Last Updated on May 16, 2006 by pastor.rocklyn

As Christians we are part of God’s Kingdom. God expects us not only to represent His Kingdom, but to expand its borders. God has never depended on men and women reaching out to Him first. God has chosen to break into human history at numerous times, most significantly in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Touching People Where They Live

In Jesus God left His “home turf” to reach out to us and He expects His church to do the same — touching people where they live and walking with them in the issues that affect their lives. God cares about the full reality of people’s lives. If we are to faithfully represent Him, we must not pretend that this covers only a few pet church issues (e.g. homosexuality, abortion, school prayer).

God Cares About All Of It

At Life Church we are working to articulate what God is saying about a number of things:

Ground Rules

There are some basic principles that underlie our approach:

• We must love God with everything we have in us [1].
• We will always oppose any public policy that would restrict our ability to publicly proclaim the truth about God and to worship him [2].
• We must love our neighbors as ourselves. This must extend to the people who are affected by any policies that we advocate [3].
• God values our free will. The Church must therefore acknowledge and defend the free will of others in the policies that we advocate [4].
• We do not consider all of the Old Testament commands to be binding on Christians today. This is not because we want to “pick and choose” as binding only the scriptures we like. Rather it is because we understand that all of the requirements of the Old Testament Law have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ [5]. Therefore our understanding of what is required of us as Christians is drawn mostly from the New Testament. Nevertheless, the Old Testament does provide is with a rich source of revelation about behaviors that God approves and behaviors that God disapproves.

Come and join the discussion!

[1]Deuteronomy 6:5*; Matthew 22:37*. (back to ground rules)
[2]Matthew 10:27*; Mark 8:38*; Luke 9:60*; Acts 20:27*; Colossians 4:3-4*; 2 Timothy 1:8*; 2 Timothy 4:2*; 1 Peter 4:16*.(back to ground rules)
[3]Leviticus 19:18*; Matthew 19:19*; Matthew 22:39*; Romans 13:9*; Galatians 5:14*; James 2:8*. (back to ground rules)
[4]Acts 5:3-4*. (back to ground rules)
[5]Matthew 5:17-19*; Romans 3:20 – 5:5*; Galatians 2:11 – 4:12*; Ephesians 2:11-16*; Philippians 3:7-14*; Colossians 2:6-23*. (back to ground rules)