It's tempting at the beginning of a church plant to jump to the "what" questions: What will we do as a church? What will our services look like? What will our engagement with the community look like? It's tempting to jump to the tangible and practical and neglect theology and the "why" questions. But I'm convinced that we must spend considerable time asking questions that get to the root of motivation: What is God like? Why has God saved us? What is the gospel and its implications for our lives?
If, in our concern to meet practical needs and be relevant, we skirt around these questions, our gaze will slowly become less on God and more on man, and we will miss the purpose for which God saved us: his glory. As J.I. Packer explains so well:
“[The new gospel]... fails to make men God-
centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their
hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying
to do. One way of stating the difference between it
and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively
concerned to be 'helpful' to man - to bring peace,
comfort, happiness, satisfaction - and too little
concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was
'helpful', too - more so, indeed, than is the new -
but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern
was always to give glory to God. It was always and
essentially a proclamation of divine sovereignty in
mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and
worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for
all good, both in nature and in grace. Its center of
reference was unambiguously God. But in the new
gospel the center of reference is man. "
- JI Packer
Great stuff. Great questions. Wise to consider these first things first. I like the way Tim Keller puts it: Is the Bible basically about you and what you must do? Or is the Bible basically about Jesus and what He has done? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2jJ7ypeBo8
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