by Alan Rathbun
I spent most of my growing up years in churches that had a call for salvation almost every Sunday service. I can still hear the seventh verse of “Just as I Am” (even though the hymn only has five verses) echoing in my mind. Apparently playing the last verse multiple times made it more likely for someone to respond.
It was also the era of evangelistic movies and I saw plenty of them in our churches. When I was twelve, I saw a particularly scary movie that involved the death of a non-believing man in a motorcycle accident and him finding himself in agony in hell. I was literally afraid and went forward immediately during the invitation. The message I received loud and clear was that the gospel was only about getting our ticket out of hell and into heaven.
Thankfully, I eventually heard a fuller proclamation of the gospel which taught me that trusting Jesus brought forgiveness of my sin, a hope-filled eternity, and much, much more. I discovered that Jesus invites us into eternal life here and now. The moment we put our trust in Christ we receive new identities as beloved children of our Heavenly Father, as citizens of His kingdom, and as His royal ambassadors. Through discipleship to Jesus, we grow in our experience of the life that comes through participating in the divine nature and of our restoration as reflections of the glory of God.
Unfortunately, the perception and experience of the gospel for too many people in our congregations is reduced to forgiveness and a free pass to heaven. They receive the glorious forgiveness of their sins and they begin looking forward to their promised eternity. Even though they may seek to live FOR Jesus out of gratitude, they are not intentionally trained in their church community to live WITH Jesus by faith through the Holy Spirit. Somehow their role as ambassadors for King Jesus is minimized and they live for their own kingdom and mission instead of His.
Our hope for this year’s district conference is to display the glory of a gospel-shaped life, a life that is personally, relationally and vocationally transformed. We long for a district full of kingdom workers who are saturated and shaped by the gospel. It’s easy for those of us in ministry to be managers of a multitude of programs and then hope that somehow disciples emerge at the other end of our program funnel. Our desire is to develop workers who make disciples who are personally impacted by the gospel and who extend that impact to others.
With this as our theme, we hope that you can join us for district conference this year. Please visit www.epdalliance.org/dc20 to learn more about the conference and to register.