Sunday, March 7, 2010

The threshold of non-ignorability

From Ray Ortlund Jr. at Christ is Deeper Still.


“. . . with regard to this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.” Acts 28:22


In the days of the apostles, outsiders disparaged the church, but they couldn’t ignore the church. Today, here in the Bible Belt, our task is to re-create those conditions. How? By planting so many gospel-centered churches that we cannot be ignored. Being “spoken against” is not a problem. Being ignored is, because this isn’t about us. It’s about Jesus.


In the corporate psychology of every city, there is a threshold of non-ignorability. Here in Nashville, the Titans cannot be ignored, country music cannot be ignored, Vanderbilt cannot be ignored. But the gospel is too ignorable.


An organic, from-below, non-big-event strategy of church-planting — some churches small, some medium, some large — but churches with the same gospel of grace, the same radical culture of gospel sociology, and Nashville will wake up one morning in eight or ten years and sense that something has changed and it cannot be ignored because it is not just another big event down at the Ryman that comes and goes but is embodied in a growing network of radiant churches that are here to stay.


Lord, help us to press the gospel forward so boldly that it reaches the threshold of non-ignorability throughout the world, for your glory alone.

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