This past Sunday we hosted our first of a series of Whiteboard Sessions at The 815.  This is a progressive series of vision meetings in which we unpack the vision (from broad to specifics) of 2 Pillars Church.

The title of this first Whiteboard Session was “Overall Vision and The Gospel.”  In the session we talked first about the Gospel and the wider storyline of the Bible including how God created everything and it was good (Creation), how Adam and Eve disobeyed God thus bringing sin into the world (Fall), how because of that we are sinful and in need of a redeemer, whom God sent in Jesus (Redemption), and how it doesn’t just stop there (with “me and Jesus”) but that it goes beyond that and that God is at work restoring all things and that one day all things will be restored (Restoration).

From there, we talked about the Gospel and how the wider storyline of the Bible plays out in each of our lives as well.  We talked about the gap between God’s holiness and our sinfulness and how Jesus is the only one that can bridge that gap.  Where irreligion tends to minimize God’s holiness and religion tries to minimize our sinfulness, we looked at how the Gospel says that both irreligion and religion get it wrong.  In fact, the Gospel says that God is way more holy than we can ever imagine, that we’re way more sinful than we’ll ever admit, and that despite that – in Jesus – we’re way more loved and accepted than we could ever have hoped for.

That’s the Gospel.  That’s the drum we’ll beat as a church.  Our vision is to be a gospel-centered and missionally-focused church.  When we talk about being a gospel-centered church, we mean that you’ll be hearing all about this all the time.

We then went on to talk about being missionally-focused.  In doing so we contrasted two views of the church.  The first is a “come and see” view, the second is a “go and tell” view.  From there, we talked about living lives on-mission which involves us (as ordinary people), living our lives (doing ordinary things), with gospel-intentionality.

If you missed this first Whiteboard Session, we hope to see you at the next one.  In the mean time, take a look at this Whiteboard Session Supplement which provides some additional information, key dates, and specific areas in which we need some specific help.