claypeck.com

Dear Grace Place Congregation,

Greetings! I hope you are enjoying summer and getting some time outdoors in the Colorado sunshine. This year the Fourth of July falls on Sunday, so we are going to have a Freedom Celebration together at the Fairgrounds Park in Loveland. We will have one worship service on July 4 at 10:30 AM. There will be no worship services on Thursday or Sunday in Berthoud July 1 and 4, but you are still invited to come on Thursday, July 1, for a CD release concert by Tom Ewing and an all-star band he has put together for the occasion ($8 for tickets).

It sounds like around 30 people are already signed up to be baptized as a part of our freedom celebration. I can’t think of a better anniversary date for a baptism than the Fourth of July—always celebrating the anniversary of both national freedom and personal freedom in Christ the same day each year! It’s not too late to be a part of the baptism. You can register online or make a decision on the spot at the end of the message (children must meet with leaders and parents previously). If you’re planning to be baptized, just wear clothes that you don’t mind getting wet in and bring a bag with a towel and extra clothes to change in to.

Plan to stay for a picnic lunch. If you have not signed up to bring anything yet, consider bringing a dessert. The rest will be provided. There will be activities for children from 1:00-2:00 PM. Bring bathing suits for your kids if they want to play in the water park. Also, our children’s ministry leaders are asking parents to go online and pre-register their kids for the children’s program that will happen during the morning worship service (in order to save time at check in). This is for security and safety measures.

Whenever we do church in the park it is an excellent opportunity to invite friends and neighbors. It is easier to show up at a park with friends and stay for a picnic then to visit a strange church building for the first time—less intimidating. So take advantage of this strategic invite opportunity and bring someone along! The sun could be a bit intense, depending on where you sit, so bring hats, sunscreen, and water along with lawn chairs/ blankets to sit on for lunch (or in case the bleachers get full). And don’t forget to bring your offerings (this is a real church service!).

Speaking of giving, many of us are finding online giving the easiest way to set a regular giving plan and it helps us give consistently even we are out of town and miss church. I want to thank those of you who faithfully give to the Lord through Grace Place. As of the end of May our giving was 5% under budget, but we have managed to keep expenses below income. So far we are over budget for the first three weeks of June. We’re hoping this is a forecast of what summer will be like and that we will not see a summer slump this year!

I also want to thank you for your generosity as a congregation over and above your regular giving. A few months ago we took a special offering to help rebuild a church in Haiti destroyed by the earthquake. I thought maybe a couple thousand dollars would come in and was so proud of our congregation when we were able to send a check for $7291 to Churches Helping Churches. If you want to follow the journey of your contributions, you can track the blog posts at www.ChurchesHelpingChurches.com. Also, we recently invited the congregation to contribute toward a goal of $2500 to help Rodolfo and Irene Alcazar launch Celebrate Recovery in Mexico City with the goal of planting a new Grace Place church there as well. More than the goal came in and we were able to give $2750 in start up funds for a new C.R. in Mexico. The missions team also approved a small monthly stipend. You can become friends with Rodolfo on Facebook if you want to follow the progress. On July 25 we will be taking another special offering to assist our local Celebrate Recovery ministry. The money will help fund the ministry for the next 12 months including paying for newcomer’s meals and leadership training.

If you are a leader in the church, in business, or some other realm, you are invited to join the Grace Place staff team at the annual Willow Creek Leadership Summit, August 5-6, broadcast live at Crossroads Church in Loveland. This is a life-changing event! Speakers this year include Bill Hybels, Jim Collins, T.D. Jakes, Jack Welch, Andy Stanley, Tony Dungy, and other top quality leaders. Contact the office for more details. Our next Leading Matters event for Grace Place leaders is scheduled for August 28.

It has been invigorating to hear and see the many positive responses to the challenge to serve the hurting, helpless, homeless, and hungry during the “Comfortably Numb” series. We have only begun to unpack the Grace Place core value of Giving Our Life Away. After a few stand alone messages in July, I will be doing a five-part series in August on idols that keep us from giving our lives away (such as money, sex, power, success, even family—all good things that become idols when they become ultimate things), and how the gospel can expose and destroy them. Then I’m looking forward to teaching verse-by-verse through the New Testament book of Philippians this fall.

On a personal note, I would like to request your prayers once again this summer as I will be taking some time to continue writing my doctoral dissertation. It has been a long process, but I believe I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. The final phase of the project is to analyze and compare the results of the two Spiritual Life Surveys we participated in as a congregation. So far I’m seeing very encouraging improvements in congregational satisfaction and spiritual growth. I’ll be telling you more about that later.

It is a joy and privilege to serve you as pastor!

In Christ Alone,

Clay Peck

P.S. Selene and I scheduled a trip to Israel during spring break (for Thompson Valley School District) next year because a number of people who missed the last trip have been asking us to lead another Holy Land adventure. We really need all of you who are planning to go with us to go online right away and get your deposits in. There is a link on the GP website or you can go directly to www.inspirationcruises.com/gp. This is the trip of a lifetime. If you are interested and there is anyway you can make it work, sign up soon! Let us know if you have questions.

A wise pastor and mentor once said to me, “Clay, the gospel is like a beautiful diamond…just keep holding it up and turning it different directions so that the light will shine off it… and people will be inspired and transformed by it.”

In addition to those who are inspired and transformed, there are two other responses to the gospel that always occur.

Romans 6 begins with a question:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? (Romans 6:1)

Now, why would Paul feel it necessary to raise such a question as that?  It’s because he had learned that preaching the gospel was risky. Whoever takes a stand for the gospel gets shot at from two sides: from the grace opposers and the grace abusers.

The grace opposers are long-faced legalists who are all about rules and regulations.  They don’t want to hear anything about grace because their emphasis is works, works, works… “Hiho, hiho, it’s off to work we go!” Paul encountered plenty of grace opposers (the book of Galatians written to those folks)…and they’re still around today.

At the other extreme are grace abusers. Wherever grace is preached there will be some who determine that since their acceptance with God is not based on their behavior, then it doesn’t matter how they behave!  Party on!!  The attitude is — “Who cares if we sin, God will forgive and forget.”

Preaching the gospel is risky because it flushes out grace opposers (and they can be mean. And then there will be some grace abusers who cast reproach on the gospel by their careless attitude and actions. But just because it’s risky, didn’t stop Paul from preaching it or lead him to water it down one bit!

The word “gospel” means good news.  How good is the good news? It is so good that when it is preached clearly and consistently there will be some who use it as an excuse for sin.

In fact:  If no one is taking it to an extreme than we aren’t preaching and teaching the gospel clear enough! The fact that some take it to an unwise extreme is proof that we are presenting the true grace of God.

The late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones states this startling truth with clarity.  Keep in mind that Martin Lloyd-Jones was a respected, conservative, British pastor and evangelical theologian.  As pastor of the Westminster Chapel for decades, he spent twelve years teaching through the book of Romans.   This guy was about as far from being a liberal as you can get.  But listen to what he wrote concerning Paul’s question at the beginning of Romans 6: “… Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”

“The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it.  There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will rebound all the more to the glory of grace.

“That is a very good test of gospel preaching.  If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.  Let me show you what I mean.

“If a man preaches justification by works, no one would ever raise this question.  If a man’s preaching is, ‘If you want to be Christians, and if you want to go to heaven, you must stop committing sins, you must take up good works, and if you do so regularly and constantly, and do not fail to keep on at it, you will make yourselves Christians, you will reconcile yourselves to God, and you will go to heaven.’ Obviously a man who preaches in that strain would never be liable to this misunderstanding.  Nobody would say to such a man, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’, because the man’s whole emphasis is just this, that if you go on sinning you are certain to be damned, and only if you stop sinning can you save yourselves.  So that misunderstanding could never arise….

“…Nobody has ever brought this charge against the Church of Rome, but it was brought frequently against Martin Luther; indeed that was precisely what the Church of Rome said about the preaching of Martin Luther.  They said, ‘This man who was a priest has changed the doctrine in order to justify his own marriage and his own lust’, and so on….  That is the very charge they brought against him.  It was also brought against George Whitefield two hundred years ago.  It is the charge that formal dead Christianity — if there is such a thing — has always brought against this startling, staggering message, that God ‘justifies the ungodly’….

“I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you really are preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God.  There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.” (Romans: The New Man, An Exposition of Chapter 6, pp. 8-9).

Did you get the powerful point he was making?  Why did Paul have to answer the charge, “Are you saying we can sin all we want?”  Because he preached the Gospel of Grace with such clarity.  If no one ever raises that question, or takes it to an extreme, we aren’t presenting it hard enough or strong enough.

Please don’t misunderstand me—I’m not encouraging anyone to become a grace abuser.  I echo Paul’s sentiments “By no means!”  “God forbid!” “Of course not!”  A Christian who adopts a flippant, “who cares” attitude about sin is either sadly deluded or driven by the flesh—perhaps not genuinely converted.

But the good news is so good that some will choose to abuse the freedom it offers.  Nevertheless, we must never back away from declaring the gospel

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes… (Romans 1:16)