Long time GCI Elder Frank Espinoza has been diagnosed with cancer and we are requesting prayer. Frank has served the church for many years – as an employee in Pasadena and also in the Spanish-speaking area. Now serving in San Diego as an elder at Cornerstone Community Church (Lemon Grove) – a congregation of GCI. Frank’s wife Carmen also has severe health issues.
Frank was diagnosed on September 2 with stage 4 liver cancer that has spread into his lungs. He was in the hospital for only a few days and is now in a hospice house. He is receiving palliative care to deal with the pain, especially as it progresses. His wife, Carmen, has been battling Parkinson’s disease for some time and is almost bedridden at home. The family is working to make it possible for Carmen to move to the same facility where Frank is so that they can be together. Please pray for them both and also for their family as they take care of them during this difficult time.
Cards of encouragement can be sent to:
3591 Ruffin Rd Unit 127, San Diego, CA 92123
Blessings,
Mark Stapleton, Pastor Cornerstone Community Church San Diego, California
Am I the only one to get confused when wearing a mask? Recently I had my face mask on when I went for a cup of coffee. I tried to pay by using my phone, but it would not process. What was the problem? My phone’s security works by facial recognition and the mask obscured my face! I felt flustered and peered intently at the phone, thinking it would click in. People in the socially distanced line behind me were snickering as they watched, and I too began to laugh.
Masks have a fascinating history and were worn for all sorts of reasons, and they still are. I remember watching a movie that featured a masquerade, a party where people wore elaborate masks to conceal who they were. The idea goes back to the theatres of ancient Greece and elsewhere, where actors would don a mask to get into character. Typically, they’d use a mask that featured a recognizable attribute of the role they were playing.
A friend of mine, who knew I was a Christian, asked me once about God. What is he like? Would he please come out from behind his mask and identify himself? My friend was being sarcastic, but I had an answer, based on Colossians 1:15, where we read that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (ESV). Jesus came, I said to him, to show us who God is, to reveal how God is love.
It’s something worth noting. If we want to know what God is like, how he thinks and how he cares for us, we look to the life of Jesus.
Jesus is God unmasked.
Prayer: Thank you, Father, for revealing yourself through your Son, Jesus Christ, and help me please to grow more and more into his image. In his name, Amen.
For 2020 I asked our GCI leaders to consider the word “focus” as our word for the year. To achieve a perfect focus of 20/20 sight, there must be clarity. Anyone who has ever undergone an eye exam was given a series of lenses to peer through and asked, “Which one is most clear?” until you achieve clear vision.
The clarity for GCI starts with me as the President having a well-defined job description – a clear lens of what my job is. (Thanks to the GCI Board of Directors, I have such a lens.) Once clarity for my job was established, it is on me to fashion priorities and goals around the activities that I have been asked to accomplish on behalf of the denomination. One of those priorities is to create a job description for the leaders who serve at the management level of the church. This applies, in turn, to our church pastors.
Our pastors are the frontline managers for our church. These men and women are the backbones of our organization. As go our pastors, so goes our church. This is not meant to imply a sense of heaviness or pressure, just simply stating the reality.
The old DNA for pastoring in our church was:
An able teacher who could support and articulate our church doctrines
A counselor to the members on all of life’s issues
An available leader who regularly visited members in their homes
As we are now 20 years into the 21st century the job description for pastors has changed significantly.
In accordance with what we see in Ephesians 4, we desire that pastors look to the leadership of the ascended Christ in not only using their gifts, but in helping members use their God-given gifts. Pastors and ministry leaders are called “to equip the saints for the work of ministry,” so that the church is built up. Equipping is done through the training and empowering of believers.
We desire a dynamic movement of ministry within our churches where people come alive in Christ, grow up into his maturity, and walk in step as they share in Christ’s ministry (verses 13-16).
We are asking our pastors to be theologically educated in GCI’s Incarnational Trinitarian theology and to express their abiding relationship with Father, Son and Spirit in how they relate to others and how they teach the gospel message.
We are asking our pastors to be intimately familiar with the Love, Hope and Faith avenues of ministry, and to prayerfully appoint leaders and teams of people for the ongoing attention and execution of these foundational ministries. Pastors must first be Team-Builders, then Leaders of Leaders, as well as Constant Custodian over the foundational ministries.
It takes a lot of effort to be a healthy church, yet isn’t that our goal? Every pastor wants his or her local congregation to be the healthiest expression of church it can be. This requires focus and clarity. A pastor’s congregation is his or her local focus of operation. To provide clarity, allow me to share—in a condensed fashion—how we are asking pastors to see their role as described in the flow of Engaging, Equipping, Empowering and Encouraging.
Engagement means being among people in the congregation and community to discern individuals who can possibly grow into ministry leaders, then intentionally engaging and recruiting potential leaders by giving them opportunities to stretch their capacity and helping them become better known.
Equipping God’s people for works of service begins in the awareness of who God is, and then who the individual is in relationship to God. How has God shaped them through their personality, life experiences, talents, and spiritual gifting? What is God calling them to in correspondence to building up the church? The pastor must rely on the help and resources from the Faith Avenue leader and team members to thoroughly work through this process. Equipping then means matching individuals to appropriate educational opportunities, and relationally connecting them with able ministry leaders who will make space for the new believer to be apprenticed—knowing that information without imitation falls short, mentoring counts.
Empowerment is a function of trust and resourcing. A pastor will give meaningful opportunities for leaders under him or her and allow liberty for the person to succeed or fail; celebrating the successes and patiently working through the failures. The pastor will work collaboratively with the team leaders to wisely determine their needs, and will follow through with provision of finances, tools and related resources.
The constant Encouragement will come to the broader congregation with the week-in-week-out preaching that is in correspondence to the Christian calendar, and in harmony with the Hope Avenue leader and team. The more specific role of encourager applies to the oversight of the core ministry team leaders, as the pastor facilitates vision-casting and alignment, relational management, and strategic review and careful planning. The pastor is the greatest cheerleader for the ministries of the church, showing support by participation and ongoing communication.
The passage in Ephesians implies growth in spiritual maturity and the winning of new disciples to the church. The pastor will rely on the Love Avenue leader and team to make sure that healthy rhythms of neighborhood engagement and relational connections are happening in the target community. A vigilant pastor will be attentive to numeric and spiritual growth and proactively lead the congregation to receive the growth provided by the Lord.
The new DNA of the four “E’s” – Engagement, Equipping, Empowering, and Encouraging – will be the catalyst for how pastors lead and serve their congregations. This continued transformation is a part of the spiritual renewal of our fellowship that has been going on for more than a quarter of a century.
Thank you, Holy Spirit. We will have some more please!
Greg Williams
P.S. The Regional Directors will be helping pastors have more clarity about their role and how to most effectively shepherd our precious congregations.
The 2020 GCIgnite all-virtual gathering was a success, giving young adults a chance to grow and fellowship despite the postponement of this year’s denominational celebration.
Breakout Session 1
With participants from around the globe, including Australia, Fiji, the Philippines, South Africa, the United States, and more. The event focused on spiritual formation and practice as key components of knowing yourself to lead yourself.
Breakout Session 2
Beginning the week with welcome activities and fellowship, participants then delved into sessions led by speakers Dishon Mills and Michelle Fleming on the main themes. Breakout sessions facilitated discussions about applications of spiritual formation and practice in both their home churches and personal lives. The week concluded with a live worship session led by four amazing young adults and included a prayer session that covered the many challenges we’ve collectively faced this year.
Worship Session
We are grateful for all the hard work and prayers from the GCNext Team and individuals in the home office over the past few months that made GCIgnite possible.
The 2020 GCIgnite gathering provided a great opportunity for participants to connect, grow and worship, and we’re looking forward to next year’s in-person event that will coincide with the Denominational Celebration!
If you need a refresher on the three avenues, please click on the image below to view and download the full Team-Based – Pastor-Led infographic, or scroll down to the bulleted summary.
Following the wake of Hurricane Laura, our Southeastern USA Regional Director, Anthony Mullins, and US Superintendent, Michael Rasmussen reached out to members of GCI congregations who were in the path of the storm. Their updates are below.
Your prayers are much appreciated.
I’ve talked to all but one of our church members, and all are okay. My sister and I suffered no home damage My sister experienced a section of fence damage due to downed tree limbs. We lost electricity for a few days. We had a generator that saved our food and powered an air conditioner/fan and lights. Sunday, August 30, news reports listed 18 deaths from storm-related causes. One half were caused by the improper use of generators. A family of five was among the nine. I believe that all the other deaths were due to trees falling on houses. Today, (Monday, August 31) we are under a heat advisory [105 degrees in some areas] from 9 am to 8 pm which adds to the misery for those without electricity.
The two church families in the Lake Charles area suffered only carport damage. I’ve not been able to contact the church member who lives across the lake in Sulphur. Her home phone does nothing when dialed and her cell goes to voice mail.
We all feel blessed that the storm was not as destructive as had been predicted.
Richard Young Facilitator – Lake Charles, Louisiana
James Scales, our Facilitator for the Beaumont, Texas church is fine and staying with his daughter due to power outages.
All the members are safe and did not sustain major damage from the storm, but some are still without power.
Acts 2:42 (ESV) “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
Though this verse speaks to a specific moment in the history of the church (the days immediately following the birth of the church in Jerusalem), it describes the basic content of the church’s public assemblies—a content that endures to this day: teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread (the Lord’s Supper) and prayers.
Being unable to assemble during the pandemic has reminded me of the great importance (and blessing) of our times together in public assembly as the body of Christ. Something we can still take part in, albeit virtually, through our church services online. (I am grateful to those who worked so hard to make this resource available, it has been a lifeline!)
Robin Parry, in Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship, states (referencing the writing of Susan Wood, emphasis added):
Taking part in Christian worship is essential for Christian spiritual formation. We may not pay conscious attention to all the individual elements of the faith that we sing or act out in worship, but we are immersed in the practice of communal devotion to God. We internalize the shape of the faith through the sights, sounds, smells, tastes of the whole experience. Liturgy… creates an environment that, when we indwell it, shapes our vision, relations, and knowledge of God in Christian ways. The knowledge of God we gain in worship is not the knowledge that one can learn from a book but the participatory knowledge that comes from being involved in a relationship.
Because we worship a relational God—the Holy Trinity—our worship is communal. By God’s design, it involves assembling together—Sunday-by-Sunday, season-by-season through the course of the Christian year. In our assemblies, through the liturgy of worship, we reenact the story of the gospel—the story of Jesus, our story. So important. Such a blessing!
Prayer: Lord God, we are grateful for your church; grateful we are part of it—members of Christ’s body. Lord, you created us and created the church so that we might share in your life and your love. We do that sharing together, and through that life together we are transformed. Lord, we pray for those who due to circumstances beyond their control, are unable to assemble with us. May we reach out to them so that they know they are part of us, and we a part of them. Help us to assemble faithfully, safely, with joy, reverence, and awe, for our sakes, and for the sake of the world that you love. Amen
Ted Johnston Instructor, Grace Communion Seminary Retired GCI Regional Pastor and Publications Editor
The interracial and international makeup of Grace Communion International is a blessing and a strength of our fellowship. As I hear and read about the controversies between the “black church” and the “white church” in America, I am pleased that we have ongoing dialogue internally as a GCI family that cares about one another.
As President, I must continually pay attention to ways that the church is being challenged and then prayerfully consider how we move forward. Thankfully, I have a wonderful team of people around me who help me with the multitude of issues. Just as I ask our pastors to be “Team-Based, Pastor-Led,” I seek to be “Team-Based, President-Led.”
I recently asked one of my team members, Dr. Gary Deddo, to write some helpful thoughts on the topic of racism as we see it addressed in Scripture. See his thoughts below.
What does biblical revelation contribute to the concern regarding the evil of racism?
What biblical revelation offers out of its incarnational and trinitarian center can be summed up in four points.
Biblical revelation sheds strong light on this form (and all forms) of evil. It does so by locating all sin—including racism—in the most comprehensive context there is. That context, that reality, is the history of humanity’s need for our Triune God’s redemption through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. That history reaches back to the beginning of created time and out to the future of eternity. In contemporary terms, the whole of biblical revelation provides us a complete story of humanity’s individual and collective brokenness—from its founding to its redeemed culmination. It is a history of all peoples, of all the families of the nations. By God’s grace, we have been given a metanarrative that includes the histories of all particular individuals, peoples, and nations. It is a story of our Creator and Redeemer’s redemption and, as such, is a story of true hope.
Biblical revelation centered in Christ tells us what is wrong with our world and so with racism. It does not offer a superficial, biased, or naive view of any evil, including racism. It does not merely expose the symptoms of evil, but the root, the source of any evil including that of racism. Evil is rooted in our distrust and alienation from God. After being tempted by the evil one, humanity rejected a personal relationship with God. Evil is rooted in the lie that we don’t need God and we don’t need to be in relationship with God. The true seriousness of any and every evil is uncovered in biblical revelation. It identifies the root of all sin operating in this “present evil age.” It tells us that our real enemy is not other persons (“flesh and blood”), but the powers of evil that tempt us all and take advantage of our weaknesses. It tells us that every human being needs to be freed by the grace of our Triune God from the power of evil at the deepest level of who we have become.
Biblical revelation, which has its center in Jesus Christ, makes known the final end goal of our Triune God’s own eradication of all evil, including racism. It ends upon Jesus’ return as Lord of all. It does not stop short by pointing us to false hopes, misguided compromises, partial results, or hopelessness. Rather, it supports the true hope for all—ultimate redemption and reconciliation between all. Going to the root, Jesus has—through his shed blood on the cross and resurrection from the dead—achieved victory over the source of all evil. At his return, he will eradicate sin as everything is placed under his total rule and reign. Nothing less can bring to a complete end all evil, including the sin of racism.
Biblical revelation informs and forms those who are members incorporated into the Body of Christ as to how to participate in our Triune God’s own work of reconciliation and redemption in this present evil age—even as we wait in hope for our ultimate reconciliation, redemption, and the renewal of all things in heaven and earth upon Jesus’ personal and bodily return. We have been given a mission and message of reconciliation to actively share (2 Cor. 5).
My synopsis from Dr. Deddo’s helpful points are:
I am thrilled that our shared theological foundation—in what is called “Incarnational Trinitarian Theology” (ITT)—is for all people groups, for all ages, in all cultures. We rest and hope in the God revealed through Jesus. He is our solid rock!
Racism is evil. Treating any people group with prejudice, discrimination, and judging them as inferior is against the nature and intent of the Triune God. We are not to view any person from a “worldly view.” Rather, we are to see all people under the spilled blood of Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus died for people of all races; he values people of all races, and no race is to look down on or feel superior to any other race; the same is true for all ethnicities. In Christ, there is no slave, no barbarian, no Scythian, no Gentile, and no Jew. We are all equal in him.
Racism will not fully be eradicated until Jesus returns and makes all things new. However, as the church of Jesus Christ we participate with him by the power of the Spirit to demonstrate love and respect to all peoples, and to be peacemakers advocating for equal treatment for all in the systems around us. As a church, we are called to be a light on the hill.
As part of our effort toward greater corporate health, we are forming an Advisory Council of minority leaders who will work with North American Superintendent Mike Rasmussen to inform him and the other Regional Directors as to ways we can more faithfully demonstrate our true unity in Jesus Christ.
As we move forward in our journey toward healthy church, we must make certain that our interracial relationships are healthy. Black lives and Black voices matter in GCI because our denominational story is incomplete without them. Hispanic lives and voices matter. All minority voices must continue to have a greater contribution within our denominational journey with Jesus. We will have more to share once the council is formed.
Please pray for the Lord’s leading in this new initiative and that wonderful fruit will be produced.
