The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only answer to man’s great need. For that reason, we want the message of the cross to be central in every facet of church life — when we gather for worship, in our homes, in our ministries where we work or even around the world. J.I. Packer says,
“The
gospel does bring us solutions to [man's] problems, but it does so by
first solving the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man’s
relation with his Maker; and unless we make it plain that the solution
of these former problems depends on the settling of this latter one, we
are misrepresenting the message and becoming false witnesses of God.”
The
gospel is the good news that, though we are sinners by nature and by
choice, we may be reconciled to the Father on the basis of Christ’s
blameless life and sacrificial death. As the repenting sinner, having
been awakened to his need of Christ and desiring deliverance from his
sin, abandons his own “righteousness” and submits to God’s just
authority, a righteousness outside himself is credited to him by grace.We believe that the same miracle (rebirth in regeneration) that is required for a child reared by Christian parents to be redeemed as for an irreligious tribesman in the deepest most remote part of the jungle. Likewise, it is the same message that is preached in either instance. Charles Spurgeon has written;
"The
power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the
preacher, otherwise men would be the converters of souls, nor does it
lie in the preachers learning, otherwise it would consist in the wisdom
of men. We must preach until our tongues rot off, till we would exhaust
our lungs and die. but never a soul would be converted unless the Holy
Spirit be with the word of God to give it the power to convert the soul.
If God does not save men by truth, He certainly will not save them by
lies. And if the old gospel in not competent to work a revival, then we
must simply do without revival."
The task of global missions matters because God is worthy of worship from every people group. To that end, we are calling and inviting local churches to a far greater task than merely an annual giving campaign. We believe local churches should be at the very center of mission work once again. This, we believe, is the norm that is given to us in the New Testament.
We believe that the adventure of world evangelization is much more than “thumbtacks on a map”. Rather, we trust that it will be the full church, joyfully, sacrificially laboring together toward the great day when we will join the “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
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To understand further the message of the Gospel, feel free to click on this link and learn even more through the "2 Ways to Live" online presentation. Please, do not hesitate to write me personally if you have any questions or prayer requests. Be blessed!
