Broken sexuality

We were studying Romans together as a community last year and this past Sunday we jumped right back in. If your missed the gathering I would suggest that you listen to the podcast to get the full context but I will try to give a recap here on trademarks view on broken sexuality. First it might be helpful to define broken sexuality. In short, it’s when humanity (including you and me) take Gods design for sexuality and distort it. It’s everything from sex outside of marriage, porn, rape, homosexuality, perverted sex inside of marriage… At the core Paul reminds us that all broken sexuality is idolatry. When we exchange our worship for God (other) and worship the created (same). It’s idolatry. 

 Understanding the issue of broken sexuality in light of broken worship is foundational. As humans we express our broken worship through disordered love. God says to love him first, then love our neighbor as ourself, then we come in third. When we get this love out of order we love ourself first, or love others first before God. The bible calls disordered love sin. Sin is to miss the mark, the mark of Gods perfect holiness and love. 

The Bible says that all are sinners and all have missed the mark. The Bible also says that God loves his sinners and sent Jesus to die for our sin while we were still broken. In Romans 5 it says that God showed us his love by loving us when we were unloveable and in sin. 

 Broken sexuality is sin, disordered love. However, before we start to throw any stones we must first admit and repent of our own sin, our disordered love. At trademark we stand as broken people calling other broken people back to our good Father who loves without measure, to Jesus who became our sin so that we can be righteous in him and to the Spirit who lives in us and is now working to restore us to holistic  lives of worship. 

 As broken worshippers resulting in our own broken sexuality …we take this stance on broken sexuality:

Trademark’s view: 

 Design- God made humans, he decides what is the right use of our bodies and his design is one man, one woman for life = God’s image.                                                 

“a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2: 24). Here we have the first reference to biblically ordered sexuality.

 Heaven- you don’t go to heaven because you are a heterosexual therefore you don’t go to hell because you are a homosexual. Self-righteousness send you to hell.    

 Love- we love all people despite race, affiliation or behavior.

Jesus bent down to the woman caught in adultery-(John 8)

 Posture of Love not condemnation 

Jesus taught to love your neighbor as yourself- Good Samaritan (John 10)

 So as Jesus followers we follow him. We take the posture of Love and bend down beside those who find themselves in broken sexuality. We look at ourselves as well as other and admit where we have all missed the mark. With boldness and love we look to God to redeem our body, mind and spirit. We give thanks to God, and honor Him as our God. May we at trademark be the first to admit our brokenness and the first to stand with grace and truth  with those in our broken culture. 

the Kingdom is breaking in

This past Sunday we stopped to celebrate how the Kingdom of God is breaking into our lives and our communities. It was an exciting celebration and we continue to see God at work in our Valley. If you missed it grab the podcast and celebrate with us. If you have not been able to get plugged into a gospel community then now is a perfect time to join a community on mission for 2012. Go to the website and contact a community near you. http://tmboise.com/gospel-communities

A note about our GC’s: Our communities are focused on family living on mission together. Because of this they tend to be geagraphical and or based on a specific people group. Sometimes people are looking for a “christian support group” or “bible study club” but after spending just a little time with a GC you realize that is not our focus. We do live as family and do read the Bible together but the primary mission of each group is to be a family on mission. 

As we celebrated the Kingdom together last week we were encouraged to hear that God is on the move in our city and it was exciting to hear about people growing in their faith and people coming to faith in Jesus. Also on this past Sunday, Our family in Portland (bread and wine community wwwbreadandwine.org) also took the day to celebrate evidence of God’s grace and how the kingdom is breaking into their city. We are honored to be a part of the movement of God in us and through us all across the world. 

Luke 17:21- “The Kingdom of God is within you” 

Building + Orphanage?

We have an incredible opportunity to walk in Faith this year at Trademark. Historically, the church has been known for a lot of things…some good and others bad. But when we we look to the bible to see what the church should be, what we should be about and why we should gather… we see a few themes that occurs over and over. The Church: Blessed  to be a blessing,  gather to worship God, care about what God cares about…widows and orphans. So what if we could buy a building to gather in weekly and all the money we use to buy the building goes 100% to build an orphanage and plant churches? We think that would be an incredible expression of the church…on local mission with a global impact. Blessed to be a blessing!

So we find ourself in this situation: We want to bless others, take care of orphans, plant churches and have a place to gather weekly as Jesus people in Boise.

God has opened up the door for us to buy the building we are gathering in right now for 375K and all that money will go to start an orphanage in Zambia and plant a church! So we are going to push in, give sacrificially, pray like crazy and ask the church to step up and be the church. We know the task is big, we know that we don’t have the money… but that is where faith comes in. Jesus wants the mission to be too big for us to grasp, too big to imagine, too big for us… something that can only be done by Jesus.

We are asking all who love Jesus, all who love orphans, all who love Boise, all who love the church… to ask God to give them the money, the means or just the provision to be able to Give $1000 each towards the 375K goal. We are asking God to do big things in 2012 and use His church to do his mission. Will you join us?

2012 Challenge

In Jan 2012 we reset our mission at Trademark once again on our mission- to make disciples. We tried to put some handels on what it looks like to be a disciple and make disciples in our context. If you missed the past few weeks it might help to go to the website or iTunes and get the sermons that go with this Challenge so that you have some context. However, the short story is this… according to Mat 28 each follower of Jesus (disciple) is called to make disciples. Therefore we want to ask the people to do just that, intentionally disciple at least one person in the ways of Jesus this year. Also as disciples we are called to be a part of the local expression of the church and to follow Jesus with all that we have… time, energy and money. Since Trademark is trying to start an orphanage in Zambia and also buy our building this year (listen to podcast for more), we think it is reasonable that we all ask God to provide the means so that we all can give $1000 to the cause. Last but not least, according to Mat 28 we are all called to make disciples in all nations. How can we go if we don’t even have a passport? So get one (that is if you are a disciple of Jesus). This is not a new way of doing church, a new way of being religious… it’s just putting handles on what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus.

2012 Challenge (From mat 28)

1) disciple one person. (teach them to obey)

2) give $1000 to building. (Trust Jesus to build his church)

3) get your passport. (obey and be ready)

Sunday Gatherings

Gatherings- Why do we meet? Why do we go to church? 

At Trademark we believe that we don’t go to church but we are the church. However, we do think it’s important to be a “both and” church…. meaning that we meet from house to house and also have a public gathering. Our house to house gatherings are called Gospel communities. These communities are a family on mission together and they meet at least once a week for family time and/or the mission. So what about our public gatherings? Why do we gather on Sunday?

We gather on Sunday as “Jesus people”. We gather to celebrate Him, worship Him, fellowship as His people, Learn to walk in His ways, be encouraged to live like Him, remember Him and His grace (communion) and Learn to Be like Him (serving the body and taking discipling our Children.) In fact, we believe that those who care for the children at our gatherings might just be learning to be like Jesus in ways that a “sermon” could never teach. 

Some call Trademark: “unplugged”, “uncomfortable”, “messy”, “inclusive” or “Real”. To that we say yes. Yes that is intentional. We gather with intention… a gathering of real people that are following Jesus. We are an inclusive community that makes space for those that don’t yet believe or are checking out what life looks like living in the ways of Jesus. We are messy, not because of lack of order but because we don’t try to hid our brokenness. We often try to make it uncomfortable so that we are reminded that our gathering is not the main thing but it’s meant to encourage us to live a life or love and grace outside of the church building. Since one of the reasons we gather is to worship (not go to a concert) we often lead Jesus’ people in an unplugged way…trying to put the focus on Jesus, not us. 

Elders and Deacons

We are excited to put into order our servant leader team. We nominated Elders (Ben Scott, Luke Morscheck & Sharad Yadav) and Deacons (Ben Wickstrom, Mark Foster & Bart Cochran). These men are already serving in their roles and will be tested over the next few months. We will end the “training process” this summer and ordain them in their roles. Please pray for them as they lead you in Love and Grace. We encourage you to listen to the podcast on “elders and deacons” to find out more. 

I thank God for these men and their families and look forward to continue to walk with them as we serve our King Jesus and love His church well. 

Putting into order

At Trademark we get to plant the church once or twice a year. If you are part of the core (in a Gospel community) then you get to help us plant Trademark this year. Part of this is helping us to put into order the church in Boise. This January we are appointing Elders and Deacons to serve Jesus and his Church. We are taking the month of January to recast the vision of Trademark, update the body on where we are and what we feel God is leading us to do this year. We will be taking a sunday (Jan 22) to teach on Elders and Deacons and appoint these men by God’s grace. Then on sunday the 29th we will be teaching on “gatherings” and what are vision is for our public gatherings in 2012. On Feb 5th- We will have a “joint” gatheirng for all who call TM home (those in Boise, Meridian and Nampa). this will be a time for all the Gospel communities to share how the kingdom is growing in their community. We look forward to walking in the ways of Jesus with you in 2012 and ask that you join us as we join the mission of God in Boise and around the world.

Romans 1

We started teaching through the book of Romans this fall at our trademark sunday gatherings. We spent the first few weeks walking through the intro as we talked about the point of this letter, who wrote the letter, who was this letter written to. Then we unpacked the Gospel as being simple and complex according to verse 16-17. We tried to get through the first chapter before Dec but we didn’t finish it. So we will be picking up chapter 1 at verse 25 starting in Jan 2012. Feel free to check out some of the podcast on the trademark site (or trademark church on iTunes).

Here are a few links that might be helpful for your further study of Romans 1:18-25

G.O.S.P.E.L.- http://vimeo.com/20960385

Creation and Evolution -http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Keller_white_paper.pdf

Books on Creation and Evolution- http://theresurgence.com/2009/06/17/recommended-reading-creation-evolution-and-science