“It takes disciples to make disciples, and Jesus had spent three years teaching his disciples what it meant to be one…. In short, you had to live under the reign of God if you wanted to go preach about the reign of God.” Christopher Wright. The Mission of…
Read More
Text: Matthew 5—8. The Demands of Christ’s Righteousness The demands of the Sermon on the Mount (SM) are great. I have presented elsewhere that the style and structure of the Beatitudes call disciples to a sacrificial way of life.[1] Most shudder at the prospect of the commands of…
Read More
At Gulf Coast Community Church, our mission is to be a faithful Gospel witness for this generation and the next. Our witness for Christ is the sine qua non of our existence, that without which our existence would be meaningless. Our missional priorities are those things essential to…
Read More
Our five missional priorities as a church—those things which comprise our faithful Gospel witness as a church—are Gospel formation, Gospel culture, Gospel mercy, Gospel outreach, and Gospel unity. Gospel culture is the product of something. It is the result of Gospel formation. We can measure the effectiveness of…
Read More
The Grand Human Fishing Expedition Many of us know the oft repeated statement from Jesus to the first disciples that he would make them “fishers of men,” or maybe better, “fishers of people” (Matt. 4:19; Luke 5:10). Standing alone, this imagery communicates clearly the task before the disciples,…
Read More
Is Jesus really reigning as king over the universe? Or should we expect someone else? Is he going to build a glorious kingdom like Solomon? Or will it be a kingdom of another kind altogether? “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will…
Read More
And [Jesus] called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” (Matthew 15:10-11 ESV) These verses come in the middle of…
Read More
Most Christians are familiar with the scene when Jesus is baptized and the Spirit descends “like a dove” and rests upon Him. What is being communicated by the presence of this dove in the scene? Why is the Spirit appearing as a dove? And when Jesus was baptized,…
Read More
By definition, Evangelical believers believe in the authority of Scripture, but what does that mean in practice? How does it change one’s life? More specifically, to the Evangelical believer, how does it change your life? Our statement of faith at Gulf Coast Community Church includes this: “We believe…
Read More
Reading: Matthew 4:8-11 This third temptation of Jesus is the offer of “all that glitters” and the “gold.” All that glitters isn’t gold but it sure does catch our attention, doesn’t it? In fact, it may be some of the most tempting stuff we deal with. The splendor…
Read More
Reading: Matthew 4:5-7 Christ’s wilderness testing can teach us much during this current pandemic. The things that tempt us as humans have not changed much, nor the truths necessary to overcome those temptations. Part three of this multi-part post explores what we can learn from Jesus’ second temptation…
Read More
Reading: Matthew 4:1-11 In the previous post, I noted that Christ’s wilderness testing in the Gospels can teach us much for a time such as this. While this pandemic is generating temptations in seemingly new forms, they are the same temptations in new packaging. The things that tempt…
Read More
Reading: Matthew 4:1-11 Christ’s wilderness testing in the Gospels (as well as Israel’s in Deuteronomy 6—8), can teach us much for a time such as this. This pandemic is generating temptations in seemingly new forms, but, in truth, they are no different than past temptations with a new…
Read More
“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9 NIV) The call for how the people of God are to treat strangers (here translated foreigners) is directly related to the command to love our neighbor…
Read More
Reading: Matthew 6:9-13 “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Karl Barth That is one of my two favorite quotes about prayer. And it is rooted in my favorite text on prayer in the Bible: The Lord’s…
Read More