Gospel enjoyment is centering on and celebrating the finished work of Jesus Christ in His life, death and resurrection. Gospel enjoyment recognizes that you only live for what you love, so for the Christian or anyone else for that matter, we must evaluate if we love what is most lovely. The good news of Jesus …
Missional Community Implications: For Church
I’m a big fan of missional communities as I believe the scriptures clearly articulate the power and intent of God for a community to demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ through their love for one another and their neighbors. It’s becoming a larger conversation and many churches are considering the idea. As they consider it, …
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Missional Community Implications: For Life
As our church continues to aim toward being a collection of gospel-centered communities on mission (Missional Communities), I’ve noticed that many people are not ready for some of the real implications that come with this idea. Even as many other churches wrestle through this, one thing that must be acknowledged is that pursuing this Book …
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Missional Community Success: Gospel, Not Mission
I have heard many people say, “What you celebrate, you also cultivate.” It’s absolutely true, which makes storytelling and defining success a huge deal whether it is in a business environment, a classroom, at home, or in the church. For missional communities, the idea of a group of Christians being a gospel-centered community on mission, …
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Missional Community: Integrating Children
One of the many challenges that Community Groups face is how to handle children in the community. We have a key conviction that children should be included and seen as members of the Community Group. This means they are seen as members of the community that need to be discipled with the gospel as we …
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Missional Community: Rhythms over Events
At Apostles Church, we are defined by 3 core values, Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, and Prayerful Mission and our Community Groups aim to contextualize these values in their neighborhood. They are often guided by 3 convictions that we believe assist them in being a gospel community on mission. Those 3 convictions are proximity over affinity, …
Missional Community: Proximity over Affinity
At our church, we are defined by 3 core values, Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, and Prayerful Mission and our Community Groups aim to contextualize these values in their neighborhood. They are often guided by 3 convictions that we believe assist them in being a gospel community on mission. Those 3 convictions are proximity over affinity, …
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Pursuing Prayerful Mission
How does a church become missional? This seems to be the question that many churches are asking, wondering how a church moves from inwardly focused to externally focused, moving from simply loving one another to extending the love of Christ to the world. A predominant response is to swing the pendulum from a consistent focus …
Valuing Intentional Community
This past Sunday, we had our 2nd of 3 equipping classes focused on our core values of Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community & Prayerful Mission. We focused this past week on Intentional Community Our aim in this core value was to take two Christian buzzwords and slam them together (not really). The fact is we all …
Cultivating Gospel Enjoyment in Communities
©iStockphoto.com/ Marcus Lindström Yesterday, I outlined our core values and the convictions that end up guiding them. Our communities start with Gospel Enjoyment to center our lives on the finished work of Christ and define our lives through its implications. In concept, it’s a good aim, but in order for it to move from rhetoric …
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