When the Gospel penetrates a community!

Recently I had one of my friends ask me, “What does the Gospel look like when it penetrates a community?” People Can't Get Away From Us. And it changes their lives for eternity.

In the late seventies I sat on the board that oversaw the Cornerstone house and when I hear stories like the one in the last blog it drives me to want to challenge the church to do more of that. It is a perfect illustration of the Church is the vehicle and the kingdom is the objective. Terry’s first encounter with Christians was at another of our ministries (Under our board called “Bear Valley Ministries” that later became Rocky Mtn. Ministries when other churches in Denver began to catch the vision and join forces to make a difference in our city), a state funded home for girls that Bear Valley Church ran long before the Faith-Based Initiative. She obviously didn’t buy into Christianity while at the Cornerstone; she went back into the streets, got pregnant and was involved in drugs.

Then she became a Christian at a coffee house and found a Christian home for women who have a crisis pregnancy. Later she did an internship at a Christian medical clinic. Bear Valley church ran, just as we ran the Cornerstone, the coffee house and the medical clinic. Plus it also had numerous families that regularly took in unwed mothers. Everywhere Terry went the church was there, waiting for her. The story illustrates the value of being decentralized throughout a city. Decentralization was part of the genius of the early church, and the Wesleyan Movement in the 18th century Britain

There isn’t a single “people group crises” in our country that churches could not respond to with our vast armies of nobodies. We could make a huge difference in medicine, education, addictions; prisons, etc. if our leaders were committed to “church is vehicle, kingdom is objective,” and the rank and file were encouraged to pursue their own call to ministry