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What is “the gospel”?

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As the elders of God’s church here at Elim, we sense God calling us to cultivate and equip a community of everyday missionaries, who follow Jesus as Savior and Lord, as we grow in our love for God, God’s Word, God’s people of every culture and ethnicity, and God’s purposes in the world.

As we kick off a new year, we want to get practical in how we resource you to live this life to which God calls you. We begin by asking the simple question: What is “the gospel”?

“Gospel” is our English translation of the Greek word euangelion. It is a compound of the prefix eu-, which means “good,” and the root angelion, which means “announcement” or “news.” The gospel is the “good announcement,” but what content do we broadcast?

For those who have spent any time around Christianity, it is fairly easy to come up with a word cloud of gospel-associated ideas and concepts—”forgiveness,” “salvation,” “Jesus,” “the cross,” “eternal life”—but it is harder for us to communicate our news with clarity and conciseness. Allow me offer some language (adapted from Jonathan Dodson’s Gospel-Centered Discipleship):

The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, and the salvation made possible for all who believe.

The gospel is the glad announcement that Jesus has defeated evil, sin, and death, through His own life, death, and resurrection, and is making all things new, even us.

The first announcement of this good news comes in the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible. Shortly after Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, the LORD God speaks to the serpent: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He [the offspring of Eve, the Son of Man] will strike your head, and you will strike His heel.” (Genesis 3:15; CSB)

From the Garden of Eden, we hear the promise of a coming newness. Our enemy, that satanic deceiver who desires our destruction and the defacement of God’s good world, will be crushed beneath the foot of a deliverer. Evil, sin, and death will be defeated, but it will come at great cost. This Son of Eve will endure a grievous wound. The venomous snake will get his fangs into our Savior, but it will not thwart His victory.

The earliest announcement of this good news in the New Testament is found on the lips of Jesus himself in the Gospel of Mark: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15; CSB)

Now is the time! God is at hand in Christ to establish His good, just, and beautiful rule on the earth, to rescue us from our domination by every power that rivals God’s authority and the devastation of our own wrongdoing and rebellion.

Will you receive it? Will you reorient your life to respond to new reality?

Embrace it. Trust it. Believe it.

Let it make you new.



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Text of Pastor Ryan’s “Fireside Chat” on the Two-Year Anniversary of the Coronavirus Pandemic

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“For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’… [Let there] be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1 Corinthians 12:14-21, 25-26)

It has been two years to the Sunday since a novel coronavirus known as Covid-19 first shut down American society and so greatly impacted our lives. In a spirit of generous listening, Elim’s leadership core is preparing this month to tell their stories of the last two years. I am going to use the opportunity of this anniversary to tell mine.

I was not with Elim back when all this started in March 2020. We were living in California at the time and I was serving at a church in Sacramento. As the pandemic broke my instinct was to run toward the hurting, the nervous, the scared, but public health officials advised that that might do more harm than good so out of love and a desire to seek our neighbors’ welfare we adapted.

I wasn’t thrilled when public health orders told us to close our doors because I knew folks would be suffering alone, but we learned new ways to forge community in digital spaces and in fresh, embodied ways. We tried to learn how to be God’s church for the moment. We did it imperfectly, but we kept putting one foot in front of the other. I do have sweet memories of a summer spent under the stars in Sacramento studying the Book of Daniel with a group of men in my buddy’s backyard.

When we came back together, we were asked to wear masks. Not everyone saw eye-to-eye on their effectiveness or value, not everyone agreed on the appropriateness of government dictates in religious spaces, but I was willing to voluntarily submit to those community leaders in authority over me because I saw that their ask was within human government’s biblical mandate to restrain evil, albeit in this case a natural evil in the form of a disease. Moreover, I was eager to be the blessing of Christ for my community and if wearing this annoying piece of cloth over my face could help preserve the lives of the vulnerable or lower the strain on an overtaxed medical system, it felt worth it.

We have now entered a new chapter in this journey. Public health officials and epidemiologists tells us we are transitioning from “pandemic” to “endemic.” That doesn’t mean we are at the end; it means Covid has taken root and is here to stay. It calls for new strategies and adjustments. As such, the guidance has changed. As you know as of yesterday, we have been told is reasonable for most of us to unmask in most settings. For some this is cause for celebration, for others trepidation. And I am reminded once again that we are one body and we have a primary calling to love God with all our being and love our neighbor as our self.

As I look back, I have two great regrets with how we navigated this season of pandemic. The first is the lack of grace, listening, and love we showed to one another. It says in Ephesians 4:29-32, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” I don’t feel like this always characterized life in the family of God their past two years. Indeed we splintered and tribalized. At times we were harsh, uncharitable, and selfish. We interpreted difference as betrayal and held onto bitterness and rage. We refused to see life from one another’s perspective. In isolation, we stopped talking, stopped forgiving, stopped reconciling. Instead of being tender-hearted, we became calloused towards one another and I feel God’s Spirit needs to once again take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.

My second big regret was that it proved so hard for us to remember. It says in Hebrews 13:1-3, “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” 

There are some in our body that felt like they have been in prison these past two years and forgotten. From some, this was due to the fact that they were medically vulnerable and even now may have a different risk calculus that you or I. For some, it was because they live with or work in close quarters with those whom are at higher risk, with those for whom infection means a much higher possibility of hospitalization and death. Others were in prisons of grief or sustained trauma. I haven’t lost anyone directly in these past two years as many of you have. I also don’t what it is like for someone like my wife Brianna who was a Covid nurse at several of the peaks in this pandemic, witnessing tragedy after tragedy every time she clocked in. Others have been trapped in a prison of isolation, mourning the loss of community. It is not just the medical risks and the people who’ve passed. In this season, there is has been lots of moving—moving cities, moving states, moving churches.

Guys, it is so easy to forget those whose circumstances are different from our own. At the beginning of this journey, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to remember and connect, eager to find creative ways to engage with others, to grant others access, but as the months ground on and fatigue set in, I confess that beloved brothers and sisters fell through the cracks and for that I am sorry.

Now today is a new day and Christ as always calls us to a lifestyle of repentance. How will we navigate this next season with love, grace, and remembrance?

  1. We need to give one another respect and acceptance in our difference. Some of us will continue to mask. I don’t want to hear any talk of “faith over fear,” “lions not sheep,” or any of that. We all have different risk calculuses. We all move in different circles. We are all discerning how to best love God, our neighbor, and the vulnerable among us. Some of us will start to unmask in different settings. I don’t want to hear “you are choosing to kill my grandma” or “you are sacrificing the weak on the altar of the comfortable.” That is not say that there were never times in these past two years where we did not selfishly choose our rights or our interests at another’s expense. I know in moments I did and for that I repent. But let us give one another the benefit of the doubt and not demonize, trusting that we are all discerning how to best love God, our neighbor, and the vulnerable among us.
  1. We need to remember—re-member (bring back in connection with the body)—those who are still in prisons of isolation due to medical vulnerability, grief, or alienation. We don’t have all the answers, but I am eager to make a fresh start. If it is a blessing to have a medically vulnerable section in our sanctuary, we are open to that idea. If it would be a blessing have house-church-style gatherings for those who have to stay more careful, we would open to facilitating that. I continue to be open to masking when in close quarters with the medically vulnerable and throwing on mask on when I wake up with a case of sniffles because I now know significant even cold can be for those whose health is fragile. If you need support navigating grief or reconciling with family, we want to come alongside you. Be partners with us in our remembrance.
  1. We need to heal. We carry wounds and bitterness from these last two years. Moving forward, we need to take that pain to Jesus. We need to do the hard work of forgiveness in His presence. But it doesn’t stop there, we need to start reconciling. I believe this begins with generous listening and allowing others the space to share their story of the past two years without interruption, defensiveness, or accusation. It will mean refraining from name-calling or speculating upon each other’s motives. It will mean giving one another the gifts of respect and grace. Don’t forget what grace is—it’s receiving what we don’t deserve and finding healing in our brokenness. Let’s start down this path together. Holy Spirit, unify this church!

Thank you for your generous listening this morning. Now allow me pray as we continue our worship: God, you are able to make all grace abound to us. May we experience your all-sufficiency in all things at all times, that we may abound in love and every good work. Amen. [prayer adapted from 2 Corinthians 9:8]

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Equipping the Saints for the Work of the Ministry

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By Pastor Ryan White

“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be genuine.”

(Romans 12:4-9)

This year at Elim we will be launch a new LEADERSHIP CORE. Based on the biblical model of deacons, it will be a community of ministry leaders that partner and collaborate with the pastor and elders to advance God’s mission here at Elim. In technical terms, the Leadership Core will be a standing committee of the church with its members serving renewable, one-year terms.

We are embracing this new adventure for three reasons:

  • As a church, we are richer and more effective when the people of God can share their perspectives, feed their passions, and use their gifts.

This has always been God’s design. God in His grace has given every believer gifts, passions, and abilities, and He intends for us to use them! We often think that whatever takes place in a church happens top down from the shepherds to the congregation, but Scripture says God gives the church her leader for this express purpose: “to equip the saints (ordinary Christians) for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11). You are the leading figures in this drama, the stars of the show who drive the narrative forward!

  • Burnout is a major problem among church volunteers, so we seek to fill your cup while you faithfully empty it in Christ’s service.

We desire for your experience of local church leadership to add value to your life. We love because God first loved us. We serve out of the overflow of God’s blessing in our lives. We are creating this new leadership structure because we want to invest in you. This is not about making you more effective servants; it’s about developing your leadership, encouraging your spiritual formation, and equipping you with new tools for your spiritual tool belt. We are thrilled to announce that Cindy Waple has agreed to serve this first year as the Core’s Leadership and Formation Coach. We pray that the training you receive will serve you both now and in later seasons of life and ministry.

  • God has called us together for a shared life and a common purpose. In light of that unity, we want to break down the silos that too often exist within local churches.

We are building this team to ease communication and collaboration across Elim’s ministries and with leadership. No more laboring alone, unseen and unsupported. No more church-calendar counterprogramming or ministries working at cross-purposes. We want to empower you to serve with confidence, in alignment with our mission and connected to one another.

We are asking different members to prayerfully consider serving as champions for various aspects of our life and ministry together. We seek to partner each core leader with a co-leader or a cohort of leaders to help us discern God’s path forward. Specifically, we are asking these newly appointed leaders to help us do the following:

  • spot and meet tangible needs;
  • exercise real, on-the-ground decision-making, experimentation, and spiritual discernment in step with the pastor and elders’ direction;
  • promote church unity and partnership; and
  • provide outlets for other believers to use their gifts, talents, and experiences to build up the body and advance God’s mission in this ministry area.

You may have more questions about how this work in practice. So do we! Details will continue to be hammered out in the coming weeks and months, but we sense this is part of Christ’s invitation for us as a church in this season. We are asking you to go with us into uncharted territory, but we are confident that we do not go alone. The Lord is doing a new thing here at Elim and in our city and we are eager to join with Him on this adventure!

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth… He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:5-6, 8-9)

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Be Bold, but No Naussicans

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By Dan Amos

It’s been three years since we put together a “regular” budget. Since then, we’ve had retirements, transitions, and the weirdest one of all, COVID. But we have presented to us for a vote a budget that says, “Be bold.” It’s well within our means, within our current giving, but it makes some choices about where to invest our effort.  There are no fictional Naussicans or allegorical starships from the Ecclesiastes 11 passage I spoke on several weeks ago. Instead, I’ll highlight a few of the significant lines in the new budget.

Kids’ Ministry is at the top of the spreadsheet. I don’t know why—it has always held that position in my memory. But it is appropriate, as one of the first efforts of rebuilding has been creating a space to care for and disciple children. There’s a little extra for curriculum and more for leadership development and volunteer appreciation. There’s a new line for family discipleship resources, reflecting the need to equip parents to lead and grow their families. There will also be a much needed upgrade to the playground.

Common Ground Student Ministry is continued at the same amount, including funds to supplement for the 2022 Challenge Conference trip to Kansas City (funds for the 2021 summer trip were unused).

The budget provides a robust investment in Adult Ministries, increasing funding for Men’s Ministry, and showing the emphasis on improving efforts to provide targeted support to adults. Similarly, there are new lines for College and Senior Ministries. Lastly, there is a new line for leadership development to empower our volunteer leaders.

The Worship Ministry budget has an increase mostly for providing the tools to enable growth and the continuation of serving with excellence.

One big, surprising decrease is in our utilities, where our telephone system is getting a technological upgrade that saves thousands of dollars.

Lastly, there are some adjustments in the personnel budget. The bold move is to fund a part-time Youth Ministries Director. We are looking to hire a dedicated leader for our Student Ministries to support the volunteer team who have kept things going for the last couple of years through extraordinary times.

As I was scrolling down the budget, I overlooked one item of great significance. The Holistic Outreach budget includes $10,000 for Local Missions. As we reach out beyond the borders of the oasis, Elim, these funds will help us tangibly partner with other Christians in the area in missions such as Care Net.

With this budget we can try many things, casting our bread on the waters and giving a portion to seven or even to eight. We don’t know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether all will do equally well.

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Every Word that Comes from the Mouth of God

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By Beth White

Right now, I’m reading a book about interacting with kids. It’s called When Children Love to Learn, and it’s a collection of thoughts shared by different people who have taught children in some capacity. My personal reason for reading the book is to gain inspiration as I try to homeschool and parent well. Going through it, though, I found something that I thought related to us as students of the Lord.

                In one chapter, author Susan Schaeffer Macaulay explains that a well-meaning teacher will often ruin a lesson for their student. Worried that a story in itself is not enough, they will either provide their own interpretation or present the kids with a neat moral. She says, “We do all children a massive disservice when we ‘chew’ over the material and ‘spit the pulp’ out for them. People reject the secondhand results of someone else’s efforts. No . . . let the children remember because they took it in themselves. Let them think their own thoughts about it. Let them respond.”

                Reading this, I thought about how we as adults are also constantly force-fed somebody else’s thoughts about the Bible. We listen to our favorite podcasts, we read a devotional crafted specifically for us by someone going through the same stage of life, or we do a Bible study. But do we ever just read the Bible?

                It’s easier to read about the Bible than it is to read the Bible itself, but that is the one thing above all else that we need to be doing. Trust in your ability to hear from the Lord. He is not a tricky God, and He doesn’t make himself hard to find. In fact, what Jesus says is that “everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:8).

                You don’t need somebody else to prechew the Lord’s words for you and pass along what they think is the main point. You, like a child, have a working mind and a heart capable of responding to the Holy Spirit’s touch. Get your nourishment directly from the source. If you are interested in learning from others, that’s great; there are some good teachers who have important things to say. But please don’t neglect the simple practice of reading through the actual Bible, with prayer. Allow God to surprise you as you seek His face directly and invite the Holy Spirit to be your teacher.

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God Is Throwing a Banquet—and We Are Invited

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By Larry Short

As Elim moves into the next season, God has been directing us to focus our attention on “rolling out a red carpet of Gospel hospitality.” Pastor Ryan even pivoted his sermon this past weekend away from Ecclesiastes and into the scene at the Last Supper where Jesus “showed the full extent of His love” to His disciples by taking on the role of a humble servant and washing their yucky feet—and then urging them (and us, by extension) to do likewise to one another, showing God’s love by serving each other in humility.

While reflecting on this topic of Gospel hospitality, another parable of Christ’s has been demanding my attention. In Luke 14, we find Jesus at the home of a ruler of the Pharisees, invited to a fancy dinner. This was “ordinary hospitality”—invite someone to dinner, and perhaps you will get something out of it: a return invitation, a chance to learn and observe, etc.

But Jesus was also observing. He saw many of the guests vying for the best seats at the table, the seats of honor closest to the host. He warned that in doing so they risked getting displaced by someone the host deemed more important than they and forced to sit shamefacedly in a lower position. He encouraged them instead to seek out in humility the low position, with the possibility that the host might then raise them up.

This principle of humility is one that of course syncs well with Christ’s teaching about washing His disciples’ feet. But it’s the very next thing Christ said, the parable of the great banquet, that really caught my eye:

12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” 16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

I realized that the part of this parable that begins with Jesus’s words “A man once gave a great banquet” is less parable and more an actual prophecy. Because Scripture tells us of a coming day in which Christ Himself, the Bridegroom of the Church, will indeed throw a great banquet, which Revelation 19 calls the “marriage supper of the Lamb”:

 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

A couple of things that jump out at me about this end-times great feast. First of all, while all may be invited, not all will accept the invitation. The original invite list in Christ’s parable was full of people who sadly allowed “ordinary life and business” to get in the way of accepting the Master’s invitation. “Please have me excused,” they begged, and the Master did, even though it caused him distress to do so. God will never compel us to accept His invitation.

And if we do accept it, we must learn the lesson of humility. We cannot seek to seat ourselves at the place of honor, or else we risk being put in our proper place. It is far better to humble oneself than to be humbled.

In Christ’s final great wedding feast, we see that humility in the way the Bride has prepared herself. “It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.” That fine linen, we are told, is “the righteous deeds of the saints,” but those saints have been freely granted the privilege of attendance, as that righteousness comes not by our own doing, but at the cost of the blood of God’s sacrificial Lamb, the Bridegroom of the feast.

It takes true humility to realize that we are invited to the wedding not because of how holy we are, but because of how God (at His own expense) has made us holy. And the proper response to such an act of grace is deep gratitude and highest praise!

The third and final aspect of our response (humble acceptance and gratitude and praise being the first two) is shown clearly in Christ’s closing words to His listeners. Once we have accepted God’s Gospel hospitality in humility and thankfulness, we must extend it to others. The Master’s command in Luke 14:23 was to “go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.” But God never forces people to accept His invitation. The basis of their acceptance will be love! Thus His mandate in John 13:34 is that we must “love one another just as he has loved us.” It is only and precisely this love and service that will make Christ’s love compelling to others.

Elim is on a journey to learn how to roll out a red carpet of Gospel hospitality to all in our community. Humble acceptance, thankfulness, selfless love, and service will be required of each of us in this priesthood of believers in order to fulfill Christ’s purposes for Elim. Are you on board?

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