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Caleb

Mar 22
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Why Community Groups?

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At Buffalo City Church we see community as an non-negotiable element of the Christian life and so we regularly meet together in Community Groups. These communities are not designed to be a program, a once a week meeting, a church-growth strategy, or just another calendar item; rather, they serve a specific purpose in the life of BCC. There are three things that Community Groups are designed to do:

Community Groups are for gospel proclamation. Proclamation in the local church finds its expression in preaching the gospel (good news). That happens on Sunday morning, but it also happens throughout the course of our weeks. We are proclaiming some news all the time: the pseudo-gospel of the impending weekend, accumulation of wealth or material, or the actual gospel of what God has done for us in Jesus. Community Group provides us a space to reorient our proclamation away from news that the world says is good and toward the actual good news of Jesus Christ.

Community Groups are for gospel ministry. Reorienting our proclamation requires that we, as the church, view ourselves all as ministers of the gospel and not just consumers. The emphasis on community in the life of BCC and the intentional lack of other programing is so we can do just that. Filling a role and proclaiming the truth of the gospel to another are not the same; we are not ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16) and we will speak it to one another and pray it for one another regularly.

Community Groups are for gospel training. In order to be speaking the gospel to one another, we cannot unplug from community. We cannot expect to lives impacted by the gospel and ignore the church which is one of God’s chosen ways to grow our knowledge and love for Him. The Community Group space is designed to offer one another encouragement through ongoing gospel repetitions of applying the truth of the gospel to life circumstances and the life circumstances of others. Community Group is the gym where we discipline ourselves to build these muscles.

In light of these three things, we seek to engage one another in community with regularity. The fact of the matter is that our relationships in community will not always look the way we think they should. There might be seasons of frustration, awkwardness, misunderstanding, or dissension. Even so, the biblical directive to be together as the body of Christ is not contingent on how we feel or what we perceive about others; the responsibility to obey commands such as those to not neglect meeting together (Hebrews 10:25) does not flex based on our seasons of life.

We must fight for togetherness; it won’t come easily. Overloaded schedules, worry and anxiety, unexpected life circumstances, and our own desires will all vie for our attention. We engage the things that we love. Community Groups aim to reorient our loves from worldly, self-centered activities to a God-glorifying, humble, others-centered posture.

Feb 26
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James Sidebar: Faith Building

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James-SidebarSeveral Sundays ago we spent our time together in James 1:12-18 and considered how God builds the faith of His people and does not erode it. It seems necessary after contemplating a statement like that to spend some time thinking through what exactly faith looks like.

Faith is a word that’s thrown around in our culture pretty liberally. It’s easy to find in film, television, pop songs, and in script fonts above our kitchen sinks.

So when we consider faith from a biblical perspective, it’s good to think through Mark 9 and explore the man’s remark “I believe; help my unbelief (Mark 9:24)!” It seems like a paradoxical exclamation in some sense. Belief and unbelief are opposites. Yet, it seems that Jesus finds this response to be the correct one as the man’s son convulsed on the floor.

The importance of what the man says exists in the broken nature of it. Faith is not something conjured to bring about a desired result. It’s the full-on admission that what is most needed cannot come from within. It’s the full-on admission that what is most needed only comes through Christ. And it’s exemplified in the man’s cry.

Later in the story, Jesus tells the disciples that the type of demon that had taken up residence inside of the man’s son could only be driven out by prayer. But the interesting thing is that Mark doesn’t record Jesus praying; Jesus simply commands the demon to come out. If I was amongst the disciples, I would have left scratching my head. Is it possible that Mark just does not record the prayer? It’s possible. However, it appears to be that Jesus is making an assertion about His deity in line with His words in John 15:5: “apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus then is the object of our faith.

One of the anthems echoing in the current age of rampant individualism is “just believe in yourself.” This is idolatry. A gospel that promotes believing in oneself is a false gospel. Jesus demands to be the object of our faith, but we would rather toss ourselves into that role. It’s convenient; we get to call the shots: no caring for the downcast or afflicted when it doesn’t fit into our schedule, no one telling us what to do with “my money” when things get tight, no accountability when surfing the internet at midnight, no bloody cross-bearing that results in death to self and sin.

For the man in Mark 9–and subsequently for us–it was an ongoing admission that he needs Jesus to be both the object (“I believe”) and the source (“help my unbelief”). Faith isn’t a complex thing. God promises salvation to us and makes a way in His Son. Faith is believing that God is faithful to His promises and acknowledging that Jesus is the way through which His promises are brought to completion.

Our understanding of faith must be grounded in the source and the object. And sorry, John Hiatt, it’s not you.

Misplaced faith will always lead to despair. Faith in Jesus does not. Why? Because when Jesus says “Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1a), He is the one who can point to Himself and provide the antidote for a troubled heart.