On Jamey Newberg's message board, one of the Rangers' fans has posted some new artwork that is sensational. Here is a finished picture of Mark Teixeira that is sure to get your blood flowing if you're a Rangers fan like myself.
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What a blessed start to the New Year God has given to the Marble Falls church. Our attendance the first two Sundays have been 395 and 373. And, on the heels of last Sunday's sacrifical offering of over $63,000, it is exciting to see God doing great things among His people here.
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Larry Chounaird, serves as one of the elders for the Norway Avenue church in Huntington, West Virginia where my friend Jeff Garrett serves as the Preaching Minister.
Chounaird's blog entry last Friday on what is means for the church to be Jesus-centered is very insightful and encouraging. I share it with you this morning in the hopes it raises your gaze to the incredible possibilities for the church when the mission of Jesus is lived out among every member.
To be Jesus centered means that the church must take seriously the teachings and redemptive mission of Jesus as the primary model shaping our witness in the world. In Jesus we not only see God's redemptive mission fully disclosed, his life becomes paradigmatic for the life of the church. While today's church often operates with a thin Jesus veneer, it is a Jesus far removed from the one we read of in the Gospel stories. As noted by Stanley Grenz, many churches have fallen prey to a "wholesale cultural accommodation":
"Some churches are restructuring congregational life in a manner that,perhaps unbeknownst to them, takes its cue more from the nation's business schools than from the Bible. Others are blindly and unquestioningly catering to the contemporary consumerist mentality. Many evangelicals have substituted therapy for salvation, thereby 'exchanging the language of Scripture for the language of Psychology Today' . . ." (Renewing the Center, p.12).
Somehow the church has been shaped more by the expectations and imagery of contemporary culture than the way of Christ. Yet, it is a radical allegiance to Christ as Lord and King that enables us to participate in what God is doing in the world. A new social order has dawned in Jesus and we are invited to participate as citizens of a new reality (Phil. 3:20). As the character of the King in the OT determined the character of the people, so the church must look to Jesus to define and embody what life in the Kingdom of God is all about. The radical Jesus of the Gospel narratives is not about the pursuit of personal happiness, financial success, or meeting every self defined need. Jesus came to challenge our superficial self interests and to abolish the artificial boundaries and standards we have erected. Jesus' invitation is to "come to me . . . and learn from me . . . and you will find rest for your souls" (Mt 11:28-30). Jesus thus becomes our ultimate "reference point for all genuine knowing, all true loving, and all authentic following of God" (Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, p. 37). We are called to a way of life, not the mere endorsement of a few propositional truths. The implications are staggering for the contemporary church.
