5) The Gospel Creates a New Community

1. The body of Christ, a living sacrifice, a temple of living stones, a holy nation, the family of God. These New Testament descriptions tell us that they understood themselves primarily as a community, rather than as individuals.
   
2. Jesus came to create a new community, empowered by the Gospel.
   
3. In Community, we preach the gospel to one another.
   
4. In Community, we devote ourselves to one another with increasing vulnerability, because the gospel frees us from hiding our faults. We are finally free to struggle.

1. The gospel is dynamic, always spreading, always reaching out.
   
2. The gospel gives us confidence to believe that God is always at work, and will not be thwarted in his advance of the Kingdom of God.
   
3. The gospel gives us compassion to see neighborhoods, and other cities reached with the unique message of the gospel, in a context that embodies the core values of our church.
   
4. New Churches are needed, are more effective in evangelism, and serve to mobilize more believers for ministry.
   
5. Because the church is the primary agent of God's kingdom, planting churches is a high priority. By proliferating churches centered on the gospel, we can play a significant role in mending the world and testifying to our hope of Jesus' return when he will set all things right.

7) The Gospel Renews the City Socially.

1. The gospel is the gospel "Of the Kingdom of God", therefore without a concern for the poor and for justice issues, we are not a gospel driven church, because it is the gospel of the Kingdom.
   
2. We are called to embody the gospel as we seek to give foretastes of the Kingdom by seeking the healing of the world's woundedness.
   
3. We seek to create an environment for the gospel to be understood, but we must create an environment where people are discovering the joy of "living out their gospel commitments". We are both "telling" and "showing". The gospel is the gospel of the Kingdom.
   
4. Our church is a model of the Kingdom of God, and an agent of the Kingdom of God. We model it's priorities, and we seek to do it's priorities, and aid others in doing the priorities of the Kingdom.
   
5. We don't involve ourselves in evangelism simply for the impact it will have on non-Christians. It is NOT that evangelism flows out of social concern, nor that social concern is good for our evangelistic purposes...rather, evangelism IS social concern IS evangelism, and cannot be defined apart from it if we define the purposes of God in a gospel driven and wholistic manner.