Gospel Fluency: It Starts with YOU (Part 2)

Yesterday we began a journey of learning from Soma Community in Tacoma, WA on Gospel Fluency.  You can read that post here Gospel Fluency (Part 1)

Today we are thinking about how Soma Community makes the gospel central to their church culture and their missional communities.   Guess what?  It begins with YOU!

Here is how Soma Community puts it:

In order to effectively equip your missional community in Gospel Fluency, you will need to create a culture where it is normal to speak the Gospel to each other regularly. Every sin and issue that stands in the way of our faithfulness to Jesus’ commands is ultimately a Gospel issue, since sin is the outcome of unbelief in Jesus (John 16:9). 

One of your key jobs will be to equip your people to KNOW the Gospel, APPLY it to all of life and SPEAK it to each other. 

It Starts With You!

Shaping a Gospel Fluent Culture starts with you being regularly shaped by the truth of the Gospel. This means you have to KNOW it and APPLY it to everyday stuff, while asking others to SPEAK it into your life.  Do you know the Gospel? Could you articulate it? Can you address everyday issues with the Gospel?  If you know it and can articulate it, the next question is: Are you experiencing ongoing repentance and growing

faith in the Gospel?   

This will look like you “taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ”. It means you are regularly checking your motives, beliefs, attitudes and actions to see if they reflect faith in Jesus or faith in someone or something else. This includes inviting others to have the freedom to speak openly into your life as well.  Then, when it is apparent that your faith is in something other than Jesus and what he accomplished for you through his life, death and resurrection, you need to be reminded how the Gospel shows Jesus to be the sufficient one for you in that issue, repent of unbelief and put your faith for that thing in Jesus and his sufficiency. 

The more you are actively applying the Gospel to all of life, the more normal it will become to both speak of it and

to equip others in it.

The more we can learn to speak the Gospel to one another as followers of Jesus the more empowered you will feel to speak the gospel in love to those Jesus misses the most.

Let it begin with you.

Grace. Peace. Power.