This video is a great example of what a missional community or gospel community could look like.
(HT: GCM Collective)
What’s Next?
I enjoyed reading this great example of a gospel community from Seth McBee. This particular story of a simple prayer challenged me. You can read the rest here.
He suggested, “Ask the Spirit, ‘What’s next?’”
At that time, I rarely asked the Spirit to guide and empower me for mission because I was doing nothing that would require the Spirit. I was insular, hanging around only Christian people, and rarely ever engaging anyone with the Gospel or showing them the effects of the Gospel and how that might look in our community. There was no reason to pray. It would have been like asking God to help me flip the channels on my television.
Well. My wife and I prayed… Spirit, what’s next?
If you want to open the power of the Spirit like freeing a hungry lion from its cage, then ask the Spirit what’s next with a desire to show others what He’s like for the sake of making disciples.
Gospel Community
“We are not saved individually and then choose to join the church as if it were some club or support group. Christ died for his people, and we are saved when by faith we become part of the people for whom Christ died. The story of the Bible is the story of God fulfilling the promise, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God” (Exodus 6:7; Revelation 21:3). If the gospel is to be at the heart of church life and mission, it is equally true that the church is to be at the heart of gospel life and mission. John Stott says:”
The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community. For his purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory.
Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, pg. 39
Jeff Vanderstelt: Missional Communities
I came across this video from Jeff Vanderstelt and Soma Communities. Jeff articulates well my desire for a church plant community here in Midland and what I envision it looking like.
