truth and belief

An idea is most powerfully shown to be true when its claims are proven under as many and diverse situations as possible. The gospel is most powerfully shown to be the truth when its claims are proven to be true in all situations.I won’t feel the need to invest in a company simply on the testimony of its enigmatic CEO. But if his accounts payable clerk, his chief strategist and his janitor all stand beside him and tell me, each in their own words, that their company is going to change the world, I just might re-consider my portfolio. The claims of Christ may seem plausible to me if I hear them to be true for a well-known orator, but they will be almost impossible to ignore if I hear them to be true for my Latino postman, my sister, the owner of my favorite restaurant, and the homeless man that I see everyday on my way to work. And here at last we come to the startling potential of a movement of believers in the city of Chicago.

If the gospel is true at all, it must be true in all situations. How better to spread the fame of Jesus than to live and speak the truth of the gospel where it is least likely to be adopted? Or has God stopped moving the in hearts of Ninevites? The tragic truth is that although the witness of the church has thrived in the large, educated cities of history for precisely the reasons mentioned above, uncloistered witnesses that boldly proclaim and live the whole gospel in the cities of today are few and far between.

We believe that the gospel is the truth. We believe that the same God who captivates the heart of the poor wage-laborer can captivate the heart of the wealthy cosmopolitan elite, for nothing is impossible for Him. His grace is sufficient to make the gospel’s fragrance a sweet aroma from Boystown to Humboldt Park to Kenwood to the Gold Coast. The Christ of God, the plumb line of true Jerusalem, the light that penetrates all darkness is building His city on a hill. We gather in Chicago by his grace to shine.