Skip to main content

Marks of a Healthy Church - A Biblical Understanding of the Good News by Pastor Kevin Feder

By

I am beginning to ask my kids about how they see the gospel presented in the various sermons and lessons they sit under. My 16 year old daughter goes to a Wednesday morning outreach ministry led by a faithful servant in the community. This man’s heart is to see the youth in the community know Christ and shepherded by Christ. God has done an amazing work through him and some 300 kids show up to eat breakfast and hear the gospel presented. My own daughter has convinced four of her unchurched and unbelieving friends to participate. I ask her how it went and ask for the ways the gospel was presented. My desire is for her to be good at spotting it so she can reiterate it to her friends. 

Truth be told, I am also training her to be discerning. It isn’t infrequent that large youth ministries degenerate into moralisms cloaked in some biblical themes. Thus, there is a real need to discern between the message of Jesus crucified, buried and risen to overcome sins and the message of try harder, do better, be nicer and think more positively. Both can sound an awful lot alike but they are very far away from the truth. Since the gospel is at the heart of Christianity the gospel should be at the center of healthy churches. 


When the gospel is at the center of healthy churches in healthy ways it manifests itself in a few ways. Let me present some of them. 


First, the church that is marked by a biblical understanding of the good news is noticed when the good news permeates through the entirety of the church. This means the gospel informs and shapes every sermon, prayer, initiative, even the conversations after the worship service in the lobby. In other words, the church should be dripping wet with the gospel of Jesus.


Second, the church should be marked by an increasing and deepening desire for a more understanding of the gospel. Mark Dever suggests this is so because “the hope of the gospel is the hope of knowing the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4-6). It’s the hope of seeing him clearly and knowing him fully, even as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:8). It’s the hope of becoming like him as we see him as he is (1 John 3:2).


Third, the church is able and willing to distinguish between the gospel itself and the benefits of the gospel. Peace, joy, fulfillment, love are benefits of the gospel but the gospel itself is the news that God is love. It is the news that Jesus died on the cross and made a way for sinners to have fellowship with God. 


Fourth, the church is marked by an increasing desire to share the gospel with the world. George Truett, a pastor in Dallas Texas suggested that the “supreme indictment that you can bring against a church is that such a church lacks in passion and compassion for human souls.” In other words, the love for the gospel of Jesus can be measured in the congregations desire for evangelism. 


May God help us to love and cherish the good news above all things,

Pastor Kevin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Worship Songs, October 15, 2017

By
We post these worship songs leading up to the worship service so that parents may listen to them in the house or in the car within the days leading up to the worship service. Our hope is that children will hear the songs prior to and it will prepare them to participate in worship on Sunday mornings. My Redeemers Love Hope Has Come I Will Glory In My Redeemer Blessed Be Your Name Here In Your Presence Your Glory Be Still My Soul (In You I Rest) -- Sermon Text: John 11:1-16 That the next generation will set their hope in God and not forget the works of God (Psalm 78:7).
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations on the Glory of Christ: He Sits at the Right Hand of God

By
In Hebrews 1:2-4, the author makes seven claims about Jesus that when taken together greatly exalt his glory. The seventh claim the author makes about the Son is that, having made purification for sins, he now sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The words “he sat down” set the stage for chapter 7 where we’re taught that Jesus is both Priest and King. Prior to Jesus, no king offered his own sacrifices and no priest sat on the throne of David, for that wouldn’t be right. God had decreed that there should be a separation of powers between the priest and the king, but Jesus, unlike all before him, is worthy and able to fulfill both roles. So, on the one hand, Jesus sat down at the right hand of God after making purification for sins because the sacrifice he offered, namely himself, is sufficient. Other priests were always standing, as we see in chapter 10:11-14, because their work was never done. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins, so the priests could...
Post a Comment
Read more