Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

146 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these require ments: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

e. Background and ethnicity are no longer obstacles to faith and spiritual maturity.

(1) Gal. 3.28 – There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (2) Col. 3.11 – Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

E. The visible display of the rule of God through the Church

1. As the people of the Resurrection, the Church of Christus Victor must concretely reveal through its worship, life, and service the tangible manifestations of the life of the Age to Come right here and now in the world today.

2. Supporting texts

a. We are the salt of the earth, and the light of the world, Matt. 5.13-16 – You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a