Missions and Community Outreach Fesitval

What does grace have to do with local and global outreach?

The word grace can be used in different ways. Some say grace over meals. Some name their children Grace. There’s even a Grace, Idaho! Oh, my blessed potatoes…

The theme of the 2022 Missions and Community Outreach Festival is the Grace Centered Mission. For the past five years, we have been focusing on one foundational biblical principle each year. The purpose is to demonstrate that our local and global outreach work is not based on dramatic statistics or modern methodologies, but on biblical principles.

Yes, we do consider statistics and various methodologies, but those are subservient to the Bible and useful only as far as they help us to engage in gospel centered, biblically based local and global mission work. Because we are people of the book our local and global outreach efforts will fall or rise with our commitment to his Word.

During our upcoming Missions & Community Outreach Festival, we will hear more about grace, that is, the unmerited favor of God, and how it enables us to participate in his great mission. As we humbly serve in his local and global work, God receives the glory, his people receive joy and those who are far from him are invited to experience the joy of knowing Jesus.

We hope that you will join us on October 16 for our local outreach Sunday featuring Matt Smethurst, pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. And join

us the following week, October 23 for our global outreach Sunday, our missions focused Sunday, where we will hear from College Church missionary Steve Krogh. Missionaries will be featured in the Sunday morning and evening services, as well as Adult Communities.

May the Lord bless you with his grace as you seek him, and we hope to see you there.

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Matt Smethurst is lead pastor of River City Baptist Church, a new congregation in Richmond, Virginia, and has been a longtime editor for The Gospel Coalition. He’s the author of several books, including Before You Open Your Bible, Before You Share Your Faith and Deacons. Matt and his wife, Maghan, have three young children.

For over thirty years, Steve Krogh served in pastoral ministry in California in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Steve and his wife, Lois, are charter members of College Church’s most recent church plant, Christ Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He currently serves with Training Leaders International, a missions organization providing training for pastors STEVE KROGH in locations with limited or no access to theological training.

MISSIONS FEST SPOTLIGHT:

Don’t Follow Your Heart

Matt Smethurst

As my children grow up and watch various movies and shows, I’m trying to gently train them to play “Spot the Lie.”

Sadly, it’s an easy game.

A couple of years ago, my daughters were watching the DreamWorks animated film Trolls, featuring the voices of Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick. My 5-year-old pitter-pattered up the stairs to ask a question: “Daddy, is happiness found inside of us?” That’s what the movie said, she explained, but it sounded wrong to her. “Isn’t happiness found in God?”

I can’t recall if I immediately took her to get ice cream, but I should have.

Like many artistic productions, Trolls is a sermon. It’s cultural catechesis. Even the film’s tagline is candid: “This is a story about happiness.” In one scene near the end, the troll princess, Poppy, is chatting with the resident curmudgeon, Branch:

Poppy: “Thank you!” Branch: “No, thank you.”

Poppy: “For what?” Branch: “For showing me how to be happy.” Poppy: “Really? You’re finally happy? Now?” Branch: “I think so. Happiness is inside of all of us, right? Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it.”

The film’s theme song, Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” is a fun tune, perfect for spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen. Find the animated version on YouTube and you’ll hear a few seconds of dialogue before the music begins. What’s this dialogue that has been played (as of this writing) nearly 600 million times?

King Gristle Sr.: “Do you really think I can be happy?” Poppy: “Of course! It’s inside you! It’s inside of all of us! And I don’t think it; I feel it!”

“I got this feeling, inside my bones . . .”

EXHAUSTING BURDEN

It wasn’t always like this. In fact, almost every previous culture in history would find this dialogue nonsensical, perhaps even dangerous. The meaning of your life wasn’t something discovered within you; it was something delivered to you. You were born into a community, a heritage, and handed a set of responsibilities. Nobody encouraged you to discover your purpose; you were simply told it. Was your last name Baker? Light the stove. Smith? Sharpen the tools.

Life in the late-modern West could not be more different. If traditional cultures tended to reduce people to their duties, the modern world reduces people to their desires. Just listen to the soundtrack of our age:

“Follow your heart.” “Be true to yourself.” “Find yourself.” “Love yourself.” “Express yourself.” “Believe in yourself.” continued on next page

We inhabit a secular age in which transcendence has been thinned out and trivialized—and the “sovereign self” thrust to the center of the stage. Nowadays, pilgrimages to find truth, beauty, and goodness don’t require a plane ticket. Just a mirror.

This is an exhausting way to live. I don’t have the wisdom to define my destiny, nor the fortitude to fulfill it, without making a royal wreck of my life and inflicting untold pain on those I love most. I am underqualified to explore my heart and steer my life. I can barely reply to emails.

These cultural mantras are well-intentioned. Some contain elements of truth. Nevertheless, it must be said: the Bible simply doesn’t talk this way. In fact, it’s striking just how differently Scripture employs the same words:

World: “Follow your heart.” Jesus: “Follow me” (Matt. 10:38).

World: “Love yourself.” Jesus: “Love the Lord your God [and] your neighbor” (Mark 12:30–31).

World: “Discover yourself.” Jesus: “Deny yourself” (Luke 9:23).

World: “Believe in yourself.” Jesus: “Believe in me” (John 6:35).

So what’s the solution? Do we just need to reject the modern view and get back to the good old days? No. The Scriptures crash into and challenge the prevailing intuitions of every culture, old or new.

EMBRACE AUTHORITY

Though we tend to think of modern individualism as being opposed to community, Jonathan Leeman insightfully notes that it’s more fundamentally opposed to authority. Here’s how he begins his book Don’t Fire Your Church Members:

Individualism . . . is not rooted in being anti-community. Everyone loves the idea of community (except, maybe, the hermit). Rather, [individualism is rooted] in being antiauthority: I will gladly hang out with you, so long as you don’t tell me who I have to be or what I have to do.

Not all uses of authority are good; many are downright evil. Authoritarianism is all too common, even within the church. Nevertheless, authority itself is a good gift from a good God. He has knit authority structures into the fabric of the world for our flourishing. No wonder King David’s last words commended the beauty of healthy authority:

The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light,

like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth. (2 Sam. 23:3 –4)

Few things are as beautiful and life-giving as authority well exercised.

Imagine you’re drafted onto a professional sports team, and you report to the person in charge—the owner. What will he tell you? “Welcome to the team. Report to the coach.” The coach possesses delegated authority from the person who has ultimate organizational authority. So you honor the owner by submitting to the coach. Likewise, when you become a Christian and report to King Jesus, as it were, he says, “If you want to honor me, report to one of my embassies. Submit your life to me by submitting your life to a church. That’s the primary place where I mean for you to grow and thrive as a Christian.”

The church offers the community and the authority we need. While godly peers in your life are an important means of Christian growth, be sure to recognize your crucial need for godly pastors, as well.

Spiritual leaders are gifts from God for your spiritual good (see Eph. 4:11–14). And his design for the church includes pastors or elders who are deployed to help you better grasp and apply his Word. Pastors are also charged by God to help protect you from all sorts of heresy, damaging doctrine, and any corruption to the pure gospel. Among the qualifications for an elder, Paul writes: “He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9).

Friend, prioritize finding a healthy, Bible-saturated, gospel-centered church. And once you find it, join it. Commit. Submit your life to the oversight of its leaders and to the care and accountability of its members. God loves you deeply, and this is the pattern he set in motion with the early church to form you into the image of Christ.

TRUE HAPPINESS

If a traditional view of identity effectively says, “You are your duties,” and modern identity says, “You are your desires,” then a gospel identity says, “You are your Savior’s.” You belong to him and to his people.

Step off the treadmill of self-obsession and walk into the presence of a God who loved you before the beginning. The most important story in your life isn’t one you wrote, and it isn’t one in which you play the starring role.

You exist to make Someone else look good. That’s not limiting; it’s liberating. And don’t be surprised if it makes you happy.

MISSIONS FEST SPOTLIGHT:

The Land of The Red Dust

Steve Krogh

This essay appeared in Topography: A Pastor’s Reflection on the Terrain Between Sundays, which Steve wrote in 2010 while a pastor in Michigan.

There are two seasons in Cameroon: rainy season and dry season. I have experienced them both. Let me try to describe them to you.

Rainy season begins in April and runs for six months. When you hear “rainy season,” don’t think of perpetual mist and gloomy, overcast skies. Think of tropical thunderstorms that appear on the horizon, blow across the mountains and valleys, release their life-giving water at 7,000 feet elevation and leave behind a sky so blue and grass so green. Life is so vibrant that you can almost touch it and taste it. You may have to run for cover for twenty minutes during the rainy season when the skies let loose, but an hour later, you can enjoy an outdoor picnic as the tropical sun and warmth dries things out nearly instantly. Rainy season in Cameroon in the mountains is a beautiful moment waiting to happen.

Dry season begins in October and lasts until the first showers of April. A fine coat of red dust covers everything, a windborn result of the expanding Saharan desert that is slowly encroaching south across Africa. Remove the dust from your table at breakfast, and when you sit down for dinner, you will find that the dust returned before you did. When you are told, “If you would like to have your shoes polished, please leave them outside your door” you may think, “A daily shoeshine? What a nice touch! I don’t get that at home.” But you soon realize both why the offer is made and the futility of the task.

If you can’t guess the season I prefer, here are a few more hints. Rainy season is life, refreshing, invigorating, at times exhilarating. Dry season is lifeless, draining, tedious, wearying. Rainy season is adventurous. Dry season is monotonous. In rainy season, we ask, “When will the thunder come? How fast will the rain come and go? What adventure will happen today?” In dry season, we ask, “Are we done yet? How long, O Lord? This again?” Rainy season points us away from ourselves and asks, “Do you see the colors? Isn’t life grand? Isn’t God great?” Dry season asks harder questions.

Life has its seasons as well. Which season are you in? If you are enjoying the refreshing rains, I rejoice with you. Isn’t God good? When the heavens open and He washes you with grace and undeserved favor, please don’t hide your smile. It diminishes the goodness of God if you do. Enjoy the emerald greens and sapphire blues. Plants and skies are gifts from God to be enjoyed with outstretched hands and uplifted faces. Share both the gifts given and your joy in the Giver with others. That is why God has watered His earth and you with the rains of grace.

If you are in the midst of a dry season, let me share two things. First, please know that God is big enough to hear you ask the hard questions. He isn’t threatened. Actually, He has heard the same questions from the lips of dear saints who have not only endured dust, but also dungeons, disease and death. Because the questions have been asked before doesn’t mean the pain is not real to your or me, it only means that we should ask the questions humbly and with hearts that believe God has and does listen to His people. God is not in a hurry. He doesn’t sheepishly paw and toe the dust and wish He could do something about this dry season, but knows His hands are tied. He makes no apologies for dry seasons. He has His purposes in your life. Ask God to show you what they are. Internal, unseen heart change perhaps happens best among the red dust of life.

Second, know that April rains are coming. Dry season will end one day and never appear again. “Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things [including red dust] have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

Esther Burr, the married daughter of Jonathan Edwards, unexpectedly lost her husband to death at the age of fortyone. Not long after the funeral she faced the prospect of losing her infant son to death because of a horrible infection. Esther wrote her father a precious letter, letting him know that all was well, and that God’s grace and kindness would see her through all these difficulties.

As soon as he read his daughter’s letter, Jonathan Edwards wrote this surprising letter in return: “Dear Daughter: I thank you for your most comfortable letter. How good and kind is your Heavenly Father! Indeed, he is a faithful God, and never will fail them that trust in him. But don’t be surprised, or think some strange thing has happened to you, if after the light, clouds of darkness should return. Perpetual sunshine is not usual in this world, even to God’s true saints.”

Note Edwards said, “in this world.” In this world we do not experience perpetual sunshine, but in the world to come we will! Edwards elsewhere said, “The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows, but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean.”

May your dry season and mine cause us to long for the eternal rains of grace that are fast approaching. May our appetites be whet for the coming freshness of the kingdom that will always be ours, never taken away.