Twenty-sixteen was a year of change, adversity, heartbreak, incredible opportunities,
and the shifting of paradigms. For our country, 2016 brought in a new administration and
(if possible) an even more polarized political and cultural landscape. For us as a faith community,
2016 brought significant losses, events that broke our hearts, victories and failures, and the need to
adjust to new normals. As followers of Jesus, how should we interpret and respond to this past
year? How do we frame 2016 in a way that will allow us to optimally position ourselves to embrace
the opportunities and successfully navigate the challenges that 2017 will inevitably bring?
Let me ask it this way, “As a faith community, how will we respond to the new political landscape,
the ever shifting cultural trends, the stark contrast between distinctly Christian values and what is
deemed normal, and the ever widening definition of terms?” Defining words like tolerance,
marriage, family, sexuality, acceptance, progress, facts, and truth itself has become so
ambiguous that productive conversations in the public square are more and more
challenging.
The rate of change has increased to the point where keeping up seems virtually impossible.
Unfortunately, this accelerated rate of change has allowed the culture to run far ahead of the
church in some crucial cultural issues. Consequently, the Christian community has often failed to
respond with wise, helpful and holistic answers to the questions and assertions being raised in the
public domain. This has led to intense animosity by some, paralyzing fear for others, and the
majority have responded with an increased tribalism, settling for making points and winning
arguments at the expense of maintaining influence and having life-giving impact in our
confused and dark world.
As Jesus followers, we passionately believe that regardless of what changes around us:
administrations, cultural norms, the meaning of words, loss of individual liberties, or even
infringement onour way of life, there is a constant; changes are inevitable, but our mission
remains the same. We are called to make Christ-like disciples, locally and around the world.
However, tribalism, which manifests itself in an instinctive tendency to limit our willingness to exert
ourselves to a select group, wars against this one constant. We are prone to reach out to, care for,
love on, and seek connection with people like us and familiar to us.
For us to continue to pursue our mission of making Christ-like disciples throughout the world, our
response cannot be misguided loyalty to our own tribe, which will result in greater apathy,
animosity, and derision. Our response must be an increased desire for, commitment to,
and action toward justice and seeking the good of the communities into which God has placed
us.
Continued
Found People, Find People. In his book, Generous Justice, Keller offers, “If a person has
grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will contend for justice. If he doesn't live justly,
then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from Him.”
If our hearts aren’t broken for those things that break God’s heart – mistreatment and
disdain for the poor, the outcast, the immigrant, the emotionally distraught, and the
spiritually lost - it exposes something about us. Without a broken heart for those things, at
best we don’t understand the grace we’ve experienced, and at worst, we have not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make us just. An authentic encounter with the
incredible grace of Jesus should cause us “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly.”
We desire to be a faith community that successfully launches people into a growing relationship
with Jesus Christ, on mission to make Christ-like disciples in Sparta, Kent County, West Michigan,
and around the world. Ultimately, we want to be a multi-generational church characterized
by prayerful dependence, loving relationships, and changed lives. In the midst of the
shifting sands and competing forces so prevalent in 2016, God has graciously seen fit to move us
more and more toward those things this past year. As we seek Him together, I pray that God will
accomplish even greater things in and through us in 2017.
May our response to this past year be one that refuses any and all animosity toward anyone,
because we understand the nature of our real enemy. May our paralyzing fears be eradicated by
our encounter with the perfect love of God. Finally, may we resist the drift toward tribalism,
realizing that Jesus doesn’t allow for it. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew in one of His
most famous parables, Jesus found the most provocative and forceful way to say that anyone at all
in need - regardless of race, politics, class, orientation, lifestyle, and religion - is our neighbor. Not
everyone is our brother or sister in faith, but everyone is our neighbor, and we are to love our
neighbor.
May our resistance to tribalism show itself in some practical ways: Increasing our generosity;
Identifying, Investing, and Inviting; Embracing our next step - Audience to Participant,
Participant to Investor, Investor to Equipper; Learning to value and leverage the influence God has
given us; and Taking personal responsibility for our own spiritual growth
As we begin 2017, my 20th year here at SBC, may God’s love and grace compel us to live our
faith more authentically and radically, share the hope we possess more boldly and fervently, and
love others more radically and sacrificially in the year(s) ahead. May we do so with even greater
confidence and clarity in these changing times knowing that “His divine power has given us
everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his
own glory and goodness.” I Peter 1:3 THE BEST IS YET TO COME!
All we are, All we have, All for Him,
Pastor Nate