My church recently celebrated our one-year anniversary as a church. Praise God for his faithfulness. We\u2019ve aspired to be a gospel-preaching, Bible-believing church for his glory in an area that\u2019s been overlooked in church-planting efforts.<\/p>\n
Here are ten reflections from our first year as a church\u2014two truths to be reminded of, three warnings to prepare for, three exhortations to obey, and two promises to cling to.<\/p>\n
TRUTHS TO REMIND YOURSELF OF (OFTEN)<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. The Gospel Must Be of First Importance (1\u00a0Cor.\u00a015<\/strong>:1<\/strong>\u20134).<\/strong><\/p>\n The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. It\u2019s good because God created humanity in his image, after his likeness, but we sinned against him and deserve his wrath. That’s why God sent Jesus to live a perfect, sinless life, to die on the cross for our sins\u2014taking on the wrath we deserved\u2014and to rise again on the third day for our justification.<\/p>\n This is the message that sinners must hear to be saved. And Jesus calls us pastors to preach this message. The gospel should be central to everything we do as a church because it\u2019s the central message of the Bible. It is of first importance. If you make it second, I don\u2019t know how you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are 10 reflections\/encouragements from a pastor who planted Congress Heights Community Church in SE Washington, DC last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-56581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-leadership","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56583,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56581\/revisions\/56583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}