"Religious people have rules to follow, but missionaries have stories to tell."
The quote comes from Bruce Wesley, our lead pastor at CCCC.
Jesus starts the tale of the Church and He also finishes it.
Jesus commissioned us to be missionaries. Matter of fact, all of the early churches we see the in New Testament were products of missionaries exhorted to be missionary agents. What they were not was a community focused completely on themselves, too caught up in earning their "blessing" to be showing God's love to a broken world. The gospel torch was handed by Jesus into the hands of the Apostles and they took off with it. But now this torch is in our hands. This will naturally work itself out in story as we seek to incarnate the gospel. But religious people, in this sense, are focused on trying to get God on their side by not being too bad, or by being as good as possible. But I do not think Jesus motivates us to obedience through guilt or pride, but rather by gratitude and trust in future grace.
The torch has been lit, carry it in love. This blog will take you on our journey as we carry the torch of the gospel into the darkness of the world. Follow us as we get to know culture, language, people and communities and place gospel "rebar" (thanks Yancey) into the lives of all we encounter. Our blog will be here to encourage you to fall deeper in love with Jesus so that the sin in all our lives become less and less attractive. To help place our identities so much in God's love through Jesus that His story explodes through our lives. Until one day... Rev 7:9-12.
-Giulian
juice. you are a gifted writer. God's really given you a voice that inspires with His authority! write a book when you are a missions veteran. im loving it.
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