Forging Faithfulness

January 2021 marks three years from when we started Doxa Church. Our beginning was humble. We had twelve people gathering every week in my living room where we opened up the Scriptures to grow in our understanding of the Gospel and wrestle with what it means to be a local church.  Three years later, we are still devoted to the very same things. We still joyfully exist to fill every inch of the community with the Glory of God by helping people behold, obey, and be transformed by the Gospel of Jesus. By God’s grace, we will move into 2021 with even greater clarity and fervor. 

Our first sermon campaign of 2021 is entitled, “Forging Faithfulness”. Those two words joined together matter greatly to me and the future of Doxa Church. “Faithfulness” not only describes our Lord’s character repeated in the Scriptures [Numbers 23:19, Deuteronomy 7:9, Lamentations 3:23-24, Hebrews 10:23], but is a criteria for Gospel ministry carried out by Christ’s Church. We aspire to be a “faithful church”.

Sadly, that’s not a criteria that’s celebrated within American Christianity and Evangelicalism. The more common and popular terms would be “growing, successful, life-giving, and fruitful”. If the church is growing in numbers, conversions, covenant members, giving, Instagram likes, website views, and mercy ministry, then the church is “effective” or “successful”. It becomes evident that churches and pastors aspire to create and manufacture powerful religious experiences that draw the masses. What kind of Christian surfaces from the lights and the haze machine of those churches? A consumer Christian whose loyalty lasts only as long as the church can keep the hype. When the hype fades, the consumer Christian vanishes as quickly as the funds of a parent when their teen gets a driver’s license.  I’m not interested in being one of “those” churches because honestly there are too many of them already. 

We are aspiring to be a “faithful church”. We want to be a church that wins people with the very thing that shapes people, the Gospel. Author Jared Wilson articulates it this way, “Consumeristic values and pragmatic methodology will win consumers and pragmatists. If they aren’t won by the glory of Christ, they aren’t won to the glory of Christ.” The Gospel is the only agent powerful enough to dig deep and really change the human heart. A faithful church depends on the Gospel to produce the life change that will matter in eternity. To briefly and concisely communicate what I’m getting at is seen in Philippians 2:12-13.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

We are going to be “faithful” to workout our calling as a local church, while trusting God to work in us and through us to bring the “fruitfulness”. This happens over a period of time.

God is the Sovereign Blacksmith who makes and shapes His Church. Like a hammer in the hands of a blacksmith, God in His love and providence wields circumstances and trials to forge the Church into what will accomplish His mission upon the earth. He’s forging faithfulness in the life of Doxa Church. 

I look forward to seeing how the Master Forger shapes us into a faithful church in 2021. 

Soli Deo Gloria, 

Pastor Jeth