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

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.