our identity as true, primitive Baptists. We see ourselves as existing within the stream of faithful Baptist witnesses: the Particular Baptists in England and elsewhere in the seventeenth century; the Philadelphia Baptist Association and like-minded churches in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the faithful Primitive Baptists that have followed in their footsteps. We identify ourselves with them through our official adoption of the 1689 London Baptist Confession as the summary of our faith.

As our new name states, we are still a Primitive Baptist church. In most public displays of our name we use the abbreviated name Grace Covenant Church. We are using that name on signs identifying our congregation and on our web pages, blogs, Facebook, etc.

Knowing that some of you may question the wisdom of the path we have taken, we ask you to understand we have sought to walk a fine line in this matter. On one hand, we wanted to distance ourselves from the negatives associated with a particular word. On the other, we wanted to retain our identity and heritage. How well we have succeeded we leave to your judgment of charity.

It is our wish that you would not be repulsed by what we identify ourselves but that you would fellowship with us, even come and worship with us in the assembly of Original, Historical Baptists.

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Questions:

Do you think this gives a good answer to concerns from both Primitive Baptists and Non-Primitive Baptists?

Is this article well formatted? (as far as grammar, structure, wording, etc.) 

Is there anything not expressed that should be added?

Is there any thing expressed that is unnecessary or should be taken out?

Is there anything written that should be rearranged somewhere else?

Bored? Read This!

(This is from the Rebelution site. I apologize for the delay in the next post in the series, it will come pretty soon!) 

Fellow rebelutionary, Spunky Junior, shares the following quotation by G.K. Chesterton: “There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.”

Chesterton is right. When you think about it, there really aren’t any intrinsically boring topics. After all, some people really are interested in studying a dripping glob of congealed black tar for decades on end. In fact, someone won an Ig Nobel Prize for doing just that.

However, although there isn’t such a thing as a boring topic, there is such a thing as a bored person. Each of us experiences the feelings of boredom on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many of the things that seem boring (or disinteresting) are the very things that develop godly character and competence — things like school, reading our Bible, studying theology, or spending time with our family.

Here’s the question: What is boredom and how can we change our interests so that we enjoy doing hard things?

How To Fight The Sin Of Pride Especially When You Are Praised

(This I got from a link on the Rebelution site, it's from John Piper)

Ten Things I Do

I call to mind that I am not self-existent; only the triune God is. Only God is absolute, but I am contingent. I remind myself that I am utterly dependent on God for my origin and for my present and future existence. I call this to mind and ponder its truth.

I remember that I am by nature a depraved sinner and that, in all my sinning, I have treated God with contempt, preferring other things to his glory. I take stock that I have never done a good deed for which I don’t need to repent. Each one is flawed because perfection is commanded. Therefore I realize that God owes me nothing but pain in this life and the next.

I ponder that this condition of mine is so desperate that it could only be remedied at the cost of the horrid death of the Son of God, to bear my punishment and provide my righteousness. And I revel in the forgiveness and righteousness that is mine in Christ.

AAEVS - Prioritizing our Lives and Desires around the Kingdom

"Our vision is for our church to reflect the centrality of the kingdom in every area of life. We desire that our decisions and activities revolve around the fact that we are part of the kingdom God has established. We want to recognize that this kingdom is God’s instrument for His reclamation of the world. Therefore, we desire to be a church with a vision for Christ’s growing kingdom. We rejoice in the events that brought about the kingdom of God incarnation of Jesus Christ, His life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to rule and reign at the right hand of the Father) and seek to be an active part of its growth, primarily through preaching the gospel." ~ The Kingdom of God Paragraph 2

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;" 2 Corinthians 10:5

Here we come to the first of the series on "Analyzing and Applying the Elders' Vision Statement". Here I'll attempt to encourage you to take the challenge and privilege that our Elders have set before us. It is a challenge because we have to make changes, changes that push us out of our comfort zones, and constantly put to death our sinful natures that oppose the working of the Spirit. It is a privilege because we have the promises of God to assure us of the blessings we receive when we put these things into practice.

AAEVS - Introduction

Lord willing, I'm going to start a series of posts titled "Analyzing and Applying the Elders' Vision Statement" to give some ideas how we as a church could move in the path that our elders have set out for us. Hopefully it will be a blessing to you and an encouragement to pursue excellence.

They'll go in this order: (they will probably have different titles)

The Kingdom of God

• Prioritizing our Lives and Desires around the Kingdom
• Our Focus and Our Strength
• Seeking Fellowship with other Believers

Community

• Putting Together a Christ-seeking Community
• Practicing Discipleship
• Having a Long-term Commitment to Faithfulness

Worship

• The Importance of Worship
• Preparing for Worship
• Expressing our Worship

Evangelism

• Expanding the Kingdom with Joy
• The Eschatology of Evangelism