Trinity Owasso (PCA) New Members Session 1

www.trinityowasso.com Introduction to Trinity (2012 Edition) 1

Welcome: Introduction to Trinity This five-week series is designed to give you information about Trinity Presbyterian Church and about opportunities for you to become involved in her ministry as members. It is also designed to answer some common questions about what it means to be a believer in Christ, what it means to be a part of a Presbyterian (PCA) Church, and what it means to be a member of Trinity in particular. We will explore how you can best take advantage of, and become involved in, the opportunities and responsibilities that come with being a part of our community here in Owasso. In the time you spend in this series, and in the pages of information which follow, you will be introduced to Trinity Presbyterian Church in a broad and general fashion. You will learn about our vision, our central beliefs, our philosophy of ministry, and our understanding of what it means to be a church of Jesus Christ. It is very likely that in this introduction some of your specific questions may remain unanswered. We encourage you to feel free to ask any question during the session and contact Blake or any of the elders to find the answers. We believe that God has brought you here for a purpose, and we are dedicated to helping you discover how you are uniquely equipped and gifted to serve Christ & His Kingdom through Trinity. We hope that these sessions will be just the first step in a long and fulfilling process of spiritual growth and fruitful service in your ministry here at the church. We are glad that you are here.

The structure of this classroom-style series:

1. The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values

2. What Do We Believe?

3. How Do We Do Life Together?

4. What Does It Mean to be Presbyterian?

5. How Do We Unveil the Beauty of Christ for the World?

Unveiling the beauty of Christ.

www.trinityowasso.com Introduction to Trinity (2012 Edition) 2

Introduction to Trinity

Session 1

The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values.

Session 2

What Do We Believe?

Session 3

How Do We Do Life Together?

Session 4

What Does it Mean to be Presbyterian?

Session 5

How Do We Unveil the Beauty of Christ for the World?

Session One – The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values Introduction to Trinity (2012 Edition) 3

Trinity Presbyterian Church

INTRODUCTION TO TRINITY

Session 1

The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values


SESSION 1 The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values

A. BRIEF HISTORY OF TRINITY

Trinity Presbyterian Church is a new church for Owasso & the region. It began as a prayer group in living rooms in 1997. Many who traveled to Tulsa for worship wanted a church in Owasso where people could “come as they are” without pretense, a church where the gospel was central; where they evangelized like “conservatives” but met physical and social needs in Tulsa & Rogers County like “progressives”. This prayerful core originated at Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) and gained some interest from reformed Baptist churches around town. For ten years that interest coalesced into an Owasso small group out of CPC. Nothing formal was done to plant a new church. Then, in 2010, five years after Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) was planted in South Tulsa, Pastor Ricky Jones lead a remnant of this core to “do something about it”. The beginning of a core group began to gather people in Owasso who were committed to the gospel for the good of Owasso. Long-time Owasso residents like Brenda and Jason Sheffield, were among the leaders of this new work. Beginning in the spring of 2010 Ricky traveled from South Tulsa to preach and administer the sacraments to this small core once a month for evening worship at Freedom Church on . About six months later, Redeemer Owasso began to meet weekly at the Owasso Sixth-Grade Center. During this time the group grew but lacked the resources to become more than a small satellite of Redeemer Tulsa. In the summer of 2011 Pastor Blake Altman was called by the pastoral search committee to lead this congregation as their full-time pastor. In October 2010, the church took on its own identity as Trinity Presbyterian Church and now ministers in concert with Redeemer Tulsa and CPC to promote spiritual, social and cultural renewal throughout the region. In November, the elders moved the weekly worship service from the Sixth Grade Center to its present location at Presence Theater where we prayerfully expect to build the remainder of our core group. Trinity is a new church, but Trinity is not new in the structure of its beliefs. Trinity wholeheartedly embraces the historic Christian faith expressed in the ecumenical creeds of the Church (e.g. the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds). It is also committed to the historic Presbyterian form of the Christian tradition by its subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Trinity is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America.


B. WHAT IS TRINITY’S PURPOSE? What convictions make Trinity distinctively what it is? We will look at the church’s doctrinal commitments. Those are the creeds: summaries of what we believe the Bible teaches about God, humanity, salvation, the Bible, the Church, the world, and so on. Trinity stands with all churches in affirming the Apostle’s Creed, and with the Protestant and Reformed traditions in affirming the teachings of the Westminster Confession of Faith. We will look more closely at these next week in Session 2: What Do We Believe? But in every time and place, a church has to determine how these doctrinal commitments are to be expressed, embodied, and applied to particular issues and to the minds and hearts of the people where the church exists. This can be called the theological vision of the congregation. This is also called its core values or philosophy of ministry. At Trinity, these basic guiding values can be broken down in a number of ways. The following is a simple summary of our mission: Trinity Presbyterian Church exists to glorify the Triune God by unveiling the beauty of Christ & His Kingdom for the good of Owasso & beyond.

C. WHAT ARE TRINITY’S DISTINCTIVE CORE VALUES? What changes everything? THE GOSPEL What is the Gospel? The Gospel is this: Jesus Christ lived the life we should have lived and died the death we deserve to die. His resurrection from the dead is the central fact of both human history and personal meaning in life. By trusting in him and letting go of our self-saving strategies we find life, meaning, joy, and purpose. We are a people who are finding freedom and life as we are learning to trust Jesus, let go of our unbelief and fear, and find joy in the mission that he calls us to (For an easy way to talk about the story of the Gospel, see Study Guide A: Sharing the Gospel on a Napkin). We seek to live as a Gospel-centered church. What does that mean?

1. We must KNOW the gospel (gospel message). Most Christians overestimate their own understanding of the gospel message. The gospel is something "into which angels long to look" (1 Peter 1:12). And angels are smarter than you. Which means: if you think you "get" the gospel, you probably don't. We must devote ourselves to an ever-deepening knowledge and appreciation of the gospel of Jesus.

2. We must EXPERIENCE the gospel (gospel motivation). The gospel is not just a message to be believed, but a power to be experienced. Until the gospel transforms our motivations, we will obey God primarily out of things like fear, pride, duty, or guilt. Those motivations simply aren’t strong enough to sustain lifelong, radical obedience. Only when we


begin to live out of our new identity in Christ will we find ourselves loving God deeply and obeying him freely.

3. We must LIVE the gospel (gospel means). The Gospel is not something we need to understand at the beginning of our Christian life, then we start to move on to other things about being a Christian. The Gospel isn’t just for unbelievers to hear so they can be saved. The Gospel is FOR Christians who have known Jesus for 5 years, 20 years, 50 years, just as much as someone who does not know Jesus. The Gospel is just as much for Christians to know and hear everyday, as it is for someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet and needs to believe for the first time.

At Trinity we assume that most people have not heard or thought out the implications of the gospel. We exist to bring things “in line with the gospel” (Galatians 2:14) which renews us spiritually, psychologically, corporately, and socially. The gospel avoids either legalism or liberalism, moralism or relativism, yet it does not produce “something in the middle,” but something different from both. The gospel critiques both religion and irreligion (Matthew 21:31), and shows us a God far more holy than the religious can bear (He had to die because we could not satisfy His holy demand) and yet far more merciful than a irreligious can conceive (He had to die because He love us). We believe the Gospel changes everything. Therefore is it central in everything we do at Trinity.

The Gospel Changes Everything.

Worship

Kingdom

The Gospel

Community


1. WORSHIP Nature, nostalgia, the concept of love may beckon us but she cannot open her arms to us. Career, family, possessions may temporarily placate our longing, but it will not satisfy us completely. Even marriage does not meet our inconsolable longing to love and be loved.

C.S. Lewis tells us why, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (Lewis, Weight of Glory). Augustine (354-430) spent years searching for the final target of human longing. He called it the summum bonum, the “supreme good.” At the end of his quest and after years of lust (“Grant me chastity,” he had prayed, “but not yet.”) and philosophical exploration, he found one good that would not fade away, one good that would not crumble if he leaned on it with the full weight of his love. And so in a famous prayer at the beginning of his Confessions, Augustine addressed the supreme good of the world, “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.” Until we find true rest in the Triune God, we will fall under the weight of our longing to love and be loved. It all goes back to the Bible. To know God in context, at the center of our view of a Christian’s view of the world, we need to know who and how to worship. “We do this in order to get oriented to God’s world, to understand the deep background of a Christian’s calling there, and, in the end, to justify our hope.” (Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World). What motivates God to create is not to get something (unlike humanity), but rather His delight in displaying what He already possesses. The goal of God in creating the world was the spread of His own glory. We see this throughout the Biblical story.

• The Creation: Gen. 1:26-27 • The Tower of Babel: Gen, 11:1-4 • The Call of Abram: Gen. 12:1-2; cf. Rom. 4:20-21 • The Exodus: Eze. 20:5-9; Ps. 106:6-8; Ex. 14:4, 18 • The Law: Ex. 20:3-5 • The Wilderness Wandering: Eze. 20:21-22; cf. vv. 13-14; Dt. 9:27-

29. • The Conquest of Canaan: Joshua 24:12-14; 2 Sam. 7:23 • The Beginning of the Monarchy (Kings): 1 Sam. 12:19-23; Ps.

25:11; 23:3


• The Temple of God: 1 Kings 8: 41-45; cf. v. 29 • The Deliverance in the time of Kings: 2 Kings 19:34; 20:6 • The Exile and Promised Restoration : Isa. 48:9-11; Eze. 36:22-23,

32 • The Post Exillic Prophets: Zech. 2:5; Haggai 1:8; Mal. 2:2 • Jesus’ Life and Ministry: Jn. 17:4; 7:18; cf. 4:34 • Jesus’ Death: Jn. 12:27-28; Rom. 3:25 • The Christian Life: 1 Cor. 10:31; 1 Pet. 4:11; Matt. 5:16 • The Second Coming and Consummation: 2 Thes. 1:9-10; Rev.

21:23; Jn. 17:24

So, we seek to gather with many in Owasso and the surrounding communities to adore the Triune God and make worship the engine of our personal and corporate transformation.

2. COMMUNITY

The Bible begins with community. The first chapters of Genesis, which relate to our beginning and our purpose, show off that people were created by God, for God and to be like God. But we were also made with a design deficiency: we don’t just function independently, delighted in ourselves. We are also made for relationship with others. “It is not good that man be alone…” (Genesis 2:18). We are made with the capacity and hunger for the relational connection. People long for relationships to complete them. We were made for it—even before sin entered the world in the garden, the first man was lonely, and needed companionship: “God does not exclusively fill the human heart. He made mankind to need more than himself. The staggering humility of God to make something that was not to be fully satisfied with the Creator and the creation is incomprehensible.” (Allender and Longman, Intimate Allies). The Fall (Genesis 3) didn’t just bring a disruption to our relationship with God. Spiritual slavery makes us less than human, less than what we were truly meant for—alienated both from God and other people. Sin makes us not able to love God and love people like we are truly meant to (and not even wanting to). Sin and selfishness strike at the heart of the relationship we were meant to have with God and also strike at the heart of human relationships. Yet the Gospel (the good news) is that Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection is the key to the healing of our relationship with God and with one another. The spiritual freedom of Jesus Christ overcomes our fundamental slavery that separates us from God and people. We believe that when Christ claims individuals as his own, he doesn't just call them to a private relationship with him. Instead, he allows them to discover and grow to become like him through the church, the community Christ established and continues to build and perfect.


So the Church is not an institution or a place, but a people. It is not somewhere you go, something you attend, or someplace you visit. The church is: not a place but a people; a movement; a counter-culture which is a snapshot of God’s future. What is Trinity? We are a community that believes that Jesus Christ is the only true source of lasting joy and life, and are discovering together what it means to both bring the gospel into the center of our individual lives and live out the implications of the gospel in our city for the joy of all people. We are those who have committed themselves to follow Jesus Christ and also those who are skeptical/investigating. We understand that we are all “in process” and so our community is humble in our relationship to those who have different beliefs. A community is both what we already are and also what we pursue as we follow Jesus Christ. We are a worshiping community of love and forgiveness because we have experienced love and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

3. KINGDOM

Jesus came, it tells us in the gospel of Mark, declaring that the “Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news!” And Jesus came as a King. When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it was the same action as the victorious Caesars did in returning from war back to Rome. He was greeted as the King. But the Kingdom of God is not like any other kingdom: • It is spiritual. Jesus’ kingdom is one that is not of this world (John

18:36). It is invisible, non-political, non-racial, and constitutes us as the people of God (1 Peter 2:18).

• It is already and not yet. Jesus came proclaiming that the “Kingdom of God is at hand” and yet, we see in the Bible that the Kingdom will not come in fullness until the return of Christ. On the one hand, Jesus’ kingdom is right here, yet there are parts of the fullness of his reign that are not yet revealed, when he will wipe every tear and all sin and death will ultimately and finally be over.

Trinity Presbyterian Church therefore embraces the calling to live as disciples who bear witness to the reality of that kingdom in our witness and work. Individually, this means: though the way each member lives out that calling finds an expression unique to the person God has made them to be, the general expression of that call comes as we graciously speak words of hope and perform deeds of love and mercy in the places we work, play, and live. As a church, this means that we are called together to a ministry of unveiling beauty of Christ & be a faithful presence for the fame of the Triune God & His Kingdom.


We express our kingdom citizenship in multiple areas: the arts, mercy, church planting, family life, evangelism and our work.

A. KINGDOM & FAMILY

1. Children and the Gospel

In Matthew 19, Jesus welcomes children to himself. He not only calls his followers to be like little children, but also calls children to be his disciples. One of the richest truths of Covenant theology is that in infant baptism, we recognize that God’s gracious promises are for us AND our children (Acts 2:39). Therefore, we don’t treat our kids as pagans until they reach an “age of accountability.” Rather, we treat them as those who have been given the promise of the gospel, and call them to faith and repentance and obedience—to keep the covenant.

2. Children and Community We believe in and practice the sacrament of Infant Baptism. Infant Baptism points us to the fact that we are passive in our salvation—just like a helpless infant. When we put the sign of God’s covenant love on our children, when we pour water over them, we are praying God’s promises for them. This has great implications for Families and for our Church Family: For Families: We are placing our hope for their salvation not in our perfect parenting, but God’s grace. We are declaring our need for God to work in the life of this child and entreating the community to come with us as we seek to show and tell the gospel to the next generation (Psalm 78:4). Our children’s ministry at Trinity is not designed therefore to take the place of the parents, but to encourage and supplement and help parents point their children toward Christ. For Church: When children are baptized, they are baptized into the Covenant Community. Therefore, we believe that they are not satellites to the “main” ministry of our church. We don’t just age-and-stage our kids in programs to keep them out of the way so that parents can be encouraged. The ministry to our children on Sundays is vitally important—as important and significant a ministry as what happens in the worship gathering. And our desire is that as children grow, they both are transitioning into the worship service as well as transitioning into using their gifts in the church body, just like their parents. This is messy, not-programmatic, and a gift that will bear fruit in the discipleship of every young person as they grow—they discover that the church is not for their entertainment but they are vital parts of Christ’s body.


Church as Family: God calls us his sons and daughters. We call God Father. God “sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6) and his church is called the “family of God” (1 Peter 2:17). Many people have families that reflect the brokenness of abuse, generational sin, or simple (and pretty “normal”) dysfunction that mar all relationships post-Fall. One of the ways that we express the reconciliation of Christ is living in intentional community that is intergenerational as a church family. We celebrate the fact that we are not all the same, and believe that our different-ness is a gift from God—for the good of our family.

3. Children and the Kingdom

We live in a time in which families tend to be either parent-centric or kid-centric. Parent-centric families revolve around the desires, hobbies, interests of parents. What the parents wants comes first. Child-centric families make kids into trophies—and family life revolves around the demanding schedules of sports and arts and kids’ activities. But God calls us to have God-centered homes: where we worship God not just on Sundays but in our daily schedule and in the way that we order our priorities. But that is so hard: the entropy of our culture toward parent-centric or kid-centric homes is so powerful. It takes a community to live any other way. Psalm 127 holds up a vision for family life that neither centers around children nor parents. Instead, it holds up to us a vision for family life that views our children as future kingdom citizens—like arrows to be shot out into the world to extend God’s fame and proclaim his kingdom. This is our vision for living as Kingdom citizens with regard to our families: not that our kids would be perfectly behaved, have all the best education and opportunities, but that they would know and live with distinction and excellence for Christ and his Kingdom.

B. KINGDOM & MERCY

Jesus came, in Matthew 4, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.” He proclaimed the good news of the kingdom, he showed the signs of the kingdom. Show & tell. God calls us as kingdom citizens, to live in such a way that our lives proclaim a kingdom that is not of this world. This means seeing all people as image-bearers, in need of compassion. There is no distinction between deserving/undeserving poor. All of us are undeserving. And God calls us as kingdom citizens to demonstrate the reality of the unseen kingdom by living upside-down lives of radical generosity, love-of-stranger


hospitality. Not treating people as problems to be solved but image bearers who need God’s mercy. Therefore, Trinity believes that the calling to live lives of Kingdom-shaped Mercy is not for those who are gifted in Mercy but for all people. We believe that participation in Mercy & Justice ministries cannot be “icing on the cake”—a task we can get to if we have time. It is a calling of all Christians. We seek to partner with good existing ministries in the Tulsa metropolitan area who are doing “Kingdom work.” We admit that this is an area of weakness and struggle for us as self-consumed individuals and look to God’s leading and the encouragement of one another to hear and heed this calling.

C. KINGDOM & WORK

God reveals himself in the first pages of the Bible as a God who works. As Jesus says in John 5:17, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” Yet one of the effects of the Fall is that we experience multiple ways that we are estranged from work. Some of us over work, are performance driven, perfectionistic, workaholics, define our worth according to our jobs. Others underwork, struggle to keep a job, live just for a paycheck, are unemployed because of failures of courage, define our worth according to our lack of jobs or salary. Our calling as Kingdom citizens entails bringing our work to God as part of our discipleship. We seek to be a community in which God’s grace and mercy is applied to our vocational lives, our work weeks—from the attitudes we have toward bosses and employees to how we understand our work in light of a theology that says “all of life is worship.” We seek healing in the ways that we misuse our work.

D. KINGDOM & CAMPUS

We believe that our ministry to the campus is a missional calling of Trinity. Studies have shown over and over how significant the college years are in forming the three main -ations, that is, Vocation, Association and Location. More fundamentally, lots of students come to the campus at a place of vulnerability, willingness to explore new ideas, and with incredible potential for leadership and growth. Rogers State and Tulsa Tech are in our backyard. We're not just hoping that students show up and take up a few seats. We want students meaningfully involved in our church. Students can become Associate members at Trinity, can serve in a variety of Sunday teams, participate in Community Groups. In addition, we are thrilled to have a great partnership with Reformed University Fellowship at The University of Tulsa and work to maintain and grow those relationships. Students are vital part of Trinity; we hope that Trinity can be a vital part of students' experience of their college years.


E. KINGDOM & CHURCH PLANTING

When Jesus was raised from the dead, he established the church. The local church has been the locus of God’s kingdom expansion throughout history. Wherever Paul went, he established churches. Parachurch ministries are great. We are grateful for those who lead and serve there. But the focus of our Kingdom-expansion efforts will be to follow the pattern of the book of Acts: to plant churches. We seek this in three ways:

1) Planting churches out of Trinity. Yes, we hope this will happen.

2) Partnering to plant churches in Owasso and beyond. No matter how many church buildings you see, there are so many people in our city who are unchurched. We are far from “saturation church planting.” We partner with the Southwest Church Planting Network to plant churches in the southwest United States. In March, we will seek association with Acts 29, another church planting network with a focus on church planting.

3) Partnering to plant churches overseas. Our International Missions vision is to partner to plant churches in countries in which the church has no significant foothold. We long to fulfill the vision of Revelation 5, to see people from every tribe and tongue and people group and nation around the throne of God, celebrating and worshipping him.

F. KINGDOM & CITIES

Owasso is a “nice place to live,” a “great place to raise kids.” The greater Tulsa area has consistently been rated a top location for raising a family, finding a job, retiring, quality of life, sunny days, temperate climate, etc. It is easy to love Owasso for any of these reasons. But all of these right reasons can quickly become wrong reasons. As followers of Christ, we recognize that this is not our home. We are pilgrims. We are sojourners. We believe that “we have no enduring city here…but are looking for a city to come, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10, 16). Owasso is not our home. Owasso is not heaven—no matter what the magazines say. We live in a city where people are making the same mistake as they did in Babel, trying to build “heaven on earth,” trying to “make a name for ourselves.” This leads to entitlement, selfishness, a “Not in my back yard” view of citizenship. But Christians are different: we have a citizenship that is in heaven; we are living for a city that is yet to come. So, in this beautiful place, in this comfortable place, in this place where everyone and everything is “nice,” Trinity seeks to love Owasso for the sake of Christ, while not trying to live here as if it is heaven on earth. There’s another heaven and it is real and is to come.


God has called us to seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which he has called us (Jeremiah 29:7). And so we seek to truly love Owasso—not for the perfect slice of the American dream that it promises, but to love the people of this place for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. We seek to point to Jesus as the real King—instead of the kingdom of self. We seek to live with inverted values in this place for the glory of Christ.

Summary: The Gospel is central to all we do at Trinity. Out of the Gospel emerge three core values to enable us to unveil the beauty of Christ as a church family:

1. Worship 2. Community 3. Kingdom

D. WHAT IS TRINITY’S VISION “PATHWAY”? With those core values, Trinity’s vision is that her members work together, by the power of the Spirit, to effect great change in Owasso and the greater Tulsa area. Trinity basic “pathway” is summarized in this way:

1. to connect the lost to Christ, 2. build Christians into servant leaders, and 3. release Servant-leaders throughout the region.

To the end, Trinity expects her members to embody this vision for our Christian life together.

1. Connecting the lost to Christ.

a. We seek to make evangelism part of all we do. We seek to have deep respect and hope for the “over-churched,” “casual-churched,” and “un-churched” in our midst. Since we are saved only by grace, we expect non-believers to exceed us in many ways and become sources of wisdom, friendship and insight. We never see anyone as too far away, since every conversion—including your own—is a miracle. The gospel gives us courage to step out of our comfort zones to share the gospel with others and yet keeps us from over-dependence on the approval of others. This clears the way for speaking directly, and it also protects us from speaking haughtily. The gospel prevents us from defensiveness and the need to win arguments and prove ourselves through witnessing. We no longer take things personally. We do not


love people in order to evangelize, we evangelize because we love them.

b. We seek to practice frequent repentance, faith and new obedience. We seek to admit that all despair, guilt, fear, anger come to the degree that something besides Jesus (career, family, moral performance, romance) is operating as our functional savior. Mere rule keeping (moralism) or numbing pleasure (hedonism) will only mask our deeper problem of unbelief. Rather than pretend to have it all together, we look again in faith to the Christ’s work for us and repent personally and corporately when sin becomes known.

2. Building Christians into Servant-Leaders.

a. We seek to prioritize relationships. We seek to become a new people of God, united to Christ and to each other. Since the gospel both humbles us and yet has assured us that we are loved, now we are free from either envy or pride, either inferiority or superiority. We no longer receive our sense of worth either through approval from people or through power over people. This makes our relationships things of beauty, driven by love (Gal. 5:6) in which we neither use people nor overly need them. Instead we are liberated to serve, affirm, or confront —whatever is best for the other. As we continue to grow this will help us remove cultural pride as a component of our acceptance, making it possible to avoid idolizing our own cultural strengths and to appreciate those of others in our subdivisions and neighborhoods.

b. We seek to be a church family of Community Groups. We seek to be a church family made up smaller communities whose social and relational fabric is radically transformed from a consumer expectation to an equipping expectation. The members of Trinity see their fellowship not merely as serving personal needs, but moving beyond comfort zones toward a holy zeal for one another’s growth, and toward kingdom impact in all society. Small groups will be the primary ministry context for these relationships to flourish and gospel-instruction to occur. Encouragement and accountability are indispensible inferences from gospel-centered relationships.

c. We seek to be outward facing. We seek to both love and respect the growing diversity of Owasso and the region and to seek its change for the better. Without the gospel we despise Owasso instead of love it. We seek to resist the consumer culture of suburban life, yet it also seek to do our best in using our gifts, ultimately for the extension of God’s Kingdom here.


d. We seek to multiply ourselves. We seek to multiply into new Community Groups and new church plants as new people enter into our fellowship.

3. Releasing Servant-Leaders throughout the region.

a. We seek to integrate the gospel into our work. We seek to clear out religiosity which makes religion and church itself into an idol. Every believer is a prophet, priest and king—we are a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). So called secular work is as valuable and God-honoring as Christian ministry. When you use your gifts in work—whether by practicing law, tilling the field, mending broken bodies, or nurturing children—you are answering God’s calling to serve the human community. We also believe that the gospel shapes and effects the motives and methods we use in our work. In every field, there are idols that distort the work offered in that, secular (relativistic) world-views produce a different cultural product than the gospel does. We encourage Christians to transform their work by offering it up to the God who saved them, and by working in line with the gospel. We encourage Christians not to privatize their faith away from their work, not to express it in terms of a subculture. Rather we want to see growing Christians working in their vocations both with excellence and Christian distinctiveness, thus transforming the culture from the inside out.

b. We seek to have every member involved in Mercy & Justice. We seek to both respect and love the poor as we meet the needs of the marginalized and overlooked in our suburban contexts through the sacrifice of our time, talent and treasure. We know that all injustice, violence, strife, dependency, intolerance come to the degree that something besides Jesus (wealth, race/blood, the state, human reason) is operating as the functional savior. Since the gospel makes us humble—which heals social brokenness (Gal. 2:14, Acts 2:1-12), we no longer use our culture’s strengths for self-justification. We now can look at others who are not like us and who are not even Christians, and know that we can learn from them (since we are not saved because of our wisdom or performance, but because of Christ’s record). Christianity becomes the greatest basis for civil relationships. Also, since the gospel makes us generous it gives us a model of sacrificial giving in Christ (2 Corinthians. 8:2) by which we help others (Matt. 18:21-35), even to those who are undeserving, as we were (Is. 64:6; Luke 6:32-35). One of the marks of a heart which is really touched by grace is a life poured out in deeds of mercy and justice (Is. 1:10-17; Matt.


25:35-36; James 2:12-14). Likewise, the gospel empowers the poor to self-sufficiency through its hope (Luke 1:52).

c. We seek to be a church that plants churches. We seek to be a movement of churches. Paul says that the gospel does not just have power, it is the power of God (Romans 1:16-17). The kingdom of God is gradually but relentlessly growing (Matt. 13:1-23; 11:12). We aim to plant churches with the same gospel-based core values as Trinity. It will take not a church, but a movement, to transform Oklahoma. Together with Redeemer Tulsa and other like-minded churches in Oklahoma we will target new areas for church plants (Bartlesville, for example). Trinity itself will begin to meet in Community Groups at various sites around Owasso, Claremore, Collinsville, and Tulsa so that we can better reach our neighborhoods. Further, Trinity is a member of the Southwest Church Planting Network, which plants PCA churches in the southwest United States. In March, we will seek to partner with Acts 29 a network of like-minded, evangelical and reformed churches committed to sharing resources to plant new churches in the United States and around the world.

GROUP QUESTIONS ......................................................... Divide into groups of three or four and spend ten minutes asking each other the questions printed below. Keep your answers simple, brief and informal – just be relaxed and enjoy getting to know each other. Be courteous and allow everyone equal time to share.

1. Share your name, how long you’ve lived in Owasso, and how you got here.

2. Describe the center of warmth in your home growing up. Was it a person, a place, a time of year, an activity, an appliance; something else?

3. What part of Trinity’s vision most surprises you? Inspires you?

Study Guide A – The Trinity Vision: Purpose & Core Values Introduction to Trinity (2012 Edition)

Study Guide A How To Share the Gospel on a Napkin

By Blake Altman, drawings adapted from James Choung Philosophers say that the four most important questions humanity can ask are: (1) Who are you? (2) Where are you? (3) What’s wrong with the world? (3) How does it get fixed? What do you think about that? How might you answer those questions? [Let them answer them as best they can. Listen long and well. Then, ask questions about their views. When you’re expected to share your views, ask them if you can draw it out on a napkin.]

THE BIG PICTURE ILLUSTRATED Our inconsolable longing.

Many people would admit that they have experienced a deep longing to belong to something greater and more beautiful than self. This is especially true of the young because that is normally a time before we have become jaded. We hear it in Garth Brook’s music. We see it in our own loneliness. We see it in our favorite films. The movie Shawshank Redemption, turns from despair to hope when Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) plays a vinyl record of Mozart’s Opera “Marriage to Figuro” through the PA system to the entire prison. In every room, in every cell, all the men stop, moved by the music. Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) expresses our inconsolable longing for beauty when he says, “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singin’ about…. I like to think they were singin’ about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away… and for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.”i

As the deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God (Psalm 42:1). O Israel, hope in the Lord! (Psalm 130:7a) Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Amos 5:24 “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17, quoting Joel 2:28).


Each culture has a word for this kind of longing. The Germans call it Sehnsucht, the Koreans call it galmang. And the remarkable thing is that these longings are unfulfillable.

• Nature, nostalgia, the concept of love may beckon us but she cannot open her arms to us.

• Career, family, possessions may temporarily placate our longing, but it will not satisfy us completely.

• Even marriage does not meet our inconsolable longing. The truth is that nothing in this earth can satisfy us. Much can make us content only for a time, but nothing can fill us to the brim. This is because, as J.R.R. Tolkein puts it, our final joys lie “beyond the walls of the world.” Ultimate beauty comes not from a lover or a landscape or a home, but only through them. C.S. Lewis tells us why, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”ii Augustine (354-430) spent years searching for the final target of human longing. He called it the summum bonum, the “supreme good.” At the end of his quest and after years of lust (“Grant me chastity,” he had prayed, “but not yet.”) and philosophical exploration, he found one good that would not fade away, one good that would not crumble if he leaned on it with the full weight of his love. And so in a famous prayer at the beginning of his Confessions, Augustine addressed the supreme good of the world, “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.”iii Why is that we find our deepest longing satisfied only in God? Because God made us for himself. We were created to worship. But worshipping anything less than our Creator enslaves us. And until we find God worthy of our worship, we will fall under the weight of our longing to love and be loved. It all goes back to the Bible. To know God in context, at the center of our view of a Christian’s view of the world, we need now to look in more detail at five “acts” or “movements” of the world’s drama. Creation, Fall, Redemption, Mission, Glory. As Cornelius Plantinga once said, “We do this in order to get oriented to God’s world, to understand the deep background of a Christian’s calling there, and, in the end, to justify our hope.”iv


1. Created for Good.

No one said, “It is not good for God to be alone. So let there be birch trees and bullfrogs and advertising executives.” Creation was a way for God to spend himself out of the overflow of his perfection and beauty. He exists in relationship at Trinity. He is satisfied in himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each person perfectly serving the others. What motivates God to create is not to get something (unlike humanity), but rather his delight in displaying what he already possesses.v

So he creates a beautiful and perfect world where man is at peace with himself, with one another and with the world. This is what the Old Testament calls, “Shalom.” But tragically it doesn’t last.

2. Totally Broken By Sin

Things were perfect in the garden, but man blew it. He was called to extend God’s glory out from the garden, but rather than listening to God he listened to the voice of the serpent. He banked his hope for a happy future on something outside of God and His truth. As a result, Adam spoiled shalom for everyone everywhere (don’t complain; you and I would have done the same). As a result of his disobedience, man experiences spiritual death (man broke fellowship with God), social death (man and man were at odds), psychological death (man was confused about himself and the world), and physical death (man dies, murder happens, weeds arise, thorns sprout, drought comes, and so on.).

The heavens are telling the glory of God. (Psalm 19:1a)

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God. (Hebrews 11:3a)

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:1,31)

In [Christ] all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17)

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” … The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12-13)

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, … they are all alike perverse. (Psalm 14:1, 3)

They have turned their backs to me, and not their faces. (Jeremiah 2:27)

They became futile in their thinking, and the senseless minds were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)

Creation was subjected to futility. (Romans 8:20)


The Bible’s term for being culpable in spoiling shalom is called, “sin.” Bible says that sin is breaking God’s law, abandoning his truth for a lie. To put it another way, sin is banking your hope for a better future on anything other than God and His truth. It is seeking satisfaction in anything other than God’s promises As punishment for sin, the first couple was expelled from the garden and sent into the wilderness.

What does this mean for us? We too have Adam’s sin nature, “for in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22a). Our sin nature separates us from a Holy God who cannot associate with sin except through his eternal wrath. So, if we remain in sin, we experience the spoil of shalom on earth and then the utter absence of God’s mercy eternally in hell. Further, as sinners, we are not just wounded by sin, but dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). We too are left to despair on our own out “in the wilderness.” Today, we seek to return to the garden, to a place where we can experience shalom again, forever. Every country song, every work of literature, every movie, every one of our ambitions has this end in mind: how do we get back to the garden? Through prosperity? Popularity? Sex? Fame? Comfort?vi Our inconsolable longing to “get back to the garden” is at the bottom of humanity’s deepest problem and deepest hope. Is there a way forward?

3. Redeemed for the better.

Thankfully, the answer is YES! The truth is that God the Father did not leave us on our own but calls a people to Himself to redeem through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. The best news in history is that Jesus left the pleasures of heaven to become a man and live the perfect life we cold not live and die that horrible death we should have died. So while you are worse than you could ever imagine, you are also more loved than you could ever dream at the same time in Jesus. By repenting of your sin and believing the gospel by faith alone you are rescued from sin and death and given Christ’s righteousness to allow

I will establish my covenant between me and you, and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations…to be God to you and your offspring after you. (Genesis 17:7)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Might God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

The Lord has risen. (Luke 24:34)


you entrance into God’s covenant family. As J.R.R. Tokein put it in Lord of the Rings, Jesus took on flesh to “make everything sad come untrue.” God did this all by His grace to magnify His glory. We did nothing to get his attention or earn it. How can you experience true shalom? Repent of your sin and look to Jesus alone to bring you into fellowship with God. What’s holding you back from believing right now?

4. Sent out to heal.

Christians are not fat-cats who just sit on the couch after they are saved and watch reruns of The Office. Every believer is a prophet, priest and king – we are a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). Rather than privatize our faith, we are sent out to

heal the world empowered by the Holy Spirit (John 14:16; 14:26). Therefore, so called secular work is as valuable and God-honoring as Christian ministry (1 Corinthians 10:31). When you use your gifts in work – whether by practicing law, tilling the field, mending broken bodies, or nurturing children – you are answering God’s calling to serve the human community and push back against the brokenness of the world. The hardest task for people who live between the times of Christ’s first and second coming is in living the sort of life that makes people, say, “Ah, so that’s how people are going to live when righteousness

takes over the world.” We extend God’s glory as we share the gospel with the lost (Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20) and as we work in our vocations both with excellence and Christian distinctiveness (Cultural Mandate, Genesis 1:28), thus transforming the culture from the inside out.

5. Enjoying God Forever

Behold, I (Jesus) am making all things new. (Revelation 21:5)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them all that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:18-20a)

Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1:28a)


The first question of the Westminster Confession’s Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” At the heart God’s pursuit of God’s glory is our growing to delight in Him above all things. Today, this growth happens gradually and sometimes very slowly since we continue to sin. Repentance, faith and new obedience is the method of growth. When Christ returns to complete the Father’s renewal campaign, we will experience total satisfaction with renewed bodies in His presence forever in the New Jerusalem, heaven. Revelation 21 speaks of the

New Jerusalem coming down to us. The birch trees and the bullfrogs and the advertising industry will operate in perfect harmony with God, man, and creation. Shalom will be here to stay in the beautiful City of God. And it all happens because of Christ’s work reconcile and redeem us and all creation in Him to the glory of the Triune God. What keeps you from believing this good news? So, if you put all this together, you’re see the Story of the Bible in a nutshell. In fact, it answers those four fundamental questions. Have you ever thought of the gospel in this comprehensive way? Does it make sense to you

Created for good Redeemed for the better Sent together to heal Enjoying God forever

Totally broken by Sin.

GENESIS 1-2 GENESIS 4 – REVELATION 20 REVELATION 21-22

Who are you? A sinner in need grace.

Where are you? In God’s fallen creation between the time of Christ’s first and second coming.

What’s wrong with the world? Sin destroyed everything.

How Does it Get Fixed? The Gospel.

GENESIS 3


i The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script, screenplay and notes by Frank Darabont, introduction by Stephen King (New York: Newmarket Press, 1996), 61-62.

ii “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. and with an intro. by Walter Hooper (New York: Collier, 1980), 3-4.

iii Augustine, Confessions, trans. and with an intro. By Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford, 1992), 145.

iv Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Leaning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 16.

v Jonathan Edwards shows us that God was motivated by a benevolent-love (God loves so that others will also benefit from it) as opposed to a need-love (I love because in loving it, I am completely satisfied by it’s benefit to me). There is a crucial difference. Edwards writes, “After the creatures are intended to be created, God may be conceived of as being moved by benevolence to [these as yet uncreated creatures]…. His exercising his goodness, and gratifying his benevolence to them in particular through the universe; as being now the determined way of gratifying his general inclination to diffuse himself. Here God acting for himself, or making himself his last end, and his acting for their sakes, are not to be set in opposition; they are rather to be considered as coinciding one with another, and implied in the other.” (Jonathan Edwards, “Dissertation Concerning the End for which God Created the World” in Works, 1:101). If you’re interested in reading more of Jonathan Edward’s but don’t like his eighteenth-century writing style, take up Daniel P. Fuller’s Unity of the Bible. It is an excellent overview of God’s delight in being God. John Piper once said that outside the Bible, Fuller’s book was the most influential book he has ever read.

vi In the courtyard outside of Murray-Dodge Hall at Princeton University there is a marble table with the lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s 1960’s hit “Woodstock” inscribed, “We are stardust. We are billion-year-old carbon. We are golden….caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” Despite Mitchell’s misdirected theology, her inconsolable longing to “get back to the garden” is at the bottom of humanity’s deepest problem and deepest hope. This is just one of thousands of examples. Just listen to your radio on the way home and hear it.

Trinity Owasso (PCA) New Members Session 1

Documents

Transcript of Trinity Owasso (PCA) New Members Session 1