Why I’m Planting In Hunter’s Creek
Mark’s gospel letter opens with an emphatic declaration to all that the One whom John, the voice crying in the wilderness, taught of, the Messiah, is coming. Immediately, Jesus enters the scene. Divinity divinely wrapped in carefully designed skin. Mark skillfully chooses to make Jesus’ first words in His letter, equally missional and edifying;
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe.” (Mark 1:15)
Two years ago, I preached through Mark’s gospel to a church plant my family and I were replanting on the Coast of Florida. Mark’s gospel is a fast-paced, quickly-moving letter, emphasizing Jesus’ Kingdom establishment through determination and deed against the spiritual forces of evil and the Empire of Rome. This intense study of the letter changed me. It radicalized me. It formed in me a desire to see a realized genuine kingdom advancement that was spiritual AND physical in its liberation. It positioned me towards, in the words of the church planting Triple OG Doug Logan, “the least, the last, and the lost” in a way I had never before experienced. It cultivated a true and deep desire to see all people come to know Jesus. To see them, repent, believe, and be transformed. It developed a true conviction to see the plights of humanity: poverty, sickness, war, and grief as experiences in which the church should be intervening. Liberating its victims to God, for God, and through God, so that all peoples might know Him and be saved.
During His ministry, Jesus preached many things about the kingdom of God. For instance, He taught that the Kingdom was small like a mustard seed yet it grows and becomes the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree that even the birds of the earth find safety and warmth in it. This picture shows us that the kingdom of God grows. It doesn’t decline and once fully realized all creation can find security and preservation in its body. In a sermon to his disciples, Jesus described just to whom this kingdom He has ushered into the world belongs. He begins to describe not a person but a people. A people who possess hearts that have been completely and utterly transformed by Him. Poor in spirit, mourning with those who mourn, humble, thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure, peacemakers, persecuted, rejoicing. These characteristics are not found natively in any one person but in the person whom the Ghost of the Godhead has transformed by the grace of God through faith in Christ.
Jesus also taught that there is a world we’ve yet to experience because it too is being transformed in the establishment of the kingdom through its citizens. This process is not a prominent “there it is!” The transformation is happening among us right now! So people and the world are being wholly remade in Him. Where sin has broken and marred the view of God’s original garden-centered creation, he is now transforming people and the world into a New City where heaven and the earth are one.
But what does that have to do with church planting?
For me, church planting is all about Jesus. When the lost are saved, it’s all about Jesus. When the broken are restored, it’s all about Jesus. When the sick are healed, it’s all about Jesus. When the city is impacted by the quality and quantity of the Saints doing kingdom work, it’s all about Jesus. I, personally, have tasted and seen Jesus that was good. He has turned my life around to the uttermost. He has done the impossible by saving, redeeming, and restoring a wretch like me— and he’s still doing it! And so now, I join the Saints of old in the planting of churches to equip the Saint, save the lost, and serve the city. Praying, like Jesus did, “on earth as it is in heaven. In Orlando, as it is in heaven.