An Introduction to Straight Up G

For whatever reason, the church (everywhere) has always been one big agenda magnet.

It attracts people with specific agendas…

You name it—somebody wants it.

And they’ll fight to get it.

To be honest, it annoys the snot out of me.

Sometimes the agenda is for a good and worthy cause.

Other times, the agendas are absolutely ridiculous.

Either way (good or bad), they’re always nonessential; they are superfluous and peripheral.

If we’re not careful, the agendas will take over—eclipsing the main thing.

What is the main thing?

It’s the Gospel.

And what is the Gospel?

Gospel means literally, Good News.

Quoting Tim Keller,

The Gospel is news of what God has done to reach us. It is not advice about what we must do to reach God.

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.

God’s love and forgiveness can pardon and restore any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done… There is no evil that the father’s love cannot pardon and cover, there is no sin that is a match for his grace.

God has entered the world in Jesus Christ to achieve a salvation that we could not achieve for ourselves which now 1) converts and transforms individuals, forming them into a new humanity, and eventually 2) will renew the whole world and all creation. This is the ‘Good News’—the Gospel.

We never “get beyond the gospel” in our Christian life to something more “advanced.” The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A-Z of Christianity.

The Gospel is the big deal, the main thing.

It is essential. Without it, we do not have a church.

The church can live without various agendas (in fact, it tends to thrive in the absence of peripheral agendas).

Our job in the church is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Agendas must never become our rally-cry.

It has always been, and will always be, the Good News of the Gospel.

That’s what this new series of teaching at NWLife is all about: Straight up G.

Together, we’re gettin’ after the Gospel.

We will be digging in to the book of John—this week, chapter 1.

I hope you will join me. C’mon! Let’s be straight up G together.