How The Cross Rescues You From The Performance Trap by CJ Mahaney

One of the greatest hindrances to keeping the gospel central in our lives is our creeping tendency toward legalism. It’s an age-old foe to God’s plan of salvation through faith alone. From the earliest days of the church, legalism has thrown Christians off course and sidetracked them all over the place. And it’s just as active and destructive today as it ever was. 

It’s important to understand that a legalist isn’t just someone with higher standards or more rules than you. A lot of us wrongly stereotype a legalistic person as one who doesn’t go to the movies, or who thinks that any music with a beat is evil. Legalism is much more subtle and serious than that. Here’s a simple definition that I use: Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God.

Yesterday morning at our first core team gathering we discussed gospel-centrality and one specific component of growing in our awareness of both God's holiness and our sinfulness. Below are the two lists we looked at that described ways we don't grow in our awareness but minimize our sin and examples of applying the gospel specifically (along with the visual of the growing awareness chart).

My wife Ashley and I courted through high school and got married as soon as we graduated in 2005. As young newlyweds, we had set out for ourselves a ‘five year plan’ by which we had determined how we would navigate through this life together; what careers we would pursue, where we would attend school, when we would have children, etc. Six months into our marriage however, the Lord showed us through a positive pregnancy test that His ways are not our ways, and that His thoughts are far above our thoughts. At the time, that’s about as far as we could see in terms of His reasoning for taking us down such a different path than we had wanted for ourselves, or at least, what we thought we wanted.

[from Brian Howard's blog Context Coaching]

Are you a parent?

Then you need to know that your kids are going to learn primarily what you teach them.

You might sometimes wish that you could delegate the spiritual training of your kids, but you are the one who is responsible to teach, train, and disciple your kids. This is not something to be outsourced to Sunday School teachers or Youth Pastors as past generations have sometimes done.

We moved to Fort Worth twelve years ago—shortly after graduating college. Tara, my wife, had a job at Cook Children's and I began teaching in south Dallas. Newly married, first ‘real-world’ jobs and based on a recommendation from Tara’s prior pastor, we were quickly involved in a local church. Five years in, we had made wonderful friendships and were shepherded by a loving pastor, but felt something lacking in our faith. During this time, I became increasingly interested in the Emergent Movement – an imbalanced paradigm of “soft” biblical teaching and strong emphasis on social justice - poverty, race relations, immigration etc. I read every book I could get my hands on and argued with anything that moved. As I delved deeper into Emergent Christianity, I found ways to minimize and downright reject central doctrines of the Bible. Sin was pushed to the back burner, as thoughts of helping and pursuing the poor were pushed to the forefront of our minds and hearts. Because of this, self-righteousness, self-reliance, and self-centeredness became sovereign. After five years at our first church as a married couple, we left bitter and angry. 

What is a local church? What is it to distinguish and mark the church?

“The local church is a covenanted community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord."

"Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted a church of God exists."

Below are nine marks of a healthy church. This is not an exhaustive or authoritative list. There are other significant marks like prayer and fellowship. But these nine are marks that we believe have tremendous impact on the health of our church and feed into other marks.

In a recent newsletter I laid out the 2017 timeline for Grace Church. I've added it below along with a list view for our three seasons.

SPRING 2017

A time of prayer: As a family of currently 30 adults and 25 children (that includes four babies with due dates this summer!) and others who are interested in joining our family, we will gather once a month from January to April. Our first gathering will be on Wednesday, January 25th from 6:30pm to 7:45 at the Fort Worth Church of the Lord’s building seen above (fka Korean Central Church): 200 Mildred Ln E Benbrook, TX 76126. Grace Kids will be provided. There are currently 45 adults and 14 children registered! Please register yourself and your children here. We will devote ourselves to God’s Word and prayer. I will teach on Jesus as the grace of God to sinners and sufferers and the implications for our family. Then we will pray together for deep friendships as a family and bold evangelism so more people will meet Jesus and be welcomed into our family.

This excerpt is taken from Being A Gospel Witness: 7 Marks Of A Witness From Mark 6 by Daniel Montgomery

ARE YOU A WITNESS?

The evangelical world has experienced a gospel craze over the decade, a renewed emphasis on church planting, and a revitalization of expositional preaching. We should be grateful and excited to live in such an era. However, sometimes even these principles can live in abstraction instead of reality.

Recently, I was in a discussion with young seminarians and the question was asked, “What is the evidence of someone being called to church plant?” After responses about theology, leadership, qualifications of eldership, and personality traits I remarked, “What if the would-be church planters were just asked, ‘Write out everyone you have evangelized in your life and how has the gospel grown in them since?”

Over four years ago my wife Bailey and I moved to Fort Worth with the intention of returning to Arkansas after one year. Immediately after moving into our apartment God started opening our eyes and hearts to a desire to remain in Fort Worth with the hope to plant a church. After only two months I withdrew from the graduate program I had begun, we bought a house and decided to become Partners with The Paradox Church. During this time, sin was exposed and we grew in a deeper understanding of repentance and response to the work of Jesus Christ. His call for us to stay in Fort Worth was clear. Over the next two years we pursued community through city groups, I enrolled in Porterbrook Theological Training and we became City Group Leaders. We learned so much and have walked with friends through life, sin and new life.