Four Connections

Saw this by Steve McCoy - Keller on Church: Four Fronts & Three Goals - summarizing some points from Keller's book Center Church. 

In Tim Keller's book, Center Church, he discusses four ministry fronts...

1. Connecting People to God (through evangelism and worship)
2. Connecting People to One Another (through community and discipleship)
3. Connecting People to the City (through mercy and justice)
4. Connecting People to the Culture (through the integration of faith and work)

Center Church, pg 293

In the same section Keller explains three goals of ministry and their comprehensive scope as taught by Edmund Clowney...

"In his biblical-theological work on the church, Clowney speaks of the biblical "goals of ministry" as threefold: (1) we are called to minister and serve God through worship (Rom 15:8-16; 1 Pet 2:9); (2) we are to minister and serve one another through Christian nurture (Eph 4:12-26); and (3) we are to minister and serve the world through witness (Matt 28:18-20; Luke 24:28; Acts 5:32)."

Center Church, pg 294

Interesting stuff to think about.

Individual Transformation & Corporate Identity

"Try this sentence on for size. A church that understands where its power comes from is a place where individuals are transformed and empowered to join God's corporate family and participate in God's plan to reconcile all things to Himself. Did you see all the pieces there? Individual salvation and transformation leads to a corporate identity., which is then used by God to redeem, restore, and reconcile all things in heaven and on earth by making peace through the blood of the cross.

And all by the gospel."

   -Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  page 21 (italics in the original)

Avoiding Gospel Amnesia

"...We seem to have developed gospel amnesia, forgetting that the gospel not only creates and sustains the Church but also deeply shapes the Church. Present and future.

All of the Epistles in the New Testament were written to Christians, and they each contain a heavy emphasis on the gospel and its implications for the people of God. This suggests that for churches who believe the gospel, the Spirit of God repeatedly wants to bring them back to the gospel. It means the Church is gospel-centric, in its existence. She must not move on from the gospel, must never graduate from the gospel. The gospel, in fact, provides our ongoing, day-by-day motivation to pursue holiness and to experience the reality of what God claims we already are in Christ: perfect, spotless, and blameless."

   -Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  page 17 (italics in the original)

The Next Bourne Movie

To be followed by "The Bourne Eschatology"?

Hat Tip:  Tall Skinny Kiwi