The JustGrace Blog Project

Welcome to our very first blog!

This has been a while in the making and is born out of many years of walking with the Lord in Evangelical circles and serving in leadership and pastoral roles. We like to think that years of service, especially within the things of the Lord, produces wisdom. Perhaps that is the case. And we hope that godly wisdom is a fruit of this blog project.

However, the primary purpose of this blog is not to relate ministry tips, or ideas for church growth, or even pithy anecdotes for church life. Rather the primary goal of this project is to try to promote dialog around the question of how do we as the church of Jesus Christ remain people of the Book, giving priority to scripture and doctrine, while simultaneously, and radically, loving others. It seems we can get the "love God' part down, but sometimes struggle with the "loving others" part of the Great Commandment. Especially when it comes to loving those whom Jesus refers to as the "least of these".

Can there be a meeting of the two? Are there communities of believers who are living out a high view of scripture, while making revolutionary advances towards a radical love for others? We do not claim to have this perfected or figured out. But we do believe that we have identified a problem in the Evangelical church as we know it today. We tend to love our tribe, our buildings, our meetings, and yes...we love our Bible and we love God. But, do we love orphans, the homeless, refugees, immigrants, widows, the poor, drug addicts, homosexuals, Muslims, and on and on the list goes. This seems to have become somewhat of a struggle for us, or perhaps it has historically been a little elusive to God's people.

This is what our blog desires to focus on. What are these ideas and concepts given to us by Jesus supposed to look like? How can they be implemented practically? How is church life and politics supposed to inform each other and are they even compatible? What is the "way of the Kingdom" and how should that inform our faith, conduct, and practice?

Two things:

1. This blog project is in no way intended to bring division, but rather to bring unity and reconciliation around the things that Jesus Himself talks about being VERY important to Him (Matthew 25:31-46). At the same time we acknowledge that these questions can be considered controversial. Some will resonate, others will not.

2. This blog project recognizes that we are not the experts, nor do we have all the answers. It is a collaborative effort and a discussion to understand how we can maybe do better in some of these areas. It is finding answers within the JustGrace community and challenging ourselves to change, instead of claiming we know how all this is supposed to work and pontificating about our opinions.

So, we want this to be interactive, inclusive, collaborative, and enjoy civil discussion and handling disagreements in God-honoring ways. There will no doubt be subjects we view differently, and that is healthy. It is ultimately though how we lift up Jesus in the midst of discussing ideas that is the true test of our Christ-likeness. We hope this discussion will stimulate us to not only love God more, but to stimulate us to never forget that second part to God's Great Commandment...to love others as ourselves.

We hope you will follow this blog and find it useful. Also, please follow our Facebook page by going to @JustGraceCommunity and liking it. Thank you for reading the very first post for JustGrace and please join us often. :-)