The Gospel is the Focus of Ridge Church

A couple days ago, I listened to a podcast of an excellent talk by Daniel Montgomery, Founding and Teaching Pastor of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY.

Daniel is a member of the Acts29 Network and often is asked to speak at A29 functions. His talk at the 2007 Church Planter "Boot Camp" (basically a church planter training conference) in Raleigh, NC was called "Gospel-Centered Theology." You can listen to it here.

One of the difficulties (at least one that I've found) of being a church planter is adequately conveying the driving force behind the church that you're planting--the most central focus of the church. That's one reason that I'm sharing our core values with you (we've done 2 so far, there's 6 total).

However, just sharing your core values sometimes feels like you are using happy words to describe something; anyone can use positive language to describe a particular vision that they have for the future. What Ridge Church will be (and really is already) is a church that is focused on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The word "gospel" simply means "good news" and is the English translation of a Greek word. The good news that we are excited about at Ridge Church is Jesus! The Gospel, the Good News (massive understatement), is found in simple terms in such places as Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth: 1 Corinthians 2:2 and also 1 Corinthians 15:3-5.

Jesus should be the focus of everything we are at Ridge Church. Everything we believe, value, talk about, think about, and do. The Gospel transforms people completely, from the inside out. It is profoundly robust in its scope: it makes everything about a person totally new. The Gospel's power changes people, families, churches, communities, cities, and nations.