Say it again...

These are two of my husband's most recent posts that I agree with whole-heartedly and therefore felt they needed to be said again..... Read the bottom one first to have them in correct order...

Value Statements
This in some way ties into my post Good News IV. When you ask a church about their core values, most of time you get statements about faithfulness to the Scriptures, style of preaching, ministry, worship, evangelism, and so on. What if we had core value statements centered on themes like reconciliation, compassion, transformation, incarnation, and/or other words closely tied to the themes of Scripture? Would this serve to keep us focused more on the spirit of the Gospel? Would it cause us to pause and reflect more deeply on the way we are doing ministry? I don't know. I am sure that we would find a way to institutionalize or legalize it, but I think it might be the direction we need to go.

posted by BAB at 6/13/2005 07:58:00 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Good News IV
I had to come back to this little string of thoughts on the Gospel; only I don't want to reflect on the content of the Gospel so much as how should we make it known in this world. I was making the case that the Gospel is not so much focused on how we get to Heaven, but how God, in Jesus, was getting heaven back to us. The Gospel was focused on Jesus, and that through him, God is setting the world aright.

The other night, I sat and took in the book of Hosea. I was taken back again by the analogy of a faithful husband who steadfastly loves his wife, a harlot. The husband, who pays his wife's trick, just so he can spend a night with her is an arresting image that communicates volumes about God's love for his own people.

Since then I have been thinking about how God commanded his prophets to communicate through symbolic actions. Hosea was commanded to marry a whore and name their children with symbolic names. Isaiah was to name his children with symbolic names and was commanded to walk around in the buff. Jeremiah was commanded to walk around with a yoke around his neck. Ezekiel was to build a makeshift model of Jerusalem under seige and lay on his side for over a year. The prophets did stuff that communicated God's message. Jesus did this, too. When Jesus eats with sinners, heals lepers, and cleanses the temple he is acting out the message. Most of the time Jesus' teaching is actually an explanation of what he is doing, and not the other way around.

It got me thinking. What if we were to take on certain actions rooted in the Gospel, that were so radical they begged the question, "What are you doing?" Off the top of my head, what if we started getting radical in our generosity as a statement of hope in the kingdom of God and not material gain? What if we threw parties for life's rejected ones? Rather than lobbying against abortion, what if we (the body of Christ) made a concerted effort to adopt and/or care for all unwanted children?

I am thinking that maybe our witness to the Gospel personally and collectively should be grounded in very intentional, public actions serving as signs to our hope and trust the Lord Jesus. And when they ask what we are doing, we will tell them about Jesus.