Religion and the Gospel

One of the biggest distinctions that needs to be made in the church today is between "Religion" and "the Gospel."

One pastor puts it this way: "As missionaries, we must not forget that if the gospel is ever going to reach people in our day it’s going to have to be distinguished from religion because “religion” is what most people outside the church think Christianity is all about—rules and standards and behavior and cleaning yourself up and politics and social causes and ascetic appeasement and self-salvation and climbing the “ladder”, and a whole host of other things."

In order to make proper distinctions, we need to define our terms. What do we mean when we say religion or gospel?

Here's a helpful comparison chart:

Download the poster HERE

Be a BRINGER

We started off 2012 with a call and a challenge to our Student Ministry to be "Bringers"

In short, a Bringer is someone who has given up trying to protect themselves by pretending to be who they're not. They bring who they are. The good. The bad. The ugly. The hurts and the hangups.

And the reason they can freely BRING it all is because they believe the gospel. They believe that because Jesus won, they're free to lose. Because Jesus was somebody, they're free to be nobody. We can give up the endless battle of having to "look good."

We can bring it all because God, in Christ, already brought it all on the cross for us.

"Ships & Storms"

Finally! The long awaited storm has arrived!

This past Sunday was the 1st week of our new series: "Ships & Storms", which is a 5-week plunge into the book of Jonah.

I've seriously been anticipating this series for at least 9 months. (Yes, 9 months...and it feels like we're finally giving birth:)

It's gonna be unbelievable. Why? Because it's such a gospel saturated story!

The reason the series is called Ships & Storms isn't because the title "Jonah and the Whale" was already taken by every Sunday school class in the known universe.
Rather, we called it Ships & Storms because of the role the ship and the storm play in the story of Jonah. (I know. Genius.)

SHIPS are the vessels we take in our attempts to flee from God as we seek freedom and meaning in life apart from him.
STORMS come to save us from ourselves.

God-sent storms come hurling at us, not as punishment, but as a merciful intervention. God hurls his tempest to lovingly strip away our false hope, which will eventually sink, so that we may be truly free and possess a lasting hope in the one true Savior, Jesus Christ!

In most movies and stories, storms are what people get rescued FROM...

However, in the upside-down realm of the gospel, STORMS do the saving! STORMS rescue people from SHIPS.

Ahoy.