Thoughts on Sunday

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
-Ephesians 4:11-16

One of the things that stood out most to me in Joey's sermon this past Sunday was when he said:

"The Church is a movement: not a museum or a monument."

Later that day I was doing some reading and writing, reflecting on the day and what was said. Here are some thoughts:

"Though we often think of revelation as conceptual, God sends persons to embody it, enable it, and speak it...God does not send a system of theology but Jesus and the Spirit, and we are bearing the Spirit."
-Arthur Freeman, The Nature of Scripture.

As the Church, our mission is to reclaim and redeem what Adam lost but Christ came to restore. Albeit the growth of the kingdom will be happening at the same time the world is increasingly becoming a hell on earth, God is presently at work through His word and Spirit bringing a partial but continual renewal of God's creation. God has given His Church the task of giving witness to the restorative work of Christ by living together in community as the redeemed new humanity and seeking to to engage the culture so as to implore all people to repent and believe the Gospel. The message of repenting and believing the Gospel is a message that denotes "one's old world [coming] to an end, whatever constitutes that old world with its struggles, and a new world [coming] into being which is constituted by God's grace" (Arthur Freeman, The Nature of Scripture).