It's made me think about the unforeseen benefits of the gospel that we have enjoyed over the last twelve years leading at Southlands.
Believe it or not, we've been at Southlands almost fifteen years, but three of those years as members of a leadership team led by Chris and Meryl Wienand. In their last couple of years of leading, God began a gospel re-awakening among our team. It's not that the gospel had been absent. It was that it had drifted out to the margins of our life together, displaced by other centers. We visited it every now and then when we gave an altar call or took sporadic communion, but the gospel was not where most of our traffic was found. A theologian from Kenya named Michael Eaton admonished us around this time about what had become central in our church. "You guys are experts at preaching your model of church, but you're novices at preaching the message of Christ," he said. We felt gut-punched. But the gut-punch became a gift.
Convicted by the Holy Spirit that our model had become more central than our message, we resolved to make Jesus and his gospel the blazing center of our church. From then on, we began to say, "If Southlands was a town, Main Street would be the gospel." Thankfully, this resolve was not just a catch phrase or a passing phase. I still believe we are called to preach the gospel as of first importance, and let everything else be shaped by that center. (1 Corinthians 15:1) We would not only preach the gospel to the lost. We would beat the good news into our own heads every day until it became the best news again, to paraphrase Martin Luther. As we did we began to experience new life again at the foot of the blood-stained cross and at the mouth of the empty tomb. We felt like we had been born again, again.
"But surely Jesus should be the center?" you may protest. Absolutely. I think most churches would say that Jesus is their center, but that can mean many different things to different people. It could mean Jesus and politics, Jesus and social justice, Jesus and miracles, even Jesus and morality. I mean, all these were part of Jesus' ministry in some way, weren't they? But the apostle Paul told the church in Corinth that when he came to visit them he resolved to know nothing among them except Christ and Him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) In other words, nothing else really matters if we don't know Christ and Him crucified. This is the essence of gospel centrality. It seems almost too simple, doesn't it? But there is powerful beauty in its simplicity. Since then, the term Gospel-centered has risen to popularity and then began to go out of vogue, carrying some cultural and political baggage. But it's not a passing phase for us.
By God's grace these past twelve years, we have grown steadily and multiplied fairly rapidly because of the gospel. We've also baptized hundreds of new believers and are so thankful to God for every person who has come to find and follow Jesus. The ways in which we have seen the gospel transform people, marriages and families is breathtaking. The gospel is still the power of God to those who believe! Still, gospel sowing and reaping can be painstaking work at times. Some seasons have felt like slim pickings.
But in retrospect, keeping Jesus and His gospel central has produced some unforeseen fruit. By this, I mean it has produced some unexpected benefits there for the picking where we did not plant. A bit like plucking overhanging fruit from your neighbor's tree.
Here are eight benefits that I never saw coming.
1. It's kept us from developing a Savior complex
I believe the finished work of the cross propels us towards the unfinished work of the kingdom. There will always be unfinished work to be done until our Savior returns. Sometimes longing for the Kingdom to come in a broken world can be heart-breaking because it often comes more slowly than we would like. The gospel has given us reason to rest in the midst of what is unfinished. We can rejoice that Jesus' saving work, which is the most important work, is already finished! We've been redeemed and our names are written in heaven! We are not the saviors of the world. Jesus is. This has given us buoyancy as we long for the Kingdom to come that has kept us from despair and striving.
2. It's protected us from the tyranny of novelty.
The gospel has set us free from what C.S. Lewis called a horror of the same old thing. We live, work and play in California, a hive of creativity and new ideas, and while I enjoy many aspects of this innovative spirit, it comes with its own pressure to always be about the new thing. I call this the tyranny of novelty. Essentially, the gospel has helped us to keep the gospel the main thing amidst a tyranny of novelty. Whether it's Hollywood-styled celebrity church, or Disney-styled theme park church, the temptation to build around novelty crouches at our door here. More subtly, the novelty of faith deconstruction, fixation with politics and social justice, charismatic sensationalism - all have their own allure. While we have tried to learn from new ideas and movements that seem to have God's fingerprint on them, keeping the gospel central has kept our people from getting whiplash because we haven't taken sharp turns down novel side roads that become cul-de-sacs. By-and-large, we've stayed on the Main Street of the gospel, learning to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints' (Jude 3). We've become less concerned with novelty than we are with fidelity, and that's produced good fruit.
3. It's given us a category for suffering as we've pursued the power of the Spirit
The gospel is the good news that God has justified us through Jesus' death and resurrection. This is stunning. It is also the good news that God has reconciled us to Himself through His Son. Once exiled enemies, we are now welcomed into His presence as friends. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to help us live in the reality of God's presence. His gifts are a manifestation of God's desire to dwell among His people in power. We are not cautiously charismatic. We've tried to obey God's command to pursue love and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit. (1 Cor 14:1) We've seen God do many miraculous things as we've pursued the Spirit's presence and power. But the gospel has also given us a category for a sovereign God who sometimes mysteriously allows us to go through disappointment and even suffering. The gospel teaches us that if such great good came to us through Christ's suffering, then God can also do great good in and through us when we suffer. We have found, to our delight, that one of the ways in which God has answered prayer is by giving us sufficient grace to suffer well for His glory rather than sulk because our supposed miracle was denied. It's been remarkable to see people persevere through trial and suffering with grace while trusting for the Spirit of God to break in with power at any moment.
4. It's given us grounds for unity in a divisive age
This last decade has been the most divisive I've ever lived or led through. I've watched heart-broken as disputes about race, politics, sexual ethics, viruses, masks, vaccines, end-time theology and conspiracy theories have divided the Church. I've watched believers become so zealous about their political ideology of choice that it becomes their new gospel and their preferred politician of choice becomes their pseudo-Savior. Thankfully, I've also had a front row seat to the gospel of reconciliation that has empowered people of different views on all of these disputable matters to engage with humility and civility, love one another in their differences and stand on the higher ground of gospel unity. I've watched our own leadership team apply the gospel to their differences with great relief, joy and a pinch of fatherly pride. The gospel has become our holy ground of agreement amidst disagreement. And this has provided a space for people of different cultures and convictions to feel at home with us.
5. It's taught us a different way to lead.
It's relatively easy to lead people with a carrot or a stick. The first way motivates through the promise of reward, while the second motivates through the fear of punishment. Each one of us has tendency to use either carrot or stick because it produces quick results, but doesn't produce healthy disciples. Of course, the Bible does talk about rewards for obedience and consequences for disobedience, but the gospel calls us to a deeper core motivation. Jesus said to his disciples, "If you love me you will obey my commands."(John 15: 1) The apostle Paul wrote to Philemon and said, "I could command you but I prefer to make my appeal out of love." When we motivate people with the gospel we are saying that Christ's obedience has already given us a great reward and rescued us from punishment. So when we obey, we do it out of love and gratitude towards Him. "I urge you, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice." (Romans 12:1) This motivation has sometimes produced slower results but it has also produced far more secure disciples.
6. It's shown us a better way to preach the Bible.
The Gospel has given us a more cohesive way of preaching the Bible. Instead of preaching it as a book of morals and heroes to be emulated, we have found that Jesus is the Bible's One True Hero, to be trusted, emulated and adored. In the words of Sally Lloyd-Jones, "Every page whispers His name." The storyline of the Bible is that God's good creation, corrupted by the sin of Adam, is being redeemed and restored by the Second Adam's saving work. All of the law and the prophets are fulfilled in Jesus, the Great Redeemer. We have learned to search, uncover and magnify Christ and His gospel story in all of Scripture and our people have developed an appetite for Christ-exalting preaching through Books of the Bible. Topical preaching is tolerated from time to time, but there is an appetite now for walking slowly through books of the Bible. I think we've become better preachers because of this, and our people have grown in their love for God's Word. Seeing them liberated from moralism and self-help theology as they learn to trust the Jesus of Scripture, has been thrilling.
7. It's given us language to fight for family
Amidst a cultural drift towards individualism, the gospel of adoption has given us language to express the communal essence of Christian faith and to fight for church as family. Through Jesus being forsaken on the cross, Christians have been adopted by God the Father into a forever family of brothers and sisters. As we've continued to emphasize the priority of this diverse family purchased by Jesus' blood from every nation tribe and tongue, we've begun to see many who walked in isolation and independence, find the warmth and sanity of a local church family. The gospel has empowered us to repent when we have hurt a family member, forgive when we've been hurt and aim for reconciliation. It's given us tools to cut down offense and dig out roots of bitterness.
8. It's helped us to become better local missionaries
Finally, gospel centrality has protected our church from being an inward-looking family that exists for its own benefit. It has shaped us as a people living on mission. In the midst of Californians generally disenchanted with their own State, we have asked what it means to live as sent ones here, like Jesus, becoming flesh and dwelling among the people where God has placed us. This has shaped a church that serves its city faithfully. It has meant that our global church planting vision has been better earthed in local faithfulness. We are learning to make disciples of Jesus on our own zip code.
No, we are not in revival. Not yet. We still long to see a great harvest of souls in our day. We are laboring and praying with other churches in our region to that end. But by God's grace, we have harvested where we have not sown. This is not a humble brag about how faithful we've been. Our faith has been feeble at times. But God has been faithful where we have been feeble. I am writing this as a reminder to avoid being forgetful about His gospel. God forbid that we boast in anything save in the Cross of Christ.
Let's resolve to keep boasting in the Cross!
