Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Nursery Schedule

July 11- Rodney and Shawna
July 18- Debbie and Jeff
July 25- Amber C. and Ashley
August 1-Stephanie and Carman
August 8- Rodney and Shawna
August 15- Debbie and Jeff
August 22- Amber C. and Ashley
August 29-Stephanie and Carman

If this doesnt work for you let me know and I will inform the appropriated person. Thanks for your service.

Rodney
rodney@metronwa.com

July 11- Rodney and Shawna
July 18- Debbie and Jeff July
25- Amber C. and Ashley
August 1-Stephanie and Carman
August 8- Rodney and Shawna
August 15- Debbie and Jeff
August 22- Amber C. and Ashley
August 29-Stephanie and Carman

Hello Church
Above is a schedule of nursery duty for the next couple of months, if you have any problems with this schedule let me know and I will inform the appropriate person thanks.

until the serpants head is crushed
Rodney Rambo
rodney@metronwa.com
417-671-1206

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Marks of a Missional Church: A Missional Church Practices and Preaches Repentance

As you will see, all of the "Marks" correlate with one another. They are building blocks to a Biblical, Missional church. Logically, if the Metro, as a Missional church, holds firm to the authority of Scripture, the practice of repentance will follow. You can not read the Bible and walk away thinking that repentance is not needed. The very core of salvation is repenting, or turning away, from our pride which tells us we can do this thing on our own. Our depravity makes it essential for us to repent to Jesus that we can not live with out Him; that He is our Sustainer and Savior. Due to the Metro's high view of Scripture, the leaders will regularly call believing sinners (including the leaders), unbelieving sinners, and especially religious people to repentance.


When it comes to calling out believing sinners, this includes telling us that we sin by both omission and commission in our thoughts, words, deeds, and motives. It is by the power of the Spirit, working through the community of the Metro, that we can change our deeds out of the newness of heart as Jesus grants us "repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they (we) may come to their (our) senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will (2 Timothy 2:25-26, emphasis added)."

For unbelieving sinners, this includes pointing them to the Gospel and calling them to repentance. Through the Gospel they can learn to love Jesus and enter into a living relationship with Him. This brings about change in their lives as their new heart-level love of the Christ grows. Like Paul, the Metro proclaims that "they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance (Acts 26:20)."

When it comes to "religious" people, this includes repenting of their religion. Here is the reason: "religion" is an attempt to gain righteousness apart from or in conjuncture with the gift-righteousness through and received only by the cross of Jesus. Instead of partaking of the grace of Christ, religion seeks righteousness through piety and religious devotion to various unbiblical legalisms that culminate in formal and informal lists of what holy people do and do not do. We see this on the far left, or Liberal, side of religion when homosexuality is accepted, and the move beyond evangelistic, interfaith friendships is made to include interfaith prayer and worship with people of other religions. Then, on the far right, or Conservative, side of religion they live in a smug, self-righteous separatism that denounces all alcohol consumption (even in moderation) as sinful and ignores mainstream entertainment - t.v., movies, music, sports - except to criticize it as godless while they lack any heart to learn from it in order to relate to lost people for the furthering of the Gospel.

There are three reasons why a Missional church, the Metro included, calls both lost sinners to repent of their sin and religious people to repent of their religion:
-First, they both offend the Gospel by pursuing righteousness apart from the grace of Jesus;
-Secondly, if only so-called "sinners" are called to repentance, then these "sinners" wrongly think the church is trying to turn them into religious people, all the while religious people fail to see that they, too, are sinners who are in need of repentance so that they can live humbly by grace.
-Third, Jesus most often and most sharply rebuked the religious people of His day and it was these same "religious" people that most violently opposed Him; if we are to follow the example given to us by the Christ, we must be just as forthright with the religious people while accepting that they will likely be our most vocal critics and opponents.

Finally, to set an example, the leaders of the Metro will openly confess their own past sin as well as their ongoing battles and failures. This has been demonstrated numerous times by Andy from the pulpit as it should be. As I said before at the Metro, a community of grace is fully aware of the fact that the leaders take dumps. The leaders must be and will be honest about what God is teaching them and how God is convicting them to make sure that everyone knows Jesus is the perfect hero in the church, and the leaders are merely humble servants. "The hope is to establish a culture of humility and honest repentance in the church that gives everyone an opportunity to follow the leaders in personally acknowledging their need for Jesus' saving, forgiving, and transforming grace (Driscoll, Vintage Church, pg. 223)."

Making Him Famous,

Donovan
donovan@metronwa.com
479.586.6636

*Again, please don't think that I am this wicked smart as all of this content can be found in its entirety in "Vintage Jesus" by Pastor Mark Driscoll on pages 222-223.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Marks of a Missional Church: A Missional Church is Biblical

This may seem like a no brainer but the harsh reality is that many churches today don't even use scripture from the pulpit! I have listened to many sermons that don't even mention the name of Jesus once. I have a problem with that. How can a church be on mission without even mentioning its Leader?

As a Missional Church we must not only stand firm on the fact that the Bible is the inspired word of God (1 Timothy 3:16) but we must, as a whole, try to the best of our abilities to live out the teachings of Jesus. We must develop a yearning for Scripture that goes deeper than mere curiosity and find ourselves deeply trusting and hanging on to every word that the Trinity has spoken to us.
Since it is biblical, a Missional Church must fight for the validity of those parts of Scripture that are essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ, doing so with humility and grace as to stay biblical. We have to find biblical answers for new assaults on biblical truth that we are facing in the culture we find ourselves in. Therefore, it is important today to contend for doctrines such as:

_Scripture, as the inerrant Word of God;

_God's sovereignty and foreknowledge;

_True humanity, which has been created in the image of God, though it has been depraved
because of sin;

_The virgin birth and the resurrection of the Christ;

_Jesus' death as our penal (receiving punishment) substitution, triumph over evil and death,
and model for every believer's life;

_The exclusivity of Jesus as our only possible means of salvation;

_God-designed, complimentary male and female gender distinction and the sinfulness of any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual marriage;

_The reality of a conscious, eternal hell for non-believers;

_The priority of God's Kingdom over any human kingdom;

_The reality of Satan and demons working to devour us like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8-9).

Finally, "because a Missional Church is biblical, a Missional Church is always, only, solely, fully, passionately, uncompromisingly, whole-heartedly, unwaveringly, and continually all about Jesus as God, Savior, Lord, Hope, and Friend (Driscoll)!" As a Missional Church we want to use the name of Jesus as often as possible so that people know Who we worship and Who is the Senior Pastor of the Metro.

Making Him Famous,

Donovan
donovan@metronwa.com
479.586.6636

*Please don't think that I'm this smart because this information can be found in its entirety in "Vintage Jesus" by Pastor Mark Driscoll on pages 221-222.


Ten Marks of a Missional Church

Hey Metro,

I am psyched about this blog! I was reading through "Vintage Church" by Mark Driscoll and I came across some interesting information concerning what a Missional Church looks like. Andy and Rodney both have mentioned and talked at length about the Metro being Missional in our culture. I thought it would be cool to go through these ten marks one by one over the next ten weeks so that we can see what a Missional Church looks like. From there we can do what we need to do as the Body of Christ to accomplish this. So get in the habit of checking the blog weekly as there will be a ton of information coming from the Metro!

Making Him Famous,

Donovan

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

metro homeless ministry

Hello Church


Just wanted to remind you about what is going on with Metro's homeless ministry. We will be going to Fayetteville on June 27th, July 25th, and August 22nd to provide a meal for 75-80 people who are currently without a permanent place to live. On each of these days we will meet at the church building at 10:00, we will start setting up by 10:45 and will begin serving at 11:30. We are serving out of Wiggins Methodist Church's building. This month we are serving spaghetti and I need people to serve in three different areas:

1. To Cook Food - All of our food has to be made in advance, we are not able to use the kitchen at the church building in Fayetteville. So I need people who are willing to make spaghetti, or brownies, and who will bring them to our church building on the Saturday of at 10:00am.

2. To Serve Food - We need people who are willing to help set up, serve people food, interact and show love through conversation to our guests, and to help clean up afterwards.

3. To Provide Food - Lastly we need people to provide food, we need spaghetti sauce (ragu traditional), normal spaghetti noodles, as well as lemonade mix, tea mix, and brownie mix.

If you feel that you can serve in any of these three areas let me know ASAP. Send me an email (rodney@metronwa.com) and let me know which areas you can serve in (whether its one or all three) and if you are interested in doing this once or all three times this summer. As soon as I have a list of people who want to serve I will announce a meeting day where we can discuss more specifics. I greatly appreciate your serving hearts as many of you have already come to me and expressed your desire to take part in this mission.

until the serpents head is crushed
Rodney Rambo
rodney@metronwa.com
417-671-1206

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him,vand not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Isaiah 58:7-8