Legacy Church Blog

Resources for Gospel Centrality

As I’ve grown over the last 25 years as a Chrsitain, I’ve watched various doctrines or beliefs change how I see God, myself, and, well really everything. For instance, Learning of God’s sovereignty changed how I saw salvation, suffering, my marriage, and even my anxiety. God’s hospitality to outsiders edited how I evangelized, and prayed. Of all the shifts in my theology however, none created as much of a sea change as the centrality of the gospel for all of living. 

 Before 2009, I believed that the gospel was the power of God to save those who trusted themselves to it, but that was as far as it could reach. Once day 2 came, the same powerful gospel wasn’t useful for my marriage, anger, or financial giving - just evangelism. After 2009, God was kind to me in showing me more of the “length, depth, breadth and width” of the gospel for my every day. I now saw racism and sex through the eyes of the gospel. I saw sleep and work through the prism of the gospel. Even enjoying food and music was altered by the deep reach of the gospel. 

 Certainly, God used key passages to accomplish this. I’d read, meditate, and the Holy Spirit would quicken the truth in my heart of hearts. Passages like the Prodigal Son or Paul reminding the Corinthian church to re-centralize the gospel, and even Jesus telling the Ephesians to return to the gospel. I also had books by men who were ahead of me in the same path. I grew through their writing to see the various shades and hear the various chords of the same true and great story. I grew through this story applied to everything from evangelism to church planting. 

 I read and re-read these books and thought it helpful to line them out for you. If you were to build a small library, start with these books. Read them slowly, take notes, interact with them. When they cite passages, go the the Bible and follow along. When you finish, type up a book report (yup, just like in middle school). Develop a robust theology on how the gospel is the best story ever told - the story we’ve received, stand in, and carry with us. 

 In somewhat of a vague order...

• The Gospel Transformation Bible
• The Explicit Gospel, Chandler & Wilson
• Gospel Deeps, Wilson
• The Gospel, Ortlund
• Gospel Fluency, Vandersteldt
• The Transforming Power of the Gospel, Bridges
• The Unbelievable Gospel, Dodson
• The Jesus Storybook Bible, Lloyd-Jones
• Note to Self, Thorn
• The Gospel for Real Life, Bridges
• The Gospel as Center, Carson & Keller
• Fifty Reasons Jesus Came To Die, Piper
• The Return of The Prodigal Son, Nouwen
• The Pursuit of Holiness, Bridges

 I hope these help. Feel free to leave a comment below regarding titles I may have missed. I’m still building my gospel library until Jesus comes to renew everything and bring home to us. 

Questions to Find Family Direction

So, you’re serious about charting a course, but aren’t sure how to navigate those conversations. Truthfully, we already have bits and pieces of these critical conversations littered throughout ordinary days. Talking about the future while cleaning the kitchen. Strategizing about ministry while on vacation. Dreaming about how God has built our families while mowing the lawn. 

The challenge isn’t in starting these thoughts, but collecting and finishing them. Well, that and finding alignment with our spouse and kiddos. So, let me try to help by giving some big-picture and follow up questions that can help you. 

• What is our mission or purpose? 

1. What are we here to accomplish - specifically - and how might that be different from our best friends?
2. What events or themes have defined us to this point as a family that makes us unique? 
3. What has God made us good at? Effective at? Gifted at? Where are we most resolved?
4. How would we finish this statement: “God has placed us here to ____________ and when we do _________ we feel his pleasure? 

• What is valuable to us? 

1. If we could only choose three values (ex: creativity, hospitality, generosity, teaching, etc…) what would others say we find most valuable?
2. When we make decisions, what values help us say “no” or “yes” when we need to?

• What does a win look like? 

1. What is our vision of what we could do as a family if we had every opportunity and no limitations?
2. What would need to happen so that in 30 years we can say we achieved our mission? 15 years? One?
3. What will be some “road markers” along the way that help us measure forward movement? 

• What will we put down to get to our goals? 

1. As we count the costs, what do we foresee losing?
2. What will be easiest - and hardest - so sacrifice to accomplish our goals as a family?

• What will we pick up? 

1. What new skills or knowledge will we need to pick up to reach our goals?
2. What will need to be put down in order to pick these things up?
3. What cross-shaped burdens will we be picking up to get our family down the road?

• How hard will we strain? 

1. What major moves do we foresee in making our family goals happen? Immediate smaller moves?
2. What do we already see as an issue in the first year, the next ten years?
3. When we fatigue, where will it be? When we’ll most want to quit, why would that be happening?

• What if we fail?

1. Can we be at peace that God is in control when we don’t hit our marks? 
2. How is the gospel good news to us when we feel our dreams are slipping away? 
3. Can we celebrate what we’ve learned and re-draft a new direction with what we know? 
4. Can we exhaust ourselves in a specific direction while resting that God is God and will do as he sees fit?