Two Points::Monday May 17

Today's two points come from the sermon from yesterday. You can listen to it here. We began a new series yesterday called "Questioning the Church" and this is a vital study for us and for Christians in general. We need to learn what scripture says about the church and what God intended the church to be and what God intended the church to do. So we will use this blog to go into detail with some topics that are touched on in the messages. Be sure to check the blog frequently and know that you are encouraged to interact here and connect with a Community Group for face to face interaction.

Point 1- Deuteronomy 4:10 (ESV)
10 how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

The word that is translated here as gather is translated elsewhere as assemble and it is the Hebrew word for church. The Hebrew church is a gathering or assembling of God' people. But the real information that is here is what follows because it lays out the purpose of the gathering or assembly or church. The author lays out three things as purposes for the church.

1. To teach the word- We gather together as the church for the purpose of being taught the word of God. The Bible is the word of God so the church exists to teach the Bible.
2. To learn to revere God and place Him in proper perspective- Deut 4:10 uses the language "Learn to fear". The is a commonly used phrase in Old Testament and it can be summarized as having a proper view of God and his power, glory, love and other attributes. It means to respect, revere, worship, see properly. The church exists to lead people to a proper view of God.
3. To disciple others- We have the word taught to us and we receive this proper view of God and then we teach it to our children or those who come after us. The church exists to create disciples.

There are so many places in scripture where the purposes of the church are spelled out, none of them are exhaustive. This one is no exception. These are not the only things that a church does, but they are what a church does. Every church should be doing these things, if it does not it is either not a good church or it is simply not a church.

Point 2 The church is more than just doing something spiritual. This is a point that Dave made in the message last night and it is spot on, especially for this current generation.

We live in a culture that rebels against organized religion. Many of the critiques on organized religion are valid and need to be challenged. But the pendulum has swung too far. Instead of reform to the church we have fake replicas of the church. We have three guys meeting at Starbucks and talking about spiritual things replacing the gathering. We have Christians living outside the gathering who have no one who has authority or discipline in their lives. This is not a church and this is not what Go has called His people to.

We have to KNOW that God has brought about this redemptive plan of Jesus and has impacted the world through this plan to reconcile man to Himself and He has created the church to accomplish this task. Living outside of a gathered expression of God's called people (another way to church) is living outside of the plan of God. This is important and heavy stuff that must be said to this generation of people who have been hurt or turned off by particular churches.

Mark Driscoll says this about this idea, "The postmodern world would have an entirely new definition of church, one in which church is understood as a community of Christians and non-Christians who love together without distinction, without leadership, or discipline or doctrine, trying to emulate the character of Jesus without stressing the gospel requirements of repentance of sin and faith in Jesus that enable the life of Jesus to be lived by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Get into and connect honestly with a church THIS WEEK!

Two Points::Friday March 19

Point 1::The kingdom of God. What does that mean?

I want you to take a minute to read this and think hard and perhaps even pray and think about how God is pursuing you.

This is a question that I read in a book, "If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live with, who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone, regardless of behavior, to seek too, and who collectively lived by faith to make the world a little more like Heaven, would you be interested?"

The kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of is in that question. We live in a world of brokenness. Disease, broken relationships, divorce, pain, famine, earthquakes and tsunamis and so many other things are evidence of our broken world. We each contribute to that brokenness. Mine rubs up against yours and yours against mine. We are left more broken.

But Jesus came to bring this kingdom of God, to restore the brokenness, to redeem it. There is beauty in each of the things that are broken. The body that can be broken with disease is an beautiful thing; the brain, the form, its various systems, skin, the eye, these are all beautiful things. Relationships that can broken can be deeply meaningful. To look upon a wide ocean or a massive mountain can move the soul to poetry yet they can be broken and bring devastation. We are meant to live in th rhythm of that poetry, but our brokenness and the brokenness of the world breaks that rhythm.

Jesus came to restore that, to bring the kingdom of God. He invented gospel centered groups of people for the purpose of being the agents of change to bring about that kingdom.

Point 2:: Gospel Centered Community

If I were to use the term church, you might think of a building you knew as a kid or a place your grand mother took you on Easter. You might think of a place filled with judging people or a place that spends millions on a building or thousands promoting a political agenda while people around them go hungry.

The term church has been hijacked by religious people and by culture. What it really means is a group of people who come together around the fact that they are messed up and that Jesus offers them hope and love. This offer is not attached to any required behavior and is unearnable. It is just given.

People within a gospel centered community give room for other people to be messed up. They do this because Jesus gave them room to be messed up and still gave them relationship. They do this because they are messed up and will need to be given room to be messed up.

This is what Jesus is leading us to be at North Church. I want to be bold enough to ask you to come and give this community a chance, to give Jesus a chance.

Two Points:: Thrusday March11

Point 1. A few words on community.- In Genesis the Bible starts with God creating. There is a rhythm that is going on. Each day there is something created and then God proclaims it to be good, it is very rhythmic. Then in Genesis 2:18 we see the words "it was not good". The reference is that man is alone. For the first time something is proclaimed to be not good and it is man being alone.

Simply put you were not meant to be alone. We were all meant to be in community. Community is is not a neighborhood. The root word of community is commune. When I use community in this context, I mean that we partake of life together and we partake of each other as we do life. You are meant to live this sort of communing life with people.

There is more though. As North Church, we seek to live in gospel centered community. What this adds to it is that we are fully aware that we are messed up and you are messed up and we do not hold back our acceptance of one another based upon being or messed up or the times that we mess up.

Do you see the freedom in this? There is no need to impress or perform. The analogy is we are free to wear our sweats and hoodies and slippers around the house. Communing with people is one thing, but hurt can come and come deep when it is not gospel centered. When it is not gospel centered, we are guarded and hold back our vulnerability and thus it is not real community.

I encourage you to engage in real community. I encourage you to think deeply about the relationships that are the most comfortable or healthy or vital to you. What characteristics are true of those relationships?

Point 2 a gospel centered community example

LOST SPOILER ALERT

This weeks Lost episode documents it perfectly. The episode is called Dr. Linus If you do not know Lost and Ben Linus, first off I pity you and second this will be irrelevant to you. But you can watch it anyway because there is background given. The scene I want to direct you occurs at 34:35. Ben has come to complete grips with his awful nature and says that he is going to join Locke because he is the only one who will have him. Ben is repentant about who he is for the first time in his life. He is really broken. The response of the one who has been pursuing him is, "I'll have you."

There is so much to this scene. So much about the gospel and repentance and idol worship and a struggle for power. But what is also here and demonstrated brilliantly is gospel centered community. Broken people who have done very hurtful things to each other, yet there is acceptance.