Part 2: GP (squared)

Q: Can you explain what you mean by Gospel Perspective and Gospel Practice?

J. It’s not merely a conceptual thing. Often times these things are seen as doctrinal or conceptual; but the thing that grips us is there’s a person behind this named Jesus who has done everything necessary to make me right with God and to equip me for life, a profitable ministry in expansion of the kingdom here and now. So, everything revolves around the person and work of Jesus Christ expressed, culturally, locally, personally, relationally and all these things. That’s the Gospel Perspective. The conceptual way to say that is Justification and sanctification by faith through grace. The personal way to say it is Jesus. I don’t think you can divorce those things. If you have this mystical relationship with this person of Christ, you might not understand who he is and what he did. If you have the doctrinal idea, it can become a tradition or philosophy in a heartbeat. Even those two things together, they have to engage in present life in context. That’s what attracted me in the first place. There wasn’t a single concept I didn’t have. It’s just that Jesus showed up and the Spirit began to work in my life. That made a difference. That’s when I began to engage faith. Those are the pillars and the centers of Christian life and experience. Those are central; that’s what Paul did, that’s what Jesus did, that’s what the New Testament does.

D. Gospel Perspective. Another way to say that is to talk about a shift in paradigm. It’s not that you pick up all these principles. You look at life through a different lens. You look at life through the Gospel and that changes everything. When I read Scripture it’s different than it was before. Now I see through grace, through the person and work on Jesus Christ. How I read the cleansing of the temple, and how that applies to my life. We keep it very simple. Looking at everything through grace. It changes your perspective and practice in every way. It makes you want to change. It gives you the equipment. You have the spirit. You are not powerless. Out of that realization, all of life comes out as a response of worship.

J. Gospel practice springs out of Gospel Perspective. Part of what the church needs to do is help people understand what the person and work of Christ has to do with every aspect of their lives. It’s not just good news for evangelism, or for church staff. It’s good news for neighbors and life in the community. We want to make that tie individually and practically. Sunday morning we can give examples and state the principles boldly. One of the things we’re saying is how small groups help people get the Gospel perspective and Gospel practice. So that is happening. We’re trying to “push” in those perspectives, so in all of life perspective is performed in the centerpiece of reformed theology. It doesn’t feel like performance. The real reformation happens when the Gospel happens in all of life. Staff is now turned toward that, the preaching is turned toward that and that organized push is part of what we’re able to see being fleshed out better.
D. It’s Gospel Perspective leads to Gospel Practice. What are the Gospel Practices? It’s all the things in the Bible that God calls us to do. So, we want to see people give more generously because they’re filled with the Gospel; we want to see them more merciful; we want to see them moving out in relationships with people; we want to see people get involved in missions; we want to see them studying the Bible, leading them to disciple other people, and all those other areas Scripture talks about.

Q. We often hear that Grace plays one note? What is that note?

D. It’s the good news of the Gospel. You can’t read the New Testament, especially, and not be smacked right in the face with the only ting we’re called to is to preach the Gospel and disciple people in the Gospel. You could go on for hours on that. One of the things God has prepared us for is the practicality and depth of preaching the Gospel. I hear the Gospel being taught by a lot of folks but it’s not very practical. I was taught it in seminary but it wasn’t very accessible as far as translating it now in my own life. It’s not transparent. Part of accessing it is seeing how it’s working in other people’s lives, including the lives of teachers and preachers. We’re both well trained. We’ve gracefully received good training. It was enough; we’ve been blessed with that. Providentially we’ve been put in a place, in a context, in a community, that fans that flame and it’s a blessing. It’s really a sanctification issue: the present tense of the Gospel. What does it mean to live by faith, by grace? Yet, for us, that’s so united to truth and fruit and it keeps it from becoming what it sometimes becomes. It’s that sanctification issue. How does faith lead to holiness? It’s not just living by faith like faith is divorced from how you treat people. It’s a strong link for us.

Q: Yet despite playing that one note over and over again, it’s amazing how diverse in terms of background our body is. Why is that?

D & J. [Laughter]
J. I had lunch with a PCA pastor this week. He said, ‘Why don’t you send some folks over?’ I told him we had 60 people in new members class. Only four had Presbyterian background, not PCA even.

D. I’m amazed how unbelievers come here and continue to come. They’re not even seekers. They don’t know why they’re coming. Some of the new age folks I see coming back again and again. Someone I was with yesterday, I was frightened. So out there! It’s not so much a racial mix, not as much as we’d like, but a political and cultural diversity.


J. Dave and I are both real comfortable with that diversity. That is a strong factor that has made us work together well.

D. It comes from the top; it affects the culture of the church now. I was talking to a gay guy last night who comes here occasionally. He knows what I think about what Scripture says, but he doesn’t feel the judgment here. We get a large number of fundamentalists or conservative or evangelical burnouts, or reactionaries or drop outs. We get a lot of unchurched Christians I would call them. We get churched Christians that are looking from something different and we get some seekers. We get a good smattering of people that never imagined that a church would even want them.

J. I’ll tell you a group. I don’t have any statistics or haven’t asked them, but I’ve noticed this. We have this Saturday night service that’s more liturgical and interestingly enough there’s some people who don’t come anywhere else to any other service. When folks come up, you can tell who’s from a Baptist background, you can tell people who are just trying to figure things out. You have the common cup and the wine. Another group comes up and takes the cup and the wine. Episcopalian, Catholic. Even at the communion time here are people responding and you notice the differences in that celebration.

D. The more personal your relationship becomes with people, you are astonished by the difference. I have a person on one side a Republican , he even wore a flag once and has someone from the Democratic planning party sitting right next to her and they get along. The Gospel gets tested. Some people can’t handle that. People find out we’re not getting onto this or that agenda, people who stay pick up what we who are in leadership are committed to. The one dogged priority is above everything else, is the Gospel.

J. There’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Democratic Party and there’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Republican Party. So, having people in both those representations and finding the Gospel is a wonderful thing. So the kingdom of God actually affects al parties all peoples rather than one group claiming ownership of kingdom

D. That’s another one of those reformed principles that we’re trying to play out practical. Don’t enculturate Jesus. Every church has a culture, but let’s remember that the Gospel is above and beyond culture.