Arbor House, one of our partners

Empowering homeless single mother families

A living and learning motherhood community offering long term housing and programs to homeless single mother families while they pursue goals that lead to self-sufficiency.

The Missional Church

Tim Keller stuff on missional church.  So convicting, challenging, desirable.  PRAY!!!

5 minute video:



The Need for a 'Missional' Church 
In the West for nearly 1,000 years, the relationship of (Anglo-European) Christian churches to the broader 
culture was a relationship known as "Christendom." The institutions of society "Christianized" people, 
and stigmatized non-Christian belief and behavior. Though people were "Christianized" by the culture, 
they were not regenerated or converted with the Gospel. The church's job was then to challenge persons 
into a vital, living relation with Christ.  
There were great advantages and yet great disadvantages to 'Christendom.' The advantage was that there 
was a common language for public moral discourse with which society could discuss what was 'the good.' 
The disadvantage was that Christian morality without gospel-changed hearts often led to cruelty and 
hypocrisy. Think of how the small town in "Christendom" treated the unwed mother or the gay person. 
Also, under "Christendom" the church often was silent against abuses of power of the ruling classes over 
the weak.  For these reasons and others, the church in Europe and North America has been losing its 
privileged place as the arbiter of public morality since at least the mid 19th century. The decline of 
Christendom has accelerated greatly since the end of WWII.


Read the rest of this amazing 3 page pdf here.

Where we hope to go

This video involves language and ideas that has lost some momentum in my own heart and, I fear, in Christ Community.  Join me in fasting and praying that Christ will re-envision us all.

This is a 1 minute video:

Baptizing & Teaching

By speaking of baptism in the context of the divine imperitives, Jesus confirms the essence of the gospel. A holy God not only commands holiness, but He also supplies it. Baptism signifies the wonderful work of Christ shedding His own blood to cleanse us from our sin. By blood He washes us from the guilt of failing to keep His commands. Disciples who carry the message of baptism while proclaiming the holy standards of God communicate the essence of grace.

--Bryan Chapell

Spreading What We Savor

Savoring a vision of a great and triumphant God in worship precedes spreading the same in missions. --John Piper

Holy and Worldly

"Mission arises from the biblical doctrine of

the church in the world.

If we are not THE CHURCH, the holy & distinct people of God, we have nothing to say because we are compromised. If on the other hand, we are not IN THE WORLD, deeply involved in its life and suffering, we have no one to serve because we are insulated. Our calling is to be HOLY and WORLDLY at the same time. Without this balanced biblical ecclesiology we will never recover or fulfill our mission." --John Stott, The Living Church

is re-posting as gauche as re-gifting??

As we continue to think about Christ Community's calling to be the people of God in Gainesville---we will talk September 20 about Covenant Succession, a.k.a "getting our chillun saved", or
passing The Faith down to the next generation(s).

So, we will be baptizing 3 members of our congregation. Three members who we will seek, in partnership with their parents, to see profess personal saving dependence upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. To help you u'stand our 'take' on baptism, i submit the following:
(this was posted here on March 10 of this year)
Sacraments:
Q. What are sacraments?
A. Sacraments are holy signs and seals for us to see. They were instituted by God so that by our use of them He might make us understand more clearly the promise of the gospel, and might put His seal on that promise. And this is God’s gospel promise: to forgive our sins and give us eternal life by grace alone because of Christ’s one sacrifice finished on the cross.


Q. Are both the word and the sacraments then intended to focus our faith on the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation?
A. Right! In the gospel the Holy Spirit teaches us and through the holy
sacraments He assures us that our entire salvation rests on Christ’s one sacrifice for us on the cross.
(from Heidelberg Catechism; 1536, #66 and #67)


Infant Baptism Explanations:
--Why I Changed My Mind, a letter to my daughter
-- Francis Schaeffer's helpful little paper



Baptism is a sacrament of the new testament, ordained by Jesus Christ,
not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church;
but also to be unto him
- a sign and seal of the covenant of grace,
- of his ingrafting into Christ,
- of regeneration,
- of remission of sins,
and
- of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.

This sacrament is, by Christ's own appointment, to be continued in His Church until the end of the world.

For a contrasting view:
see Spurgeon's "Children Brought to Christ, Not the Font" (awesome title)
and Fred Malone's journey from baptizing babies to NOT

missiom

good stuff from bruce ware:

Understanding the Person and Work of Christ as missional is crucial and central to understanding Jesus and his work correctly. The mission of the Son began long before his going to the cross, or his baptism, or even his incarnation. The mission of the Son began in eternity past when the Father devised his plan by which the Son would be preeminent over the created world the Father designed, planned, and willed to create.

As the Father chose the Son to be his Agent by which creation would come into being, so the Father chose the Son to be his Agent by which re-creation also would come to pass. The Son's mission, then, was from eternity past the mission of one thing—he sought in all that he thought and felt and said and did to do the will of his Father.

Divine Empowerment

But to accomplish this mission, the Son had to take on human nature and live as one of us. While he was fully God, he also was fully man. And as man, he needed divine empowerment to obey the Father, resist temptation, and fulfill the mission the Father sent him to carry out. The Spirit's indwelling presence and power on the Son was necessary for the Son to accomplish what he did. Only as the Spirit-anointed Messiah could this Christ be our Savior.

To see the mission of the Son correctly requires that we see him in Trinitarian context. Both the Person and the Work of the Son are fully inexplicable apart from seeing the Son's relation to the Father and the Spirit. Getting the Trinity right is crucial to getting the mission of the Son right.

more here

Mercy Links

article:
Biblical Guidelines for Mercy Ministry in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

audio:
Tim Keller

Neighbors	Download
Blessed are the Poor	Download
Blueprint for Revival - Social Concern	Download

Justice	Isaiah 58:1-14	Download

book: When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

got a minute?

History of Religion in 90 seconds... fascinating... can't help thinking of this "movie" while preparing my heart to sing Psalm 2 in the services sunday morning