Cultural Values as Standard-Bearers

Sometimes one-line or two can communicate more than a whole book.

In an article titled, Books Don’t Change People, Paragraphs Do, John Piper, said the following about this context: “One sentence or paragraph may lodge itself so powerfully in our mind that its effect is enormous when all else is forgotten.” [*]

With this in mind, the following is a growing list of Cultural Values as Standard-Bearers, which we at RELOVUTIONARY will seek to infuse and defuse in our forming communal and cultural mix at a more specific level than say the Core Distinctives, for example. Therefore, you could understand these as grounding this material down into the next level, where the potential lines could be innumerable.

These can provide singular gut-checks of truth, challenging where we presently reside in the daily unfolding. Therefore, their purpose is multiple. God willing, this list will increasingly grow, and increasingly bite.

These should also both provide insight into our growing shape, and whether this local church will personally resonate.

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~ A RELOVUTIONARY Life is about the Extraordinary God, Empowering Ordinary People, through the Mundane of Days, in Ways that Can Only Be Divinely Scaled.

~ Meaning for Life + Flourishing into Life = In Christ

~ Everybody is Living for Something. Something will be the Content of Meaning. Meaning Fuels the Human Gravitational Pull into Worship. And Everybody Must Worship. Jesus is the Christian’s Answer for Meaning. Jesus is, therefore, the Life We Worship.

~ The Content of Identity becomes the Object of Worship, and the Measure of Living Sacrifice. For the Christian, the Answer is Following Jesus.

~ Without Jesus, the Content of Identity, becomes the Means for Idolatry, and the Fuel for Addiction. The Inevitable Arc of this Universal Flow Leads to Destruction, and Not Flourishing.

~ ‪Only Through God-Centred, Jesus-Faming-Worship, are We Restored to Vigour from the Exhaustion and Burnout of Seeking Our Own Glory (Working some Keller).

~ Flourishing Means like the True Human, Jesus.

~ Flourishing = Gospel Depth + Missional Width.

~ Flourishing Means Compartment-Free Living.

~ Flourishing Demands Process. Programs and Moments have a Place, But Remain Additions, Not Foundations.

~ Flourishing Does Not Mean the Culturally Enthusiastic Pursuit for Unbridled Authenticity; for an Unrestricted and Unrestrained Liberated Push into a Type of Demanding Freedom, which is Anchored through an Undeterred Self-Expression.

~ Flourishing Does Not Mean All That We Can Be, But More Like Jesus Can, through Our Broken, Yet Renewed Human Vessel, Made Supernaturally Whole.

~ Flourishing Means Knowing the Right Restrictions as God Intends; that Fit our Humanity like a Glove; as Only through a God-Refining Shape Will We Find True Liberation from Our Mortally Self-Absorbed Devolutionary Disease.

~ Daily Seeking Intentionality in Our Life and Times, like God is Sovereignly Purposeful Throughout Every Detail, for His Glory, and Our Good.

~ Making Disciples Means Every Believer Living an Active Intentional Process. Without Which, A Passively Intentional Lack, Will Dominate and Domesticate. This Will Not Lead to Flourishing.

~ Worship as Lifestyle Does Not Mean Passively Below-the-Surface, But Comprehensively Throughout All-of-Life, as a Realistic Celebration and Outworking of Meaning, Identity, and Flourishing.

~ Celebrating the Seasons of Life with a Party.

~ Life as Process Means Small Steps in the Same Direction over an Increasing Period of Time.

~ Life as Process Means the Power of Habit to Confirm the Love of Our Life (Some James KA inspiration).

~ Imitation is the Flourishing Art of Realised Discipleship, and the Expectant Result of Believers, Who Can Be Righteously Copied.

~ Real Change is an Every Week-Day Event.

~ It is Not Desire that Determines your Destiny, but Discipline (Ravenhill).

~ Skilful Living Means Not Being Cynical; Not Being Gullible; But Discerning.

~ Faithful Before, But Into, Fruitful. God Defines and Decides the Exact Growing Shape.

~ Seeking to Perpetually Infuse the Profane with the Profound; the Secular with the Sacred, and the Insignificant with Real Meaning.

~ Theologically Conservative in Ideas, But Culturally Liberal in Engagement, Like Jesus.

~ Expect the God of the Bible to Regularly Contradict Every Person, Because His Perfections Define Truth, and Not Our Still Flawed Person or Perspective.

~ For We Cannot Do Anything Against the Truth, But Only for the Truth (2 Cor. 13:8).

~ Hearts and Minds Always Exploded with Truth.

~ Truth-Seekers Should Not Fear Any Questions and Be Open to Examination.

~ God’s Truth is Not Rocket-Science, but Rocket-Fuel.

~ Not Afraid to Sound Culturally Stupid for the Glory of God.

~ Scripture Alone is Our Leading Epistemology, but not as “Solo” without Church History.

~ Substance Over, But Not Without, Style.

~ Subject-Depth Before Content-Width.

~ Saved to Serve: Using Our God-Given Gifts in Service.

~ We Have Been Made Imago Dei and Re-Made in Christ for Community like the Trinity.

~ Community with an Open-Door Policy, Especially to Any Least of These.

~ Seeking and Celebrating Each Other’s Journey, Like It Is Your Own, and Because We’re On the Same Team.

~ Naked Conversations Validate our Identity as Not in What We Do, But in What Christ has Already Finished.

~ Fruitful are the Wounds of a Faithful Friend.

~ Increasingly Encouraging As We Should, Setting the Proper Balance and Future Coordinates, for a Positively Challenging Rebuke.

~ If You Truly Love Someone, You Will Hate the Sin Destroying Their Person, and Seek the Solution, Because You Believe the Consequences.

~ Mask-Free Living: Small-Talk leads to Shallow Engagement.

~ Blazing Affections and Emotions rightly Anchored through True Thinking Wisdom.

~ No Singing Boyfriend Songs to Jesus.

~ Celebrating Man and Woman as Same, but Different, as God Intended.

~ Men of Honour. Men Who Open Doors for Others.

~ Not Going Far Enough Can Be Just as Great a Sin as Going Too Far. The Result is We Have a Generation of Conservative-Conservatives, Who Invariably Don’t Go Far Enough Out of Fear of Going Beyond. This Has Emasculated Our Existential Emancipation.

~ Wrongly-Conceived Fear is Not Our Friend. Awe is. Because the Gospel Has Forever Changed His Relationship to Abba Father.

~ “Godly fear does not arise from a perception of God as hazardous, but glorious.” – John Flavel

~ Quick to Hear, Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger.

~ Because Our Identity is Completed through the Gospel, We Need Not Take Ourselves Too Seriously, Since His Performance is What Counts, We Can Laugh at Ourselves Out-Loud.

~ God Gets to Define the Content of What True Love Looks and Lives Like. He Has. In the Word of God.

~ Love is About Doing What is (Biblically) Best for Another Person.

~ Speaking the Truth in Love with Grace.

~ Love Just Must.

~ Encouraging Others like We Believe in the Resurrection.

~ RELOVUTIONARY intends to be a Local Church that Plants Churches. This is Foundational. Our Culture and Process Must Reflect this Reality through the Identification, Training, and Enabling of Future Godly Planters.

~ Prayer is our Pulse. It Remains a “Litmust” Test of True Life.

~ Because God Must Do It, and We Really Believe This, We Will Become Prayerfully Animated and Arrested.

~ We Talk About What We Love the Most (Goff). This is Both an Indicator of Passion and Should be an Intention of Daily Purpose.

~ How We Worship Proves the Strength of Whom We Trust.

~ Depth in the Gospel Leads to Width in the Mission (Greear).

~ If the Body of Christ is Little More than a Communal Club, It Has Become Separated from Its Transformative Head, and Lost Its Redemptive Life and Purpose.

~ This Movement Must Not Be a Group of People Gathered Around a Leader, But a Leadership Factory Gathered Through the Flourishing Production of the Gospel (Working some Greear).

~ All Leaders Must Be Renewed or Replaced (Chan). The Former is Normative Discipleship in the Gospel; the Latter a Deadening Religious Posturing of Going through the Superficial Motions.

~ Real Cultural Relevance is Never Gained Through Watering Down Christian Doctrine, But Through Better Understanding How the Depth of God’s Story is More Coherent, Compelling, and Comprehensive in Answering the Questions About Ultimate Reality, Than Any Other Substitute.

~ We Don’t Become More Fruitful By Losing Our Biblical Edges, But By Better Sharpening These Through Existential Integration, Into All of Life.

~ The Gospel is Real Hope, Not Hype. Only One Letter Difference, But a World in Meaning. In a World of Spin, Hype Can Amount to Sin. Hype is Man-Generated. Hope is Jesus-Incarnated.

~ One of Our Biggest Negative Daily Obstacles Is Ourselves. We Need the Freedom that Comes from Forgetting Ourselves; Not Attaching Every Event Through Our Personal.

~ The World Says You’ll Only Find Your Place By Making Yourself Number One. Jesus Says, Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross, and Follow Me. True Life is Gained Through Giving This Life Away.

~ In Christ, What Cosmically Unites Is Much More Than What Culturally Divides. The Gospel DNA Gifts a New Passport for the Community of God to Unite Under, And So Become Truly Liberated, to Reach and Integrate Every Other World and Culture.

~ God’s True Shalom Contra Western Meanings of Peace, Can Be Most Proven in the Multicultural Make-up of the Church. This is Not Simply to Make a Show That We Are Not Race-Based, But to Model the True Unity Within Diversity that Being Made Imago Dei Contends, And Which the Gospel Establishes, into Our Forever Unfolding Future.

~ When you enter corporate worship, sit down, rest, and be renewed, but be warned, by the end, that seat becomes a launchpad.

~ If your god does not contradict you, you may just be worshipping yourself (Some Keller inspiration)!

~ The Missional Flow: Sent-Went. It’s almost poetry-in-motion!

~ For the Fame of His Name.

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[*] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/books-dont-change-people-paragraphs-do.