Connecting the Core Dots
August 3, 2008
As we walk through our core values on Wednesday evenings, I am beginning to realize how necessarily interrelated these priorities are. Consider the value we studied this week: “We prayerfully seek to provide a safe environment in which the vulnerable can grow in the faith and in which the hurting and abused can experience God’s love and healing.”
On Wednesday we discussed how our approach to sin in church members’ lives significantly affects the safety of our church family. On the one hand, we must have a commitment to confront unconfessed sin in the church, lest we allow harmful behavior to continue to the detriment of the vulnerable in our flock. On the other hand, the spirit of such confrontation must be characterized by brokenness and self-examination. Otherwise we would create an equally unsafe Pharisaical atmosphere where no one feels the freedom to confess their struggles and seek spiritual support from others.
As I reflected on this tension, I realized that humble confrontation of sin-the type that makes for a safe church environment-is already addressed in our other core values. The value we will cover next Wednesday addresses the confrontation issue: “We prayerfully seek to foster an atmosphere of joy-filled holiness by pointing each other to the promises of God in response to the promises of the world.” The humility aspect is addressed in our first core value: “to be awed by…the mercy of the gospel.” To put it together, our awe that God would forgive our sins through Christ’s death creates a humble tone as we pursue holiness in our body.
If this “connect-the-core values-dots” game strikes you as too complicated, it may be helpful to pan out and see the picture that all these lines create: a church that holds fast to the gospel. Some may be helped by asking the interrelated questions about awe and a safe environment and joy-filled holiness. Indeed, the shepherds of this flock must keep these finer points in view. But at the end of the day the issue that encompasses them all is the gospel-the news that God has graciously redeemed us to belong to himself through the death and resurrection of his Son. If we hold fast to this reality and allow its implications to permeate our personal and church life, we will be in a position to glorify God by reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out.
Pastor Chris