Our Gospel Vision

Colossians 1:3-8

Welcome. If you’re new to Renewal/Philadelphia, we’re glad you’re here.

We want to welcome a special new comer: Dave Skinner has joined our staff as our assistant site pastor, and his family has just arrived from MS.

You’ve come at an exciting time of change for us as a church. Over the years I’ve develop as a pastor, the session has developed as a team, and we’ve been developing as a church. In particular, we’re moving toward becoming a multi-site church. With all these developments, the session felt we needed to revisit our vision statement. Over the next few months, we want to share our revised vision statement and core values. I hope this will help us understand where we’re going as a church, both for those who’ve been here as well as for those of us who are new.

To ignite a gospel-spreading movement through multiple local congregations in the greater Philadelphia area and the world, so that individuals, communities, and cultures are renewed in Christ.

Core Values

Gospel, Worship, Transformation

Community, Local Church

Compassion & Service, Spreading, Cultural Renewal

Over the next few months, we want to flesh out how the Gospel transforms the world, both in depth and breadth. It changes us deeply at a personal level. Gather these people who’ve been transformed by the Gospel, and you find a new kind of society with different values and dynamics. Put this group of Gospel-transformed people in a neighborhood, and there’s something that overflows and impacts that neighborhood. Like salt, it changes its environment. Allow these people to apply the Gospel to all their relationships, their family and work, their finances and recreation, and it changes the culture.

We’d like to look at our vision and core values through the lens of Colossians. The vision and values don’t just come from Colossians, but I think studying these various passages will help us recognize these values as values the Bible also holds and better understand what they mean.

Look at the structure/bones of the passage

Thanksgiving

jFaith & love

jhope

jGospelm

Bearing fruit

mWhole world

mColossians

jEphaphras

1. Paul is giving thanks for the Gospel

When you boil down all the phrases added on phrases, the basic message is that Paul is giving thanks for the Gospel. He is giving thanks for the Gospel and its fruit in the Colossians.

This is very much like Paul. When he writes letters, he often gives a word of thanks, and this thanks is usually connected to the Gospel, or how the people have received the Gospel, or how they partner in the Gospel:

2^#^{We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly}^#^#^{mentioning you in our prayers, 3remembering before}^#^{our God and Father}^#^{your work of faith and labor of}^#^{love and}^#^{steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4For we know,}^#^{brothers loved by God,}^#^{that he has chosen you, 5because}^#^{our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and}^#^{in the Holy Spirit and with full}^#^{conviction. (1 Thess 1:2-5)}

13But^#^{we ought always to give thanks to God for you,}^#^{brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you}^#^{as the firstfruits to be saved,}^#^{through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14To this he called you through}^#^{our gospel,}^#^{so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thess 2:13-14)}

3^#^{I thank my God}^#^{in all my remembrance of you, 4always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5}^#^{because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. (Philippians 1:3-5)}

6I am astonished that you are^#^{so quickly deserting}^#^{him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to}^#^{a different gospel (Galatians 1:6; the reverse is true: Paul’s dismay is centered on their rejection of the gospel)}

What excited Paul is the gospel and how this gospel changes lives. The Gospel is at the core of Paul’s heart, Paul’s ministry. And as you’ll see more fully, it is at the core of our vision and values.

2. This is a world-wide Gospel movement

This Gospel is bearing fruit and increasing in the whole world (v. 6)

Also, 23, the gospel “has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven”

This is the mission Paul devoted his life to.

In Paul’s day, the Gospel quickly spread through the Roman Empire. We know how Paul planted many churches, but he was not the only one. The church at Colosse was planted by Epaphras (7). The other apostles also were going around planting churches too. There was a world-wide Gospel movement.

Even today, that Gospel continues to spread. We read in Revelations that one day, every tribe and nation will be gathered to worship Jesus.

This is bigger than Renewal/Philadelphia. This is the plan of God, from centuries and centuries past, through generations and generations. We are part of something far bigger than ourselves. This God’s world-wide movement that stretches around the globe and from the beginning to the end of human history: to save people from sin and judgment and restore people to Himself.

We are called to actively participate in advancing this movement. We, as Renewal, want to ignite and further a gospel movement in the Philadelphia area and the world

For us, we believe God has led us to adopt a particular strategy for this: we are becoming a multi-site church, believing that the Gospel can most effectively be spread through more local congregations. We’re excited to launch our first campus, Lord willing around this February. We’re excited to have Dave Skinner come on board as an assistant site pastor for our PM campus.

We’re also excited for how our WP campus will have a more defined target in the city. We’re excited to have Dwight be the site pastor for our WP campus and Charles to be his assistant site pastor.

We’re also excited for Dan and his work with our college students and their efforts to more intentionally spread the Gospel on the various campuses represented by our members.

We have a vision to spread the gospel.

3. This is a life-changing Gospel movement

There is breadth to this Gospel, but there is also depth.

Notice the depth of impact on the Colossians. This Gospel produced hope, and this hope produced love and faith (4, 5). This love was so evident that Epaphras reported it to Paul and Timothy (8).

Their lives were deeply and noticeably changed by the Gospel.

This life-change was not a once-for-all thing. It is on-going.

Notice (6) the gospel is (present) bearing fruit and growing—as it also does (present) among you since the day you heard it and understood it. This bearing fruit and growing started they day they heard and understood the gospel but it is still going on. This Gospel isn’t just how they found hope (past), it is how they continue to find hope, which continues to produces faith and love.

The Gospel isn’t just how we start the Christian life, it is how we live the Christian life.

Paul’s goal isn’t just winning converts. He wants to see people transformed and growing in the Gospel. Paul wants breadth & depth.

28[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that^#^{we may present everyone}^#^{mature in Christ}. 29For this^#^{I toil,}^#^struggling^#^{with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Col 1:28-29)}

Paul toils and struggles, he labors to see deep Gospel impact.

1For I want you to know^#^{how great a}^#^{struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2that}^#^{their hearts may be encouraged, being}^#^{knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of}^#^{God’s mystery, which is Christ (Col 2:1-2)}

He wanted the Colossians to reach all the riches of full assurance, to become mature in Christ. He sees a world-wide Gospel movement, which is also an on-going, deep, life-changing Gospel movement.

This is our vision, to help people start in the Gospel and live in the Gospel in such a way that they are deeply transformed, that we can reach all the riches of the full assurance of knowing Christ.

How does the Gospel change us? A little today, more in weeks to come.

4. The Gospel changes us with the hope of heaven

Consider the dynamic of change Paul presents here.

In the Gospel there is hope of what is to come. There is a promise, a picture, a reality of forgiveness, wholeness, acceptance, significance, glory. We experience some of that now, but we recognize this is just a deposit of what is yet to come. Our hearts can hold onto a glorious future, our hearts can rest in the assurance of things yet unseen.

Paul encourages them to keep thinking about heaven.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Col 3:1-2).

That hope produces faith and love. We trust Christ. We can rest, delight, enjoy the assurance of our heavenly home and our loving Savior. We find our hearts freed to love.

When heaven is more real, love can flow more freely.

The PM core team did a study on heaven and we asked, If heaven we real to us, like we could taste and see it, how would that change us? We’d probably care less about trivial things; we’d live with more hope that our brokenness and the brokenness of those around us will one day be healed; we’d have more joy and celebration. Paul says, we’d love more.

Let’s look at an example. Hebrews 10:32-34

32But recall the former days when, after^#^{you were enlightened, you endured}^#^{a hard struggle with sufferings, 33sometimes being}^#^{publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34For}^#^{you had compassion on those in prison, and}^#^{you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had}^#^{a better possession and an abiding one. (Hebrews 10:32-34)}

There was a lot of persecution in the early church. Many were beaten, jailed, and martyred. If you weren’t arrested, the best thing would be to go underground and hide. There was a real danger in associating with those in prison because you’d be identified as a Christian too. But these early Christians didn’t hesitate to go and take care of their fellow Christians, even at great cost (plundering of their property). Why? They had compassion. But also, they knew they had a better possession, one that could not be taken away.

Their Gospel hope of heaven enabled/freed them to disregard their own earthly possessions. Without being bound by their earthly possessions they were more free to care for their friends in prison. Hope of heaven broke the power of love for the things of the world so they could love their fellow Christians.

The Gospel tells us that we have a far greater possession than the things of earth.

The global recession has affected all of us, including the very wealthy. A year ago there were 1125 billionaires in the world. Now, there are only 793. Bill Gates is once again the riches man in the world, even though he lost $18 billion, taking him to a net worth of $40 billion.

If he spent a $1 million/day, it would take him over a century to spend all his money, presuming his net worth doesn’t go up at all.

He lives in a [pictures] 66,000 sq ft house, 7 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 6 fireplaces, 60 ft swimming pool with an underwater sound system, reception hall that can seat 150 for a meal with a 22-ft wide video screen, and all kinds of high-tech marvels.

The Gospel says, you have more than Bill Gates. Do you believe it?

“We have a better possession and an abiding one.”

This hope of heaven isn’t just a “positive attitude.” This is the enlightening work of the HS. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians:

having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what arethe riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe (Eph 1:18-19)

We need spiritual enlightenment to grasp this hope we have, the riches of our glorious inheritance—because humanly speaking, normal minds do not have the capacity to imagine so glorious a hope or so astronomical an inheritance.

This is what we want to see: the Gospel take root, make Christ and heaven more real, so that it produces hope, love and faith. It changes our lives.

We see ourselves as participating in a world-wide, life-changing gospel movement. We have good news to proclaim, we have a Savior who lavishly pours his love and goodness on us, we have a hope, a home where he’s taking us with riches, joys, and glory that are beyond our human ability to comprehend or imagine.

Let’s pray Paul’s prayer, enlighten the eyes of my heart to know the hope, the riches of our inheritance. That hope of heaven can break the power of love for the things of the world so we also could love our fellow Christians and the world.