Grace Blog
The Bible Is Not About You
For the past seven weeks, I have been leading a group of men through Tim Keller and Ed Clowney’s class on Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World. The 35 MP3’s are available for free on RTS iTunesU, and a PDF of the class notes are available as well. It has really be a lot of fun to learn together how to expound Christ, apply Christ, and adore Christ in our preaching. Below is a video which is a good summary of what Tim Keller means by Christ-centered preaching, followed by a summary transcript of the audio excerpt. Check it out.
Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us.
Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal.
Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God.
Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me,” now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, “Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us.”
Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.
Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.
Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.
Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert.
Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.
Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.
Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.
Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.
The Bible’s really not about you—it’s about him.
HT :: Collin Hansen
Labels: Cape Coral, Gospel, Grace Baptist Church, Jesus, Praeching, Tim Keller | posted by TimBrister at 9:31 am | Categories: Gospel, Preaching |
The Beauty of Sacrifice and Service
Below is a post written by Stephen Altrogge at The Blazing Center. Grace has experienced significant growth over the past year, providing opportunities for us to stretch in our sacrifice and be strengthened in our service. I repost this article from Altrogge because he speaks well of the kind of perspective, attitude, and heart we need as a gospel-driven church. Check it out.
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Wanted: Perfect church. A small, tight-knit community of believers. Close friendships a must.
Sometimes we talk about the early New Testament church as if it were a small, quaint country church with about one hundred intimate relationships, and killer pot providence (not luck) dinners. And that’s exactly what it was. For about a month.
Then Pentecost happened (Acts 2) and everything went crazy. The Spirit fell. People talked in foreign languages. Tongues of fire danced over people’s heads. And 3,000 people were added to the church in one day. In one day the church went from intimate small group to giant mega church.
Suddenly things weren’t so intimate. Everybody couldn’t be friends with everybody. The leaders were less accessible. The worship service didn’t have the close, sing around the campfire, feel. Everyone was required to sacrifice and serve in new ways.
But that’s what happens when the gospel is being preached. Sinners are saved. The church grows. New friendships are formed, new small groups are formed, new services are added to accommodate all the people that God is saving. If the gospel is preached, people will be added to the church. For people to be added to the church, sacrifice is required.
It takes sacrifice to welcome people with messy lives into the church. It takes sacrifice to reach out to people you don’t know. It takes sacrifice to figure out who is going to be in what small group. It takes sacrifice to see a church grow from small to big. But it’s glorious sacrifice. Sinners are being saved. God’s kingdom is going forth. People are being pulled from darkness into the kingdom of God. Lives are being rearranged and transformed.
To be a part of this sacrifice is to be a part of something beautiful.
If the gospel is going to spread, and the church is going to grow, sacrifice and serving must happen. Sacrifice and serving are hard, but the result is beautiful.
Labels: Cape Coral, Church Growth, Gospel, Grace Baptist Church, Stephen Altrogge | posted by TimBrister at 2:13 pm | Categories: Church Growth, Community |
The Gospel, Posessions, and Prosperity
David Platt, lead pastor of The Church at Brook Hills and author of Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, encourages us to think biblically about our possessions and prosperity. Platt leads an event called “Secret Church” which is their “house church” where they meet periodically for an intense time of Bible study–lasting 4-6 hours–and prayer for persecuted brothers and sisters across the globe. Each Secret Church meeting has a theme, the most recent being on “The Gospel, Possessions, and Prosperity.”
The Greater Things Initiative is an opportunity, as Pastor Tom explained, to leverage our resources to impact eternity. Focusing on facilitating growth, fueling plant, and fostering mission, we are seeking to make greater impact both here and abroad. In for this to happen, such greater things will require greater sacrifice–the kind of sacrifice that is joyfully and freely offered up because the King made the greatest offering to bring us into His kingdom.
I am providing the video and notes below in hopes that these would challenge our thinking and more importantly or living in light of God’s Word. Check them out! To download the notes of “The Gospel, Possessions, and Prosperity,” click here.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Labels: Cape Coral, David Platt, Gospel, Grace Baptist Church, Greater Things, Possessions, Prosperity, Radical, Secret Church | posted by TimBrister at 1:59 pm | Categories: Gospel, Greater Things |
What Is the Greater Things Initiative?
The Greater Things Initiative has grown out of the realization that God has led Grace Baptist Church to a place where we must we must important decisions about our future. The blessings of God in our church have created practical challenges and unprecedented opportunities for us. We have come to a point where we must either try to manage these blessings or else leverage them for greater kingdom advancement. God is stirring us up to attempt the latter with renewed energy, boldness and faith. Having been convinced that greater things are still to be done in and through Grace, this initiative was set in place to cast the vision of what God can do through a people radically devoted to him and sacrificially offering their lives for His cause.
There are three specific areas where we are seeking God for greater things: facilitating growth for greater church expansion, fueling planting for greater church multiplication, and fostering mission for greater church extension.
Facilitating Growth (Greater Church Expansion)
Over the past two years, we have experienced continued growth in our congregation. In November 2009, this growth led us to starting an additional morning worship service. Hoping to meet the existing space needs, this change not only contributed to more growth, but our morning worship attendance is growing at a faster rate than ever before with July 2010 seeing 50% growth over a year’s period of time. Though the current building has served us well, we are now in a position where it is necessary for us to consider space needs that would facilitate this growth and continue the expansion of our church here in Cape Coral and SW Florida. It is our desire to have a greater presence in the city while providing greater accessibility to the gospel for those our neighbors who have had little to no exposure of the saving message of Jesus Christ.
Fueling Planting (Greater Church Multiplication)
For the past two years while we have been experiencing numerical growth, we have also been laboring to see churches planted in SW Florida. By God’s grace, our first church plant will be launched in October. We have hopes and are making plans to see many more new churches started in the in the next several years. In order for this to come to pass, we need to fuel our focus on planting more gospel-centered churches. The Greater Things Initiative serves that purpose, and if God is pleased to own our efforts, we anticipate planting at least 3 more churches in the next five years.
Fostering Mission (Greater Church Extension)
Grace has a long history of sending and supporting missionaries from our church family. We have also sought to increase our missions giving for the extension of the gospel among the unreached peoples of the world. However, we are convinced that God is going to call out from among us more to be sent to the hard places to make Christ known. The Greater Things Initiative seeks to help foster this mission by providing more opportunities for short-term missionary labors and caring for the needs of our long-term missionaries as well. As we continue to pursue God’s heart for the peoples of the world, we are committed to working for the extension of the kingdom of God by gathering more worshippers who will treasure Jesus Christ.
Labels: Cape Coral, Church Planting, Grace Baptist Church, Greater Things Initiative, Missions | posted by TimBrister at 10:56 am | Categories: Church Planting, Greater Things, Missions |
Creative Ways to Give Sacrificially to Greater Things
Below is a list of various ways you can save and give sacrificially to the Greater Things Initiative. Some of them are simple and common sense while others are quite creative. I encourage you to consider them as you are diligently seeking leverage your resources for impacting eternity!
1. Commit to drink only water at a restaurant. On average, one person could save $5 per week or more. That’s a minimum of $260 a year, just for drinking water!
2. Be a coupon clipper. By taking the time to use coupons, you could save as much as $30 per week. Thirty dollars a week is $1560 in one year!
3. Give up a habit. For example, gourmet coffee, plus tax, each day, costs nearly $1,000 a year.
4. Reduce or cancel cable or satellite TV service. Depending on your current service, this could save as much as $110 per month, totally $1,320 per year.
5. Skip a meal each week as a family for prayer and fasting. Skipping one meal a week at an average of $20 per family to devote to prayer and fasting is $1,040 a year.
6. Continue a bill payment. If you will be paying off a car, school loan, or other large purchase in the next three years, commitment continue to “pay the bill” by redirecting the money to the Greater Things Initiative. A $100 payment per month over one year’s time is $1,200.
7. Give a gift of stock. When you make a gift of stock, there are two main advantages: 1) you can write off the current value of the gift (current stock value) as a charitable deduction on your income tax, and 2) and you don’t have to pay the tax on the appreciation that built up while you owned it. The church receives more than if you had sold the securities and donated the after-tax proceeds.
8. Commit any income tax refund you receive to the Lord.
9. Commit an estimated raise in salary to the Lord.
10. Adjust your vacations. For one or more years, do something close and inexpensive like day trips, picnics, or take a three-day vacation instead of a week to save on airfare and hotel costs. This can easily save between $1,000-2,000.
11. Wait for a movie to come out on DVD instead of seeing it at the theater. One trip to the theater can cost over $25 with popcorn and candy for two. If you cut out two movies per month, that’s almost $500 annually. You can also save money by picking up DVDs from the library rather than renting or purchasing them.
12. Put off a discretionary major purchase, such as a car or new carpeting for your home, and redirect the money to the Greater Things Initiative.
13. Sell items that are going unused around your house—like jewelry, gold, silver or furniture.
14. Find out if your employer has a matching gifts program. Typically, if a company has a program, for every dollar an employee donates to a charity, the company also donates a dollar to the same organization. Matching gift programs are a wonderful way for employees to make their charitable dollars stretch farther at no additional cost to themselves. Simply ask your company’s human resources office or benefits administrator for a matching gift form and instructions. You may be able to effectively double your contribution.
15. If overtime pay is possible in your job, consider working an extra 5 or 10 hours per month and give the earnings for the Greater Things Initiative.
Labels: Cape Coral, Giving, Grace Baptist Church, Greater Things, Stewardship | posted by TimBrister at 9:32 am | Categories: Greater Things |
Greater Things Have Yet to Come
In case you missed it, we played a video last night in our second members’ meeting focusing on the “Greater Things” initiative. The video is a compilation of images taken by several members of Grace from various areas of Lee County and Cape Coral in particular. The song, God of This City, is the driving theme for this season in the life of our church as we are praying for more radical faith in the God who has promised to do greater things in and through His church. This video can also be found on the home page of our website.
Labels: Cape Coral, God of This City, Grace Baptist Church, Greater Things | posted by TimBrister at 9:35 am | Categories: Greater Things |
Prodigal
For those of you who are praying for prodigals, may this animated video and song encourage your hearts to persevere and not lose heart.
Labels: Cape Coral, Grace Baptist Church, Prodigal, Sovereign Grace Music | posted by TimBrister at 8:05 am | Categories: Encouragement, Prayer |
Great Commission Task Force Report Highlights
Some of you will remember last month during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, a report was presented by the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommending several components that would affect the Southern Baptist Convention for the good of advancing the mission as a convention of cooperating churches. Below is a short video summarizing some of the highlights of the report and discussion that followed–a report that, as you will see, was affirmed by the majority of messengers in attendance.
GCR: Highlights From A Historic Day, June 15, 2010 from GCR on Vimeo.
Labels: Cape Coral, GCR, Grace Baptist Church, Great Commission Resurgence | posted by TimBrister at 10:03 pm | Categories: Missions, Videos |
What you don’t like about church stretches and matures you.
“When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls. . . . I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit in it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”
C. S. Lewis, God In The Dock (Grand Rapids, 1970), pages 61-62.
HT :: Ray Ortlund, Jr.
Labels: C.S. Lewis, Cape Coral, Church, God in the Dock, Grace Baptist Church | posted by TimBrister at 7:31 am | Categories: Encouragement |
The Power of Prayer in Community
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s little book Life Together is a classic on biblical community. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to check it out. I wanted to post an excerpt where Bonhoeffer speaks of the impact that praying for one another brings in true community. Let us consider these words as we continue to share our lives together on mission for the sake of the gospel and glory of Christ.
“A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed. I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner. That is a blessed discovery for the Christian who is beginning to offer intercessory prayer for others. As far as we are concerned, there is no dislike, no personal tension, no disunity or strife, that cannot be overcome by intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 90.
Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Grace Baptist Church, Life Together, Prayer | posted by TimBrister at 7:42 am | Categories: Community, Prayer |
For Perspective and Prayer
Operation Mobilisation is a missions agency doing great work around the world. If you are on Twitter, you can follow their updates at www.twitter.com/omusa. I recently came across their daily photo blog which gives you a glimpse of what is taking place around the world. I encourage you to check it out for two reasons: perspective and prayer. For perspective, because it is easy for us to view life in a myopic, tunnel-vision kind of way; for prayer, because God is doing so many things around the world that we are beckoned to join Him in.
Labels: Cape Coral, Grace Baptist Church, Missions, Operation Mobilisation, Photography, Prayer | posted by TimBrister at 7:51 am | Categories: Missions, Prayer |
The Church Is Not a Restaurant
Mark Driscoll shares on the difference between the church being a family versus a restaurant. Driscoll makes some great points here about biblical community being shaped by service and mission. Check it out.
Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Consumerism, Grace Baptist Church, Mark Driscoll | posted by TimBrister at 11:52 pm | Categories: Community, Videos |
Testimonies of Grace: Steve and Anya Podolsky
This morning, we had the privilege of witnessing the baptism of Steve and Anya Podolsky. Steve and Anya are from the former Soviet Union, and raised to be atheists and communists, Steve and Anya were without access to the gospel or hope of salvation in Jesus Christ - until last year.
This is an abbreviated version of their testimony (we hope to make a longer version available soon). We rejoice in God’s work of grace in their lives and look forward to joining them in their new found joy in Jesus Christ, our Treasure!
Podolsky Testimony from Grace Baptist Church on Vimeo.
Labels: Anya Podolsky, Cape Coral, Grace Baptist Church, Steve Podolsky, Stories of Grace | posted by TimBrister at 10:23 am | Categories: Testimonies of Grace |
SBC Resolution on Family Worship
Perhaps two of the biggest statements made (apart from the GCR vote) at the 2010 SBC Annual Meeting were the resolutions on the centrality of the gospel and family worship. Although members of Grace are no strangers to the concept of family worship, the fact is that many Christians today do not know or practice this important means of grace in the home. As we continue our study on Gospel-Centered Family this summer, let us consider this resolution and give thanks to God for the focus being given to the functional centrality of the gospel and practical outworking of God’s Word in the home!
Here’s the resolution on family worship:
Labels: Cape Coral, Family, Family Worship, Grace Baptist Church, SBC | posted by TimBrister at 6:30 am | Categories: News and Announcements, Parenting/Family |
SBC Resolution on the Centrality of the Gospel
A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Tom got the call to help draft a resolution on the centrality of the gospel for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando. The resolution was edited with other insertions, but the language provided by Tom was largely kept in tact. In particular, you will see from the outset of the resolution that the gospel is about “who Jesus is, what He has done, and what that matters” - language peculiar to Grace. In the years past where resolutions were much about the cultural ills that Southern Baptists were against, it is great to see resolutions being passed on what we are for. This new direction, under the leadership of resolutions committee chair Dr. Russell Moore, is something to be praised. Here is the resolution on the centrality of the gospel:
Labels: Cape Coral, Gospel, Gospel-Centered, Grace Baptist Church, SBC, Tom Ascol | posted by TimBrister at 10:30 am | Categories: Gospel, News and Announcements |
