Posts by Josh
2012 Emphasis #3: Gender-specific discipleship for Bridge women
not actual T2C logo
We’ve been taking time on the blog for the last week to roll out the major initiatives from our elders for the next year. We hit the first two major emphases HERE and HERE. The third major emphasis addresses something we’ve seen God building within our body for a LONG time now…
Gender-specific discipleship and training for Bridge women
One of the interesting things about The Bridge is the uncommonly high number of godly, courageous men that permeate our church and disciple and lead like men should. This is both Biblical and awesome as our culture increasingly sees boys try to stay boys forever and avoid manly responsibility at home, work, and church.
What we’ve seen in the last few years though is God providing a groundswell of godly, leadership-oriented women in our church body who are hungry to minister to other women. In addition to the virtual uprising of godly women passionate for ministry we’ve also seen God entrust The Bridge with HUNDREDS of young women, new moms, and new wives who need encouragement, discipleship, and training. This is good, as Titus 2 gives these instructions to women in a young pastor’s church…
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Seeing both what God has been doing in the women of our church body and this command in Scripture, we’re working toward launching a “Titus 2 Collective” (T2C) later this year with the vision of raising up an army of grace-filled, counter-cultural, godly women in Spring Hill, Thompson Station, and Columbia. We’re still working on laying the foundation of everything this will be, but we know we want it to include…
- Leadership from godly women who are called to encourage and help shepherd other women
- Encouragement for tired, discouraged, and often guilt-laden singles, wives, and mothers
- Training in Biblical womanhood in the three roles mentioned in Titus 2 (Christian, wife, mother)
Will people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace?
After getting a few very similar messages, I wanted to follow up on yesterday’s sermon with a quick post today. In yesterday’s “Killing Guilt” sermon, we saw from Romans 3 that Jesus is our true “propitiation” that satisfies [all] of God’s punishment for our sin and our true “justification” that secures God’s moment-by-moment declaration of “not guilty” for us. Then I made this statement…
A lot of people ask the question, “Then how does God feel toward me when I sin?” The answer is, “Exactly how he felt toward Jesus when he did not sin.”
Then last night and this morning it seemed like a few people all had the same concern with this statement. All four people voiced it differently, but all of their concerns could be stated like this…
“OK, I get grace and I believe it. But won’t people just keep on sinning if you preach too much grace!?”
The assumption is that what a person who’s walking in sin needs is to be threatened with the law and made to feel guilty in order to get them to obey. First, I just want to say that all of these people – and you, if you have that same concern – have a good desire. They desire to see people glorify God and not harm others in how they live – a desire that The Bible is very much for! But Biblically, saying “If you give people too much grace, they’ll stop obeying!” is like saying, “If you give people too much oxygen, they’ll stop breathing!“. A few things from Scripture…
- Grace always comes before obedience in the Bible. The Bible is so rich and true that we learn not just from what it says, but from how it says what it says. Have you ever noticed that there is not a single command (imperative) about what we should do in the New Testament that isn’t preceded by a reminder about what God has already done (indicative)? Seriously. Not one. In every epistle in the New Testament, the readers are FIRST reminded that because of their union with Christ, God is going to accept them regardless of their track record. Only AFTER that are people instructed about how to honor God with their lives.
- Grace – not law – motivates a person to obey. This is particularly clear in Titus 2:11-12. Here’s what it says: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age”. So, what is it that motivates (trains) a person to avoid ungodliness and run toward godliness? We would expect it to be the law, fear of punishment, threats of wrath, etc. But it’s not. It’s THE GRACE OF GOD, according to Titus 2:11-12!
- Small thoughts of grace – not small thoughts of law – cause a person to disobey. Check out 2 Peter 1:5-9 HERE. It says that if godliness is absent from the life of a Christian, the reason ISN’T that they’re “not afraid of God enough” and it ISN’T that they don’t feel guilty enough. It says, “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” So why do Christians sin? They sin when the captivating reality of God’s radical acceptance of sinners grows small before their eyes!
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THE LAW AND GRACE: TRACKS AND A TRAIN
2012 Emphasis #2: move from “having” to “producing” good church leaders
Move from “having” to “producing” good church leaders
About a year ago in one of the most important staff meetings we’ve ever had, we drew this image on the board and talked about it for about 40 minutes…
- The church on the left is oriented toward “getting” and “having”. It measures success by seating capacity.
- The church on the right is oriented toward “going” and “sending”. It measures success by sending capacity.
IN THE BIBLE…
- Paul, the greatest leader the church has ever had, was NEVER alone. He always had other men with him he was raising up to send out. Look at the first and last verses of every letter he wrote to churches in the New Testament and other men are with him (Romans 16, 1 Corinthians 1, 2 Corinthians 1, Galatians 1, Ephesians 6, Philippians 1, Colossians 1, 1 Thess 1, 2 Thess 1)
- Ephesians 4 says the role of church leaders is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry”. It’s not simply the job of church leaders to “do ministry” – actually, that’s not even their primary job! Their primary job is to attract, identify, and equip others to lead, pastor, shepherd, and minister well.
- The pattern of the New Testament is that healthy churches reproduce to plant other healthy churches. You cannot reproduce healthy churches without reproducing healthy church leadership. See the entire book of Acts for this.
HERE’S WHAT THIS MEANS…
- God is going to call many of you to significant leadership. Yes, you. God has SUCH a bigger vision for your life than “seat filler” in his kingdom. Like Alan Hood, Lance Howerton, Shivonne Hood, Jennifer Williams, John Howard, Dennis Knisely, and many others, God is going to use many of you to take on significant roles in his church. Get ready.
- We’ll be launching structured, formalized theological training available to anyone who wants to be equipped for church leadership. Right now, we’re looking into the Porterbrook Network for training to implement here.
- We may need people willing to house ministry residents who move to Spring Hill for a season of training at The Bridge.
- The top item on every staff job description is now “attract, identify, and equip leaders in all areas of ministry”.
2012 Emphasis #1: unify on a course for relocation
We’re taking this blog week to talk about some of the things (some of which are MAJOR) that The Bridge will likely see in 2012. Here’s priority #1 for our church body in 2012:
Unify on a course for relocation
From a pure attendance standpoint, the past few years have been a tidal wave of grace upon our church body…
- WG attendance has grown from around 80 to 425 (this week’s attendance)
- We’ve moved to two WG’s with the possibility of launching a third later this year
- The Kids Ministry, our primary space “problem”, has grown from around 30 to well over 100 kids weekly
- 580 people – an all time high – attended our Christmas Eve Eve services a few weeks ago
As a result, this is what WG’s have looked like this year, including three weeks we can think of off the top of our heads that visitors have left unable to find seats in a WG…
- At first, we hoped to delay a need to relocate by simply trying to expand around our current location. However, in recent talks with our landlords (who have been INCREDIBLY gracious and kind to us) we’ve discovered that they aren’t interested in selling the property to The Bridge. Aside from the fact that there is little or no space around us in which to expand, this would put us in an unstable situation moving forward, making expansion financially risky and unwise.
- The clear calling of Scripture and God’s Holy Spirit on us specifically is for The Bridge to be a church that plants other churches. In order for us to position ourselves to be able to train leaders and continue to grow so that we can send, we need to establish a long-term launchpad for our efforts.
- Space issues, specifically in our Kids’ Ministry (although often in WG’s as well), very obviously necessitate expansion.
- Although this is a much smaller issue, our growing staff needs office space for undistracted work, counseling, and unity. While we will NEVER devolve into a structure where church leadership retreats from the community into the confines of a church building, offices are necessary as the staff grows.
WHAT THIS WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2012
We’re still a fair distance away from relocation and definitely won’t be relocating this year. Our emphasis this year is to unify on a course for relocation. Here’s what’s going on…
- The elders launched a relocation team comprised of Pastor Josh, Scott Shoopman, Dave Hall, and Dave Malin to figure out how to figure this out! These men have been working for about four months on this.
- By God’s grace and after this years’ Gift for Christ offering, we’ve almost completely eliminated our debt. We’ll be begin saving money this year in wisdom to prepare.
- As we work with guys outside our walls with specific wisdom in this area and identify a course forward, we’ll be communicating that to the church body and begging for prayer. We do not – DO NOT – want to get distracted from the heart of our mission by becoming consumed with a building or property.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
- Pray without ceasing. If you have a prayer list, put our location on it. Pray that God will “open a wide door for effective service”, that he might open hearts to be generous toward The Bridge and possibly give us a location through a miracle, and pray that God will unify us and make us holy through the process.
- Give generously. While The Bridge already runs on a skeletal budget so that we can give generously toward mission, it’s still our goal to financially prepare for the future of the mission this year. Give generously, knowing that your giving advances Jesus’ fame and mission.
- Exercise “communicative grace” with us. The sad fact is that many people have had bad experiences with churches and buildings and therefore have much baggage and many concerns. Rather than giving Satan a foothold in our church body by harboring those feelings, please ask graceful questions of our church leadership as we communicate the course forward.
A PDP (personal discipleship plan) for 2012
Looking to Scripture, we see that Christians 1) are constantly moving deeper into the gospel, 2) are having their lives transformed by gospel-grace, and 3) orient their lives to Jesus’ mission of gospel advancement in the world. Our pastors have crafted this PDP to help each person assess where they are in each of these areas to help them joyfully grow as Christians.
PDP
To download this self-assessment tool, click the link above. Once you’ve completed it, to maximize the impact of the PDP…
- Ask your HG leader to talk through it with you, giving you a chance to confess your sins to someone, be reminded of grace, and helped to move in a Godward direction.
- Talk through it with your spouse and saved children. Husbands, lead your families in this.
- Ask a godly man or woman from your HG to complete it with you and then decide on a time to get together and talk through what you find.
More Information
CLICK HERE