In May we took a team of 12 São Paulo Brasil. Here is a video of some of the highlights from the trip. Thank all of you who supported our team with prayer and financial support.
Archive for June, 2009
Global Mission (Brasil)
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009Aletheia Richmond 9.28.2009
Monday, June 29th, 2009
It was a wonderful day at Aletheia yesterday as we gathered as a community to worship Jesus. I noticed yesterday for the first time since we began meeting weekly to worship Christ together that our baby church is beginning to mature. I am beginning to see the same faces week after week as people begin to really grasp the concept of covenant life. I am also beginning to hear, as I speak to people within the congregation, a deep desire to see their friends and neighbors connect to Christ and His community. It is such a joy and an honor to be one of many that lead Aletheia in becoming more like Jesus.
We are currently teaching through the book of Hebrews, and our central text yesterday was Hebrews 9:1-10 (The series is called “Shadows”). The central theme was the function of the 1st Covenant. I made three observations:
- The 1st Covenant Was Meant To Point To Jesus
- The 1st Covenant Was Meant To Point To Its Own Insufficiency
- The 1st Covenant Was Meant To Point To Our Ultimate Problem
As I studied for this message, I was gripped with the reality that every portion of Scripture is either pointing forward, pointing back, or focused on Jesus and the redemptive work of God. The Old Covenant worship practices are laced with a redemptive foreshadowing for the work of Christ and are alway beckoning us back to a cross centered and gospel saturated view of life. Keilan and the band did a great job of focusing our heart toward Christ through music and responding to Christ’s words in repentance, adoration, and praise. John challenged us in light of the New Covenant work of Jesus to enter in to the presence of God daily. Ashton shared about our global mission trip to Brasil and her heart to return and see the gospel take root in that country. She called us to take a missionary posture with our friends, family, and coworkers for the sake of Christ. It was a great day.
After the service, about forty of us went out to lunch to share a meal with the Kollman family. Chris and Christine have been members our church for the last year. They answered the call to serve Jesus overseas in Belgium a little more than a year ago. I had the great opportunity of meeting Chris about a year and a half ago when he approached me about an internship to fulfill his remaining requirements at Southern Theological Seminary. Chris and Christine in their time at Aletheia have served in every possible area. Their passion to see the gospel go out to this generation is inspiring. They have been such a blessing to our church as they brought the new dynamic of children to our 20-something dominated church.
On Wednesday Chris, Christine, Daniel, Joshua, and baby Grace leave for Belgium. As a church our prayers go with them as they adjust to life away from family, learn a new language, and sow the seed of the gospel into the hard soil of Western Europe. You can follow there progress and prayer needs on their blog at http://kollmansinsubmission.blogspot.com/
Barriers To Being On Mission (Part 2)
Sunday, June 28th, 2009First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established— that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. -Romans 1:8-15
Struggle #2: I Have A Tendency To View The Gospel As A Means Of My Success Rather Than The End Of All My Affections
In Romans 1:15 the apostle Paul states, “I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” At first glance this seems to be a pretty normal statement for a frontier missionary to the Gentiles to make in light of his passion and calling to take the good news of Christ to those who do not know him, but it is somewhat odd when you consider that he is writing to an already established church and to those who have already responded to Jesus in repentance and faith. Essentially Paul is telling “all those in Rome loved by God, and called (this word means to call out unto salvation) to be saints” that his greatest desire is to preach the good news of Jesus to them.
Why does he do this? Why does Paul see a need to tell the people in Rome who have obviously received the gospel their need of the gospel? Because Paul knew something that we pragmatic, system-saturated, electronic-savvy generation of pastors, church planters and followers of Christ have forgotten–the gospel of the glory of Christ is the end. It was meant to produce in us affections that burn so hot for Jesus that it would propel us to love, good deeds, redemptive biblical community, and mission. Thus, the gospel is not merely what causes new birth, it is the very power of God that produces conformity to Jesus and mission in and through us. I believe this is why the apostle, at the end of his master exposition of the gospel of God’s grace, charges us in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Essentially, Paul is telling us that it is through a deep rigorous embrace of the gospel in our souls that we will understand the priority of worship and mission. Why do I fail to engage in the mission of God? Because I have become so familiar with the message of Jesus that I see no need to preach the good news to myself. Instead, I am content to tell others of their need to share the gospel with their friends and neighbors, while I rarely ever allow the gospel to burn in my own soul. Why do I fail to do this? I think it is because it is easier as a pastor to produce more “fruit” and ‘fill” more chairs when I reduce the gospel to a punctilier event embraced in the heart and then forgotten, rather than cultivating a community that connects the message of Jesus to all of life. The shocking truth is that when the gospel becomes a means to my own success rather than the end of all my affection, the mission will fail!
It will fail because I become a professional that clocks in and out of work instead of a New Covenant missionary indwelt with the treasure of the gospel. It will fail because the fame of Christ is not the central motivation of mission. It will fail because my congregation will soon see that I am about the temporal business of church and not the transcendent mission of the kingdom advancement of God. O, that the gospel would seep in the crevices of my adulterous heart and produce in me affections for Christ that burn with such white hot passion, that I would not rest until everyone of my far off friends and distant neighbors would embrace the love of Jesus displayed in the cross.
onlybyHISgrace,
josh