want to destroy a church?
The ways of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it-admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively over the long haul. Building the church with superficial ‘conversions’ and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembling of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism-all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. And to do so is dangerous: ‘If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple (1 Cor. 3:17).” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
from the book, The Cross and Christian Ministry by D.A. Carson
happy birthday, Kalena!
take me back
I love the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The one son wastes his inheritance, messes up his life and finds himself feeding pigs. Worse yet, he is even joining the pigs for dinner. Finally he has had enough and decides to head back home, to ask his father to be a servant. Because even his father’s servants were living better than he was. The story concludes with the son walking down the dusty lane and sees his father running towards him, welcoming him back to the family.
Ministry isn’t always full of glamourous stories. There are times when the life seems to be sucked out you. Recently I was startled to find out that one of my friends had fallen back to his old lifestyle. Individuals searched the city until he was found. As I was sitting beside him, he cried out, “pastor, do you think God will take me back?” It was a joy to walk beside him that night as I shared the story of the prodigal son and how God would gladly welcome him back home. We wept together and prayed together.
I can never thank God enough for taking me back.
hope, love, redemption // part 3
put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption. - Psalm 130:7
I believe that redemption is still possible. At the Gospel Center , everything we do, we do with the ultimate of goal of redemption. By offering hope and love, we believe that is able to help us share the redemption story of Jesus Christ.
Here are two examples.
We have been doing Angel Food Ministries for almost two years now. Not only does it help our community tangibly, we are able to share the love of Jesus Christ through that ministry. We now have several individuals who are coming to the Gospel Center because we offered them hope and love and now we are able to share the story of redemption. We have joined them in the journey of life.
up7street is the same story. We offer hope to teens, give them a safe environment to hang out at, show them unconditional love and share the redemption of Jesus.
I am passionate about offering hope, love and redemption and I am thrilled that the people of the Gospel Center are too!
hope, love, redemption // part 2
continuation from yesterday …
In addition to offering hope to our community, another value that we believe strongly in is to offer the love of Jesus Christ to everyone. I realize that this seems to to be a given, but it is extremely important. In fact offering hope and love go hand-in-hand.
Here are a few examples of how individuals from the Gospel Center offered love to those around them just in these past 24 hours.
- Being with a family as their fourteen-year-old child was taken to a juvenile facility in handcuffs and shackles.
- Offering comfort to a family from Haiti that has received daily news of close friends who are now dead.
- Walking with a friend who has had to pick up the pieces of their life and start over.
- Being a source of love to a frustrated single mom.
- Helping to feed and clothe those who lost so much in the fire yesterday.
Some ways were small, others were time consuming, but in the end, everyone of these examples were offered love tangibly.
hope, love, redemption // part 1
Three of the core values that we believe in strongly at the Gospel Center are to offer everyone around us hope, love and redemption.
“Joe” got out of our local prison a few months ago. While he was in jail, his wife filed for divorce, had a restraining order put out against him, drained his financial accounts, and generally ruined his life. While he was in jail, I had the opportunity to introduce him to the hope of the world, Jesus Christ. All of his problems still aren’t solved and his life still seems to be in chaos. But he has seen the hope that Jesus offers.
Not all of our ministry is glamourous as you can imagine. We have seen lives ruined. There are people that we have worked closely with that have died of an overdose, or were killed. We have seen children that were sent off to foster care because both daddy and mommy were in prison. But with each and every individual that we come across, we offer them the hope of Jesus Christ. He is the only one that can transform their lives
We offer hope to children. Every week we have an active kidz club where children of all ages hear the stories of Jesus. Arlene and her team of helpers do an incredible job of teaching our children.
We offer hope to teens. Lance Shuey and Jeremy Morford work with our teens each Sunday morning. We also offer hope to our teens through up7street. Every second and fourth monday evening we meet with our teens for an incredible time of teaching and fun.
We offer hope through Discover Recovery. We offer good Christ-centered, Bible-based counseling in their areas of need.
We offer our community hope through helping them with their grocery budget by offering them Angel Food Ministries. This is a growing ministry of the Gospel Center that helps practically. Jim Sherman and our great team of volunteers do an incredible job with this ministry.
But most of all, we offer hope through Jesus Christ. We are able to impact peoples lives through our Sunday morning worship services. Three of us also go into the Lebanon Jail two times a month. I am privileged to preach about Jesus and the hope that He offers to all.
As the Gospel Center continues to grow, we plan on basing all of our ministry upon the foundation of hope, love and redemption.
cold baptisms
A few weeks ago on our camping trip, we had an impromptu baptism service with some of our teens. We baptized them in a cold mountain-fed stream.
Earlier that weekend we had talked about moments that we feel closest to God – this was one of those moments for me.
The Gospel Center has awesome volunteers!
Tomorrows morning, before 6am, several of our volunteers will be unloading the truck at the Lebanon Middle School. A little while later, more volunteers will show up and tables were moved, chairs rearranged, forms filled out and computers hooked up to the network. Sometime after that, people of the community will arrive to pick up the food that they had pre-purchased.
So far, over 1,500 families have benefited from Angel Food. It is an incredible program that feeds a family of four for a week, or a single individual for almost a month.
Month-after-month, our volunteers are thrilled to be able to help our community by showing hope and love through tangible means.
We have the best volunteers around!
safety
Life is never dull at the Gospel Center. For those of you who don’t know, Arlene and I currently live above the Gospel Center. We have kids, teens and adults from our community at our house almost everyday. Sometimes they are there for counseling, other times just to hang out. Often when nobody else is around, the conversations turn more serious. Recently we had a few teens over, and the moment happened. Turns out these two teens are probably fighting a serious spiritual war. One that is potentially so serious they shouldn’t have to face alone. And they won’t, now that we know.
Some of their final words were words that Arlene and I hear so often. “We feel so safe here.”
That is why the Gospel Center desperately needs a place where people can hang out. Whether it is to get counseling, have fun, grow in community together or whatever. They need a safe place.
gang activity and the church
On July 19th, gangs and drugs were topics of interest at a local forum. There are certain gangs that are recruiting members from our local elementary and middle school students.
I am glad that our community is concerned about the increased gang activity. I am thrilled that there are new initiatives that have been started to help combat the problem. But I wonder what the church is going about it?
Several ways that we in the church-community can help:
- know the signs. Become a student of gang-related signs, insignias, clothing, numbers. Understand the reasons people join gangs.
- Develop an outlet for them. Sunday School just isn’t enough. They probably aren’t going to come. According to experts that I have talked with, individuals join gangs initially because they are looking for friends and fellowship and long for identity.
- Become a role model. Many gang members long for strong figures in their lives. Many grew up without a dad in their lives. They long for responsible people in their lives.
Since our arrival in Lebanon, Arlene and I have noticed the uptick in gangs. One of the reasons we started up7street was to help combat our section of the neighborhood from being as susceptible to gangs. We have had gang members attend up7street. We have teens and kids of ours right now that are being drawn into their folds. A few years ago I had a memorial service of a gang member that was shot and killed. The Gospel Center was FULL of rival gang members that night, many of them were packing weapons of all sorts. They had lookouts outside the Gospel Center and around the block.
We created a place for individuals to feel safe, whether they grew up in church, or are members of a gang. We have role models for them. up7street is based on a small-group model and we have our teens broken up into four groups that are led by by good role models. But there is still more that we can do.
What about you? What have you done or are you going to do to help with the problem of gangs in your area? Let me know! Together we can make a difference for our communities.
