Grace Baptist Church

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 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 |

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 |

The Glory of Plodding Visionaries

Kevin DeYoung, in his TableTalk article, recently wrote:

It’s sexy among young people — my generation — to talk about ditching institutional religion and starting a revolution of real Christ-followers living in real community without the confines of church. Besides being unbiblical, such notions of churchless Christianity are unrealistic. It’s immaturity actually, like the newly engaged couple who think romance preserves the marriage, when the couple celebrating their golden anniversary know it’s the institution of marriage that preserves the romance. Without the God-given habit of corporate worship and the God-given mandate of corporate accountability, we will not prove faithful over the long haul.

What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church — a multitude of faithful, risktaking plodders. The best churches are full of gospel-saturated people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency.

This excellent article is worth your time.  Be sure to read the whole thing.  May God raise up an army of plodding visionaries here at Grace!

Labels: Cape Coral, Christianity, Grace Baptist Church, Kevin DeYoung | posted by TimBrister at 12:37 pm | Categories: Community, Encouragement, Holiness |

Steve Timmis on the the Nature of Gospel Community

Below is a short but clear explanation of what gospel community looks like by Steve Timmis, author of Total Church. The Towers, the news service of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, interviewed Timmis which can be viewed here. Check it out.

Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Gospel, Gospel Community, Grace Baptist Church, Steve Timmis | posted by TimBrister at 10:28 pm | Categories: Community, Gospel, Small Groups |

Disarming an Angry Person

Ed Welch writes at CCEF on “How to Disarm an Angry Person.”  The whole article is worth reading, but here are his six steps for moving forward:

1. Don’t minimize the destruction of anger. You are getting shot at! Of course it hurts.
2. You are setting out to learn a disarming strategy that takes humility and love, and this is way over your head. As such, “Lord have mercy on me” is the order of the day.
3. Remember that angry people are blind to their own anger. They are the last to know that they are killing people. Instead, all they see is that they are right and others are wrong. Assume that they are spiritual lunatics.
4. Divest yourself of all the things you desire and cherish for yourself. Do you want love? Toss it and keep only the necessities, such as the desire to love. Do you need respect and understanding? It will only be an encumbrance. Get rid of it.
5. Move toward the angry person in love and humility. Fear runs away, anger attacks. Humility and love move toward. In a surprise attack they blindside angry people with weakness. Your timing will be important. Sometimes you can say something while the gun is aimed. Other times you will wait and speak later.
6. The person’s anger could have many reasons – you being one. But murderous anger is always wrong. At some point, from your place of love and humility, you will hold up the mirror and help angry people see themselves (Matthew 7:5).

Labels: Anger, Cape Coral, Ed Welch, Grace Baptist Church | posted by TimBrister at 12:23 pm | Categories: Change, Community, Humility |

Koinonitis - Fellowship Gone Bad

Thom Rainer writes about unhealthy community in a term called koinonitis and provides some symptoms for evaluation.  Rainer (emphasis mine):

Okay, it’s not a real word. It’s not even a word that is original with me. Koinonitis is a play on koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. Koinonia typically refers to a healthy fellowship among people, where each person is placing the other’s needs before himself or herself.

If koinonia is healthy fellowship, then koinonitis is unhealthy fellowship. Koinonitis means that the interest of self is pervasive in the group. “My” interests trump the needs of others.

It is ironic that one of the most common places we see koinonitis today is the local church. That group of Christians, one would suppose, would always be more concerned about the needs of others that the needs and comforts of themselves. Surely self-interest does not place in the church! The latter statement, of course, was made with just a hint of sarcasm.

After over two decades of serving, studying, and consulting with local churches, I have seen untold examples of koinonitis. And the tragedy is that this affliction is keeping numbers of churches from being the Great Commission, missional church that God has called them to be.   How can we detect koinonitis in the church? Perhaps a few questions can help in the diagnosis of this “illness” in local churches.

When I have my annual physical examination, I have lab work, measurements of my weight, blood pressure, and pulse rates, and my physician asks me a series of questions. My doctor is very good about integrating the subjective questions with the more objective medical work that is done.  Likewise, we can ask several questions of people in local churches. And the more “yes” responses we get, the more likely the church is afflicted with the unhealthy fellowship that I call koinonitis. Let’s look at a few of those questions.

· Are most of the budget dollars of the church primarily used for meeting the needs, preferences, and desires of the members rather than those outside the church?
· Do many members demand that others conform to their preferred styles of music and worship?
· Is there a pervasive attitude in the church that says my tithes and offerings give me the right to have my way and my say?
· Does “the way we’ve always done it” trump the need to change to reach the community and the nations?
· Are church business meetings times of rancor and divisiveness rather than times of confession and celebration?
· Are the pastors and the staff of the church perceived by many of the members to be a personal pastoral care giver?
· Is church membership perceived to be more of a right than a responsibility?

The list is not exhaustive, but these few questions alone can provide clear indications whether the church has healthy or unhealthy fellowship. How do you think your church fares in this diagnosis?

These are good questions to ask ourselves, evaluate our growth groups, and use in diagnosing areas where we may be unhealthy in our fellowship.

Labels: Cape Coral, Fellowship, Grace Baptist Church, Koinonitis, Thom Rainer | posted by TimBrister at 8:54 am | Categories: Community, Small Groups |

Three Judgments to Avoid

Ken Sande has written a very helpful booklet called “Judging Others: The Danger of Playing God” where he counsels believers to judge charitably instead of critically.  In the heart of his booklet, he lays out three specific judgments to avoid.  They are:

First, we think negatively of the qualities of others. When we develop a critical attitude toward others, we start a subtle but steady process of selective data gathering. We easily overlook or minimize others’ good qualities, while at the same time we search for and magnify any unfavorable qualities. As we find faults that reinforce opinions we have already formed, we seize them eagerly, saying to ourselves (and sometimes others), “See, I told you so!” One critical judgment looks for and feeds on another, and the person’s character is steadily diminished and ultimately destroyed in our minds.

The second way we judge others wrongly is to think the worst of their words and actions. We hear rumors of conversations or observe fragments of an opponent’s behavior. Instead of searching for a favorable interpretation of their actions, or giving them a chance to explain what happened (Prov. 18:13), we prefer to put the worst construction on what they have done. We overlook things that are in the person’s favor and focus on the things that seem to be against him. To top it off, we fill in the gaps with assumptions and finally judge the person to have done wrong.

The third and most insidious type of critical judgment is to assume the worst about others’ motives. Some people are habitually cynical (distrustful or suspicious of others’ nature or motives); others assume the worst only in certain people. In either case, the effect is the same: they are quick to attribute others’ actions to an unworthy motive, such as pride, greed, selfishness, control, rebellion, stubbornness, or favoritism.

All three types of critical judgments violate God’s will. Scripture sternly warns against those who indulge evil suspicions against their brothers and fail to give them a chance to explain themselves (1 Tim. 6:4; Ps. 15:3, 50:19-20). Our sin is compounded if we develop the habit of receiving or circulating evil reports about others (2 Cor. 12:20; Eph. 4:31). Jonathan Edwards likens our believing and spreading of a critical judgment to “feeding on it, as carrion birds do on the worst of flesh.”ii That is what we are doing when we receive and circulate bad reports about others: it is like passing around rotting flesh.

This Wednesday, I will be concluding our Grace in 60 Seconds by looking at our core commitment of grace and love.  The opposite of grace is judgmentalism, and where there is lack of love, there is a critical spirit.  Whether inside or outside the church family, these words are a sober call for us to be a people who are known for gracious words and loving hearts, more willing to be merciful than we are judgmental.  May God help us to exemplify such a Christ-like disposition!

Labels: Cape Coral, Grace, Grace Baptist Church, Judging Others, Ken Sande, Love | posted by TimBrister at 9:40 am | Categories: Community, Core Values/Practices |

How to be a community group member

Tony Payne, who I mentioned earlier, has written an excellent article called “How to be a small group member” in a Matthias Minizine focusing on loving your church.  He explains that the primary reason for belonging to a small group is:

“to give us opportunity love and encourage other people in Christ.  It’s not about me; it’s about them.  And it’s about them because of Christ.”

Payne rightly notes that “we go to small groups not primarily to have our needs met, but to meet the needs of others” and “the more more we focus on loving others and doing whatever we can for them, the more encouragement and strength we find ourselves.”

So how can we practically fulfill our primary reason for existing in community?  Payne lays out five simple ways:

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Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Grace Baptist Church, Small Groups, Tony Payne | posted by TimBrister at 3:04 pm | Categories: Community, Small Groups |

The Relational/Social Aspect of Being Created in the Image of God

When we look at the creation account, we learn that man (human beings) are created in the image of God.  But what exactly does this mean?  Take a look at Genesis 1:26-27 which says:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

What we find is that first, God exists in community–”let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  The relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–three persons in the Godhead–is one of perfect unity, love, and intimacy.  What we see recorded in Scripture is how the Father delights in His Son and desires to see Him glorified, how the Son loves the Father and does nothing apart from His purpose and plan, and how the Spirit reveals the Father and magnifies the Son. To be created in the image of God means to be created in the image of the Triune God who existed in community before the world was ever created.

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Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Grace Baptist Church, Image of God, Imago Dei | posted by TimBrister at 10:12 am | Categories: Community |

Grace Community Groups - A Resource Directory

This month marks one year that we began meeting monthly in small groups (Grace Community Groups).  At the end of this month, we will be voting on the proposal by our elders to begin meeting three weeks each month in our GCGs (fourth together for Lord’s Supper and Baptism service).  Over the course of this past year, dozens of resources have been made available, including articles, powerpoint presentations, PDF position papers, sermons, and book recommendations.  Below is a history of our Grace Community Groups, including a resource directory to assist you in learning, praying, and seeking God’s direction regarding the upcoming proposal.

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Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Grace Baptist Church, Small Groups | posted by TimBrister at 4:17 pm | Categories: Community, Small Groups |

Explaining Community Life

Here is an excellent clip from Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA (Francis Chan is lead pastor) about community life shaped by the gospel.

Community from Cornerstone Church on Vimeo.

Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Gospel, Grace Baptist Church | posted by TimBrister at 11:23 am | Categories: Community, Gospel, Small Groups |

Events vs. Family - Giving Appropriate Emphasis

Tim Chester, author of several books include Total Church, recently wrote a thought-provoking blogpost about performance-based ministry and real-life ministry as it relates to the “store-front” image of the church.  His desire is that people not ask about their meetings (events) but rather ask about how the church lives their lives together with gospel intentionality.

Chester writes:

For many Christians church is an event. It is a meeting you attend or a place you enter. Churches may talk about being a family, but most of their resources go into the Sunday morning event. Acquiring a building. Preparing the sermon. Producing the bulletin. Equipping a venue with sound and light. Planning the show. Practicing the band. That’s were their money and their staff time go. We talk about being family and community, but when you look at how we spend our time and money it becomes clear that in practice we view church as an event.

People often ask me about our meetings. ‘When do you meet? Where? What do you do when you meet together?’ But if you ask those questions then you have completely missed the point! We’re not advocating a new way of doing meetings. Actually our meetings are not good! The music is poor and the teaching is nothing you’d go out of your way to hear. What matters to us is our shared life: sharing our lives, doing ordinary life with gospel intentionality.

The church will never out perform TV shows and music videos. But there is nothing like the community life of the church. There is nowhere else where diverse people come together. There is nowhere else were broken people find a home. There is nowhere else when grace is experienced. There is nowhere else where God is present by his Spirit.

Although our corporate times of gathered worship are very important in the life of our church, relatively speaking if we are a healthy church, we would view church life much more than an “event” but a shared journey where we live life together on mission in our community with a gospel-driven passion.  While the de-churched in our community will perhaps find their way to one of our corporate gatherings, the unchurched and unreached people will not exposed to the glorious realities of the gospel without the community apologetic and everyday witness of kingdom living through word (proclamation) and deed (service).

While we do not want diminish the significance of our times of gathered corporate worship, we ought to raise the significance of everyday life in between these gatherings to authentically and intentionality demonstrate how the gospel continues to transform our lives where the Spirit of God makes ordinary moments extraordinary opportunities for glorying in Jesus Christ!

Labels: Cape Coral, Community, Family Life, Grace Baptist Church, Tim Chester | posted by TimBrister at 8:28 am | Categories: Community, Gospel, Small Groups |

Killer Community Tips

Here’s a light-hearted way of communicating some wrong-headed view of community groups . . .

Labels: Community, Small Groups | posted by TimBrister at 12:42 pm | Categories: Community, Small Groups |

Seven Reasons Why Preaching Is NOT Enough - John Piper

Much like Grace, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN (where John Piper is lead pastor) has been transitioning in structure for small group ministry.  In his exposition on John 5, Piper explained the importance of small group for healthy body life and why preaching is NOT enough.  From Piper’s manuscript (emphasis mine):

Last Sunday when I met with the small group leaders of the Downtown Campus, I tried to show them how essential their role is at this church by giving them seven reasons my preaching is not enough—seven reasons why perseverance in faith and growth in faith call for Christians to meet regularly in a face-to-face way to “serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). God intends to do things in you which he will only do through the ministry of other believers.

7 Reasons We Need Small Groups

He has given pastors to the church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-12). I believe in what I do. And I believe that it is not enough. Here are the seven reasons I gave the small group leaders.

1. The impulse [to] avoid painful growth by disappearing safely into the crowd in corporate worship is very strong.
2. The tendency toward passivity in listening to a sermon is part of our human weakness.
3. Listeners in a big group can more easily evade redemptive crises. If tears well up in your eyes in a small group, wise friends will gently find out why. But in a large gathering, you can just walk away from it.
4. Listeners in a large group tend to neglect efforts of personal application. The sermon may touch a nerve of conviction, but without someone to press in, it can easily be avoided.
5. Opportunity for questions leading to growth is missing. Sermons are not dialogue. Nor should they be. But asking questions is a key to understanding and growth. Small groups are great occasions for this.
6. Accountability for follow-through on good resolves is missing. But if someone knows what you intended to do, the resolve is stronger.
7. Prayer support for a specific need or conviction or resolve goes wanting. O how many blessings we do not have because we are not surrounded by a band of friends who pray for us.

So please know that when this small-group ministry of our church is lifted up, I don’t think it’s an optional add-on to basic Christian living. I think it is normal, healthy, needed, New Testament Christianity. I pray that you will be part of one of these small groups or that you will get the training and start one. This is the main strategy through which our pastors and elders shepherd the flock at Bethlehem: Elders > small group leaders > members to one another.

These seven points provided Piper are important to consider, especially because of the fact that we are all members of one another and participants in the change God wants to bring in conforming us more into the image of Christ.

Labels: Bethlehem Baptist Church, Community, Grace Baptist Church, John Piper, Small Groups | posted by TimBrister at 2:01 pm | Categories: Community, Small Groups |