Intro: Waypoint’s Values
WHAT GOSPEL TRANSFORMATION LOOKS LIKE
When a missionary is sent overseas, they go there to bring the gospel to bear on a culture. It takes a lot of work to understand the culture they are being sent to, learning how to communicate the gospel to that culture. And as he shares the message of the gospel, some parts will be desirable and other parts will be hard to swallow. Tim Keller calls this “A” and “B” Beliefs. And in his book Center Church he talks about this concept. That each culture has “A” beliefs, things they find agreeable, like fairness and justice. When we preach a message of fairness and justice, most people say “yes, that is a good thing, it’s agreeable”. “B” beliefs are things that need to be challenged and confronted. If you preached on the wrath and judgment of God, that feels harsh and wrong.
Keller says the best way to enter into a culture is to affirm the “A” Beliefs they have, and use that as a foundation to show they should open themselves up to be challenged on “B” beliefs. So if you agree with fairness and justice (an “A” belief) then you should be glad that God punishes evil, when a child is abused, God will be the good judge who adequately punishes the wrongdoer.
So every missionary has this task. They must determine what to affirm and what to challenge in the culture. They must make observations and learn how to articulate what real change would look like. They should bring the gospel to bear on a culture and name the ways they hope it to transform. They must have a “missionary encounter with their culture.”
And we have to do the same. We need to look around at our culture and name the ways it lines up with God’s calling but also name the ways it must be challenged. And it might be harder for us, because culture is like water to a fish, sometimes it’s hard to name it and describe it when you’re surrounded by it!
That’s why the Vision of our church is to “bring gospel reorientation to the suburbs” (you can read more about that here). That means we need to make observations about our target area (We call that the “Target Area Profile”) and we need to name what those traits would look like if transformed by the gospel (Our Values). Here’s what it looks like:
That's why I’m writing this series on our Values. So we know how to name the broken parts of our area, and name and describe the ways the gospel can move us to live more in line with the values.
If we don’t become skilled at doing this, there is a danger we become Christian, but remain stuck in an old way of life. Before faith, we lived striving to prove ourselves in our career, then we became a christian and replaced work with church, but we are stuck, using church activities to stay busy and prove ourselves through “religious” work. Or we stay on the outside of church, remain autonomous, remain consumeristic and consume the best Christian content, rather than commit to community and give part of ourselves to serve one another in love.
So let's dive into the values…
