Tag: Gospel-Centered

Walking Together Toward Community: Cultivation

Cultivation

Cultivate disciples who make disciples.

Gospel Centered Community (GCC): a body of committed believers, connected by a shared purpose and vision to see Jesus glorified and who challenge each other into deeper relationships with Jesus and one another.

Gospel Centered Missional Community (GCMC): the practical outworking of GCC and is focused on cultivating disciples who make connected disciples.

I call the process for growing into community The Walk and it looks like this:

The Walk

This is the third and final post in which we will examine the committed actions, and their associated elements, for developing community. In this post, we will examine Cultivation:

The committed action of Cultivation is:

 We will cultivate disciples who make connected disciples by sacrificing our time, resources, and self.

Cultivate Disciples who Make Connected Disciples

I changed the word for this final, committed action at least five times. The intent in action never changed, but I struggled to find a word to fit the message. I chose cultivation and not just because it alliterates. Cultivate is defined as:

1. To develop or improve by education or training, 2. to promote the growth or development of, and 3. to devote oneself to developing or growing.

When a community commits to cultivation, they devote themselves to developing and promoting the growth of disciples who make disciples. In committing to developing others, we honor Jesus’ call to be His witness to a lost and dying world.

When we honor His call, we take part in His commission to make disciples. Making disciples:

  • Moves you from GCC into GCMC
  • Moves you from the experience of growing found in GCC, into the experience of living with a mind and heart set on Jesus’s mission found in GCMC.
  • In GCC we enjoy receiving the love of God, and in GCMC we learn to reveal it to others. If we do not cultivate a mission-minded heart, we cannot fully experience the abundant life Christ promised.

The heart of living in GCMC is a commitment to a life of sacrifice, so others have an avenue to connect to Jesus and community.

By Sacrificing our Time, Resources and Self

Time

When I mention sacrificing your time for your community, if your first thought is “I have no time,” then you need to reevaluate how you spend your time. Or, you may need to realize you are not ready to commit to GCMC. Living in authentic, gospel-centered community, and making disciples requires much of you, including your time. As our example for growing disciples, Jesus dedicated three years of his life and was always with them. This should clue us into the time investment required for making and growing people for the sake of the kingdom.

Resources

Few Christians would argue with the truth that God calls us to be generous with our finances. Whether or not you agree with tithing is irrelevant. Sacrificing your resources in the context of GCMC goes far beyond giving 10% of your income to a local church. Sharing your resources is the practice of maintaining an open hand with ALL God has blessed you with. We can look at Acts 2:45 and see Christians selling everything and doling out the proceeds to people according to their need. This was a generosity in which the Christians divorced themselves from ownership of property that would appear to be theirs, and viewed it as God’s. Because of this view, they were able to honor Jesus by decreasing others’ burdens.

Self

We can use any number of scriptural references to talk about sacrificing ourselves for the sake of our Christian community. However, we must recognize the most important aspect of self-sacrifice is love. Jesus, and later the Apostles, continuously exhort Christians to love one another. Self-sacrifice will always spring out of love for Jesus, and by proxy, our love for each other. When we sacrifice ourselves, for the sake of our brothers/sisters, we identify ourselves with Christ and His sacrifice. One of the best descriptions of love like this is in Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

How is this Biblical

A heart of sacrifice is easy to see, in the early church, when we read Acts 2:42-47. Verse 45 is the clearest evidence of the early Christian’s willingness to sacrifice. In that verse, we read they “were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” This verse makes clear that they viewed their resources as a means to diminish the needs of those around them, both believer and unbeliever. We find their commitment to growing as a community in the time they invested into being with each other. Verses 42, 44, and 46 tell us that all the believers were together every day, attending the temple and sharing meals.

The time they invested was a sacrifice. They gave themselves up to grow others in Christ, and advance the Gospel. And to what end? For the sake of making disciples as Christ commissioned them to do. And that was their purpose. All of their charity, generosity, invested time, and willingness to give themselves for the sake of Christ drew people to God. Their commitment to cultivating disciples had a noticeable impact as “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

photo: Don Caywood

Defining Gospel Centered Missional Community (GCMC)

community

For the last few years a few and my friends and I have been talking about community. The focus is on what it would look like to live in authentic community with other Christians. It is a topic that has consumed large parts of our conversations and time. During that time, we have all written down our ideas and meshed them into a conglomerate of processes. My friend and co-host of The (G)odd Show, Thomas Hogan, has been the most intentional about collecting these ideas.

In my last post I talked about being committed to building and helping others build lasting Gospel Centered Community (GCC). In order to provide a clearer picture of what that means, it is important to define that for you. So, what do I mean when I talk about Gospel Centered Community? Unfortunately, I have not taken a lot of time to write the definition. But, lucky for all of us, Thomas was good enough to write out our ideas so they are easily coherent. Here is what I mean when I say GCC or GCMC:

Gospel Centered Missional Community

We teach a purpose toward ministry called, “Gospel Centered Community” (GCC) and a method of ministry called, “Gospel Centered Missional Community” (GCMC).

The easiest way to define such a life encompassing idea is to define each word’s ideas and modes. And, the easiest way to execute this purpose is by understanding GCC as Jesus moving your heart to intentionally live toward others. And if GCC is an intent to live toward others, GCMC is the missional outworking of that intent, focused on making disciples who make disciples. In the below paragraphs, first I will define the purpose of each word and then under that, provide the practical outworking of that word as a method.

Gospel

By Gospel we mean the life altering invitation by God to come home. The cross of Jesus Christ is the extension of this invitation. He has made the way for us to be close to God, to not feel ashamed or rejected, to be clean and whole without any hindrance or condemnation.

The Gospel invites us into God’s family and we should be decorating the invitation for others. By growing into maturity, through being a disciple and discipling others, we extend that invitation through our commission and emulate Christ’s work on the Earth.

Centered

By Centered we mean complete balance in your life. Balance between Heaven and Earth, between friends, family and ourselves, and between hurts and all joy. Our lives should be experienced, not buried in a landslide of religious duty or distracted by every wind of philosophy. We must find the center of our souls. That center is found in a loving, growing, and forward relationship with Jesus Christ. It is only from a place of spiritual identity and openness that balance is maintained.

In a Centered life our efforts and actions reflect simplicity. We best experience centeredness by living at peace with others, as best we can, and revealing the love of God through unity. In areas where being right and relationship come into conflict, we should seek relationship first and being right through developing our faith.

Missional

By Missional we mean that we exist for the benefit of those around us. We have abandon self-centeredness and embrace the mission of God to reach and heal the lost and hurting. By focusing on the greatest commandment, the great commission and the new commandment we fully encompass God’s heart for the world.

In a Missional community we create opportunities for others to interact with God’s love by meeting real needs in the real world. Christ is teaching us to love each other, so we can love God and love our neighbor. We best express that love by tangible manifestations in our neighborhoods. In doing so, our neighbors are able to see Christ pursuing them without compulsion or prerequisites.

Community

By Community we mean a place and a people who are truly “your own.” We are not meant to find balance or experience the grace and power of God alone; we need each other. There is no version of community that doesn’t begin with deep-rooted love and end in freedom. In community we are free and with our people we can explore the richness of love from the Father without fear or restriction.

In Community we find our greatest purpose. Community spurs us on when we become weak and tired; in turn we use our gifts, talents, and abilities to interact in the work of the gospel. By experiencing the ebb and flow of conflict, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation of “body-life” we see the clearest picture of Christ among us.

Scriptural References: Acts 4:32, Acts 20:32, 1 Corinthians 5:13, Philippians 2:1-4, James 3:17-18 & Colossians 1:6-7.

If you have an interest in continuing to this discussion or developing GCMC where you are, I (or Thomas) would love to talk with you about it. You can contact me by clicking the below link:

Let’s talk about GCMC!

photo: Trinity Church

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