By Pastor Dan
There are three specific strands of our RELOVUTIONARY DNA that excite me most right now. These are: Gospel-centredness, All of life as Missional, and a Church that Plants Churches.
As a Celtics fan, I’ve considered calling them, ‘the Big 3’, maybe at least in an unofficial sense? Now, because I’m writing this particular blog, and to bring things back into order after Pastor Jon’s comment about a certain Green, I just might do it.
So, why am I excited about ‘the Big 3’?
First of all, I’m excited about being an intentionally ‘gospel-centred’ community because of the way the Spirit of God moves amongst a people who grasp the reality of their identity in the gospel and live it out in their daily lives. I was blessed to be part of a church family in Chicago who had this as one of their core values and I experienced great liberty in my own walk with the Lord as a result of the faithfulness of the leadership and the core team to teach this truth, to live and embody it, AND to invite us all to walk together with them in it as a community. I’m excited to be a part of this RELOVUTIONARY community which has this gospel-centred strand in the very fabric of who we are. I’m also excited for the opportunity to cultivate this gospel-centred environment and culture, in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that other brothers and sisters too might walk more wholly and completely in the power and liberty of the gospel in their daily lives.
This brings life and joy to my soul! I believe we have a leadership, and a core team that God is establishing, who both expound the truth of the gospel from Scripture in a faithful manner and who also daily-live these truths in the power of the Holy Spirit in a manner worth imitating and being a part of in community. I’m excited about walking and growing as a community in the gospel; seeing how the gospel is the basis of our new identity in Christ; understanding how the gospel is the fuel for our daily walk with Christ; and living as a community of people who are continually becoming more gospel-saturated in our hearts, minds, wills, emotions and experience.
Secondly, I’m excited about being ‘All of life as Missional’. It’s especially important for us to understand as believers that being ‘missional’ or being ‘on mission’ isn’t just something we do when we go on a ‘mission trip’. Yes, this can be part of our missional life and service unto the Lord. However, this isn’t all that’s involved. Our whole life is mission; our whole life is to be missional. We need to know this, see it, own it, and walk in it with purpose and intentionality every day. God has sovereignly placed us right where we are in order that we would be living-testimonies to His gospel through both word and deed to all those whom we come into contact with in the God-ordained spheres of our everyday lives.
I’m excited about how the Lord will use this strand of our RELOVUTIONARY DNA to help us increasingly recognise, and take, the daily opportunities we have to both live out and speak forth the gospel into the lives of those who don’t believe. This should also challenge us with regard to the way we currently live our lives whilst going about the most mundane of tasks. Does our life truly testify to the gospel? Any minute of any given day, will those around us see the reality of the gospel in our lives? This should be the case. We need to know, in an ever-increasing manner, that the gospel is what every person needs; more than their next meal, more than clothing, more than the very oxygen God gives them to breathe; everyone desperately NEEDS the gospel. Why?
Because God gives us Himself in the gospel. In believing the gospel we receive Jesus, and in Him we receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And so, in this manner, God transforms us through the gospel. He gives us true meaning and purpose; He restores us to our reason for existing. He gives us freedom from ourselves and from our own self-righteous performance on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. And in Christ, God gives us life forever-more. The more we see this, and grasp it, and live it out—the more convinced we will be of it in our own lives and the more urgently we will make it known to those around us.
Finally, I’m excited about being ‘a Church that Plants Churches.’ This strand almost flows forth like a wellspring from the previous two. It’s the natural outworking of a gospel-centred, all of life as missional, community—we are committed to reproducing this RELOVUTIONARY community in other contexts and multiplying as we go about making disciples of Jesus Christ—teaching them to obey all that He’s commanded us and baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The goal of our RELOVUTIONARY church plant is to be part of advancing God’s Kingdom on this earth. We want to do this by being diligent to train and equip other pastors, leaders, and core team members who share in this vision and go forth planting churches throughout New Zealand and the nations—as the Lord wills.
To this end, I’m excited to pour out my life as an offering unto the Lord, and to lay it down in service of others, especially those in our RELOVUTIONARY church family.
May Christ be pleased to build His Church through us as He sees fit and to use our lives for His purposes in this country and to the ends of the earth for the sake of His own great name and for His glory!