Home Pastors Articles for Pastors We’re Getting This WRONG and It’s Killing the Church

We’re Getting This WRONG and It’s Killing the Church

Now, I’m fully aware that this is a sweeping generalization, but play along with a brotha, ok?

Think about it. For the great majority of evangelicals and the many tribes within our big tent, when a person enters into a relationship with Jesus (John 17:3), they’re told immediately to practice many of the following Spiritual Disciplines:

Read your Bible everyday

Memorize scripture

Pray

Join a church

Get in a small group or Sunday school class

Serve in a church ministry

And share the Gospel with your friends and invite them to a service

Thin gospel.

Everything mentioned above is right and Biblical and good, except it can become an expression of Christless Christianity.

We’re often teaching people to rely more on the “spiritual disciplines” than on the indwelling Lord Jesus through God the Holy Spirit’s presence and power.

Often, the Gospel we preach is so thin people don’t fully grasp what Jesus has done for them, what He is doing in them, and what He wants to do through them for the glory of His Father, for their joy, and for the sake of the world.

I propose that a thin Gospel produces thin believers who have thin results in their spheres of influences.

“Come to Me,” Jesus says.

Jesus said,

Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-29 ESV

Jesus gave His life for us,

So He could give His life to us,

So He could live His Life through us.

Christological spiritual formation.

At Transformation Church, we’re committed to Christological Spiritual Formation. This means we intoxicate and immerse believers, new and old, in understanding that they are indwelt by Jesus.

We want them to know that they are in Christ and that Christ is in them. God the Father wants us to behold Jesus, not ourselves (2 Cor. 3:17-18).

Because every Christ-follower is united to Jesus, His life and unsearchable riches are theirs as a gift of His limitless grace (Eph. 3:8).