Truth, Beauty, Community

6 · A brief prophetic assertion that successfully embodying truth and beauty in community will make the church rare and distinctive in the contemporary landscape

Because, I mean, to be sure, if we manage to pull this off, we're going to be one of the few places that do.

7 · An analogy from improvisational music (Grateful Dead and similar bands) illustrating that the value lies in aspiring to transcendent excellence even when execution is inconsistent—the occasional sublime moment justifies the pursuit

You know, some of my favorite bands are rich in improvisational culture, and you guys would hate them, like most of you would hate them. I know this, my children hate my music. But the deal about these bands is that they're rich in improvisational culture, which means that about half the time they sound bad because they literally get up on stage and they run through a song they know really well but a completely different arrangement and different focus, and they're practicing different rhythms and playing in different keys and so on and so forth. And yet these bands which have this commitment to improvisation, they have the deepest following, the most multigenerational following. You know, you've heard of the phrase 'deadhead.' That's what I'm talking about here. And what's going on there is not that they're pulling it off consistently, but they're aspiring to something that they hit every once in a while, and when they hit it, it's far better than mere playing the notes right. Can be. They find this transcendent other level, not often, but when they find it, it's like golf. I will hit 3 good golf shots, you know, every 3 years, but it's enough because it's such a sublime experience.

8 · The unit applies the improvisational analogy to the church's pursuit of truth and beauty, establishing that the aspiration itself—even when imperfectly executed—will make the church distinctive, though distinctiveness is not the ultimate goal

And so when I talk about aspiring to being truth and beauty and community. I'm talking about aspiring to something that's very difficult. I'm talking about aspiring to something that is wrought with complications and questions. What I'm saying is we don't have to always nail it. We won't. But simply in the pursuit of this union of truth and beauty and community, let me tell you, we're going to stand out. And that's good for the reasons I will present in a moment. I don't merely want to stand out for the purpose of standing out.

9 · A structural transition announcing a shift from theological foundation to practical implications, establishing that 'house of the Lord' legitimately refers to the local church and previewing five implications to follow

Let me give you 5 implications to what David is saying here if we take it seriously, that the house of the Lord means many things. It means Jesus, it means the gathering of the saints, but it also can mean a local church. There's nothing wrong with that interpretation or application. That the house of the Lord should be a place where beauty can be gazed upon and truth can be inquired of. Let me give you 5 kind of implications to that.

10 · The first implication establishes the theological framework of general and special revelation, arguing that God reveals himself both through Scripture (truth) and through creation (beauty), and that the church should honor both modes of divine self-disclosure

One of the things that means is that we're embracing both books of Revelation. Like, I don't think there are 2 books of Revelation, Chris. I think the end of the Revelation says you're not supposed to add a second book. No, I'm talking about a theological concept. That people talk about, theologians talk about, God has written or revealed himself in two books. And the one book is special, perfect revelation, which is the Scriptures, and the other book is what they call general revelation, which is the created world. So in some respects, God communicates himself to us both through his perfect, inerrant authoritative, sufficient scriptures, and also through, like, trees and paint and shirts and dinners. And that God is revealing and has always revealed himself in both ways, both through truth and beauty.

11 · The biblical story of Esther illustrates the proper relationship between beauty and truth: beauty serves as an entrance point that draws people in, but truth is ultimate

Now, I would tell you that a good example of what I'm thinking about when I'm talking about Embracing beauty, committed to truth. One of the ways I would explain what that looks like is I would look— I would bring Esther up on stage and I would say, what— why was Esther able to have an audience before the king? Because beauty gets you in the door. And communicate certain things to everyone, but that beauty can't be ultimate. So the amazing thing about Esther's story is she invests herself in beautification, right, of the body, while being willing all the while to let it all burn. You get that? Like, she beautified her body But that beauty wasn't considered to be ultimate. It was considered to be an entrance point into a deeper subject. And that's what God does through creation. He creates a beautiful world. He speaks His divine attributes to every human through their senses, through their reason. And then as He draws them in and clarifies that He exists and that He is good, He brings them into the second book.

12 · The unit applies the Esther illustration to ecclesiology, asserting the church should pursue beauty instrumentally (to gain audience) while maintaining beauty's subordination to truth, never equating general revelation with Scripture's authority

The Scriptures and gives a perfect, inspired, clear explanation of who He is. A church should have— church should be Esther. A church should pursue beauty, but not as an end to itself. As a means by which you gain an audience, and also as something which you would give up and lay down to be destroyed if that becomes necessary. Don't go thinking that truth and beauty are held in essentially the same, or that general revelation and God's communication through creation is equivalent to or as good as God's communication to us through the Scriptures. That is not what we're saying here, but we are saying that God does speak through both places.

13 · The second major implication identifies three cultural errors this vision corrects, beginning with individualism: truth and beauty in community requires diverse gifts working together, making the body metaphor functionally necessary rather than theoretically nice

Number 2: Errors corrected. I think that moving a church's identity toward truth and beauty and community has a way of dealing with 3 particular errors that are common within our culture and may be just common, period. The first one would be individualism. When you aspire to the the union of diverse excellencies, when you aspire to do truth and beauty together, you need more than you. The whole implication of truth and beauty in community is that there's a whole group of people working together, some of which have a special bent toward logic and rationalism, and others which have a special bent toward aesthetics and beauty. And they work together to communicate the glories of God in a way that David is describing in Psalm 27:4, where he can gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and he can inquire in his temple.

14 · The unit addresses the second error (subjectivism), asserting that the church's commitment to truth directly confronts the cultural claim that truth is multiple, relative, or unattainable, taking a stand for objective truth grounded in all of Scripture

So there's the error of individualism that says like your whole existence as a Christian is sort of just the sum of who you are and what you stand before God. And of course we would say no, not true. Your identity as a believer in Jesus is tied really deeply into the local body in which you serve. The second error is subjectivism, which is, you know, we've talked about this a lot, we'll continue to talk about this more, but one of the massive errors we see consistently is just the idea that there are many truths, or that objective truth itself is impossible to perceive or attain. Or that your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. So when we talk about truth and beauty in community, we really are putting our foot down and saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, there is such a thing as truth. It's not as slippery as you think it is. And we're gonna take a stand for all of Scripture and all of its implications.

15 · The exposition establishes the exegetical question underlying the third error (austerity): Does the Old Testament emphasis on physical beauty in worship continue into the New Testament, or was it entirely replaced by spiritual/informational worship when Christ became the true temple?

The third error is austerity, and I'm gonna speak more about this one. The question that you might want to ask as you're looking at Psalm 27:4 is, is the beauty that David is beholding physical beauty? Or is David merely talking about some spiritual notion, some interior heart notion of beholding God's beauty? Is the beauty that he's describing non-material, is his beholding of it non-material, or is David talking about beholding physical beauty? Well, the Old Testament structure for worship involved a great deal of attention to physical beauty and ornamentation. Repeatedly, you see the artists within that people of God being employed to create things that God routinely says for beauty and for glory. And so the Old Testament system of worship is exceedingly rich in physical beauty. Question becomes, does that all get jettisoned when Jesus comes as the one true temple? Does all of the materiality with which God speaks to his people get jettisoned and we just stand in a black room with a Bible, and all of the beauty we behold at that point becomes informational? Or does God plan to, as a general rule, continue to incorporate physical beauty, the arts, into New Testament worship? That's like a really big question.

16 · A historical example from the Reformation illustrating how Protestant iconoclasm—the tearing down and whitewashing of Catholic ornamentation—initiated a trajectory in Reformed theology away from physical beauty in worship spaces, moving toward increasing austerity

So the term iconoclast is a really interesting term. It comes about through the Reformation, and you've got this thing happening where, of course, the Catholic Church up until the 1500s is just, and still is, excessively ornamental. As is the Eastern Orthodox Church. And these churches are just like full of stuff, you know? It looks like a thrift shop in there, but with a lot more gold. And you've got the icons, and you've got images, and you've got symbols everywhere. I mean, just go to a cathedral. The very layout of a cathedral is a cross. Like the whole thing is physicality communicating theological truth. And then you get to the Reformation, and there's a reaction to— some of which was positive and some of which wasn't— there's a reaction to all of the ornamentation of the worship space. And they begin to tear down the icons. And that's what an iconoclast is. It's someone who would go into a Catholic church after the Catholic church was taken over by good Reformed people and good Reformed people, and they would tear all that stuff down, and they loved it, and it was their passion, and so they were called iconoclasts. And one of the things that they would do is they would take over these worship spaces, and they would be like, okay, we really don't want our people looking at a picture of St. Thomas holding his own head. The pictures were weird, I mean, let's just grant that. Some weird stuff going on there. The Reformers, Winglies, like, well, I don't really want reformed worshipers to be looking at this picture, and so what do we do? Well, they actually hired whitewashers to come in, and they would get these enormous troughs of whitewash paint, which is kind of a low-quality paint, you know, and they would just throw that stuff up on everything, on all the surfaces. And so then you walk into a church, and it's still a cathedral— by the way, a cathedral took thousands of years to build, right? It's still It's still ornamental because structurally it is ornamental, but now everything's white. And from that point on, the trajectory of Reformed theology keeps moving away from the arts, and it keeps moving away from beautification of the worship space.

17 · A personal testimony acknowledging the pastor's shift from supporting Reformed austerity to believing the church must recover from excessive austerity, recognizing the need to hold truth and beauty in tension rather than abandoning beauty entirely

Now, I think that there's a decent chunk of my life when I thought as it should be, as it should be. I no longer believe that's true. I believe that there will always be a tension between a truthiness, an informational kind of Christianity that doesn't really pay attention to beauty. There'll be a tension between that and there'll be a tension with an ornamental, artistic, overly adorned, high beauty, low truth kind of expression of worship. And I believe that we have to recover some of our bent toward austerity that is not actually informed by the Scriptures.

18 · A cultural observation contrasting Generation X's pride in anti-ornamentation (leading to cafetorium worship) with Millennials' greater attention to beauty, exposing how pious-sounding theology ('the church is the people, not the building') was used to spiritually one-up those who valued beauty

Guys, I'm Generation X, like, we took pride— Brian and I were talking about We took pride in how little we cared about ornamentation. You know, look at the difference between a Generation X wedding and a Millennial wedding. Like, it's a massive difference. Generation X Christians, and Boomer Christians to some extent, were the ones that led us out of permanent church buildings and into the local elementary school's cafetorium. And we thought, well, and we would use all the very pious sounding reason, right? We would talk about, well, the church isn't the building, the church is the people, and so forth and so forth. It's like, okay, that makes me sound like I'm very spiritual. It makes anyone else who needs something beautiful, artistic to draw them to God sound very, very inferior.

19 · A direct theological assertion challenging the cafetorium model, claiming God intends for his people to worship in beautiful physical spaces when possible, and that tangible beauty is an important element of worship

I don't believe that God built us to find the truest expression of corporate worship in a cafeteria. I actually do believe that in an ultimate expression of Christianity, in a moment in time when it is possible, we should be building beautiful things to worship in, and that that piece of the puzzle is important. It is important to be able to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in some tangible way.

20 · The unit exposes the logical contradiction in the information-only model of church: if worship is merely content delivery, online sermons make physical gathering obsolete

Now, all the guys that were pro-cafegemitorium, they got us all worshiping in these, you know, these schools and stuff because the building doesn't matter and so on and so forth, and we're all about the mission. Yeah, they sound super militant and pious when they say that. By the way, there are times when that is the appropriate choice. But what's been very interesting is that they would tell you that church is essentially information delivery system, that what's happening right now, sermon, is the foundational piece of the service, which I agree with, but they would treat church as primarily the downloading of information from one person to another person or to a group of people. So they were telling us, let's go meet in our cafeteria auditoriums. And I'm, I'm impressed by how easily I say that. Uh, let's go meet in our cafeteria auditoriums and thank you. And, uh, and, uh, and we'll give you information and then we'll depart from here. But, but something very interesting has happened. You can go online now and get a better sermon than this right now, and you could get one for each day of the week or two for each day of the week and so on and so forth. So the basic plan to give you information, that's entirely decentralized now, and you can get a lot of information, good information about Jesus, about the Bible all over the place. And now people are saying, 'Well, I don't know that we even need to physically gather.' Why? Why do they say that? Well, one of the reasons they say that is because they're taking the logical conclusion of what the Caffe Gemmatorium people are saying all along, and that is, if content is the goal, I don't need to assemble to get content. And so now the Caffe Gemmatorium guys are like, 'Hold on a minute, I didn't mean that.' You need to be physically gathering. And the question is, why? If all that's happening is content delivery, why do we need to gather? If it's not to invoke truth and beauty in community in a physical way, if it's not to communicate the glory of God, if that's not why we're gathering, then why do we need to gather together?

21 · The unit synthesizes the austerity critique, asserting that severing beauty from truth damages community and leads to isolated Netflix-style consumption rather than corporate worship

The truth is, is that the gathering of the saints is an expression, as David says in this passage, is an expression of both/and. It's the expression not only of things to inquire about, but beauty to gaze upon. And that the whole challenge right now, of course, is like, we could all be home watching a church service online, and the question is, what are you missing if you do that? And the answer has to be, in some regard, you're missing an experience of the true and beautiful God. So our jettisoning of all of the stuff, like not caring about a stain on our roof and like the whole like, it's okay, it's the mission, it's not about the building, we're moving ourselves into the place, if we continue on that line of logic, where we will all be in computer chairs watching church on TV. And we won't all do it at 10 AM in the morning. We'll do it like we do Netflix and we'll do it each in our own individual time. We're moving away from community. And that's the thing. Is when you try to pull beauty away from truth, I think you actually damage community in the end. So that's one of the three errors that this is seeking to address. The error of individualism, the error of subjectivism, and the error of austerity. And I want to be clear, like if we get in a place where The persecution's coming in hot, we all need to meet in a cave, we'll meet in that cave. But somebody, Sadie, you're gonna paint something on that cave wall. Like, we don't have to have it, but if we can have it, we should, because it communicates something about God.

22 · The third major implication establishes that truth and beauty in community works as a unified vision across all spheres of life—church, home, work, friendships—preventing the fragmentation of having different visions for different contexts and allowing each sphere to strengthen the others

Number 3, the third reason why I think this is the right vision for us. This church is an exceedingly relational church. And one of the things that my wife and I have always aspired to in doing ministry is we never want to call people to a vision in the church that doesn't kind of happen in a way that also allows them to fulfill their responsibilities outside of the church. I don't want you to have one vision for your church and one vision for your home. And Truth and Beauty and Community is a wonderful vision for your home. I dare say, and this is wildly stereotypical and painting with a broad brush, I dare say there are little fragments of gender roles in that statement, truth and beauty and community, but you could just say, okay, Boomer, that's ridiculous, but I think there might be something there. The point is that this vision of having truth and beauty and community will work in your homes and it will work in your friendships. It can be a guiding vision for every layer of your life. This can be the plaque that you have on your desk at work. This can be the plaque you have on your wall in the kitchen. The aspiration to be both deeply grounded in objective truth, resisting all of the pull into subjectivism, while also like really interested in excellence and beauty and glory. So that's the third idea, that every one of your tiers of responsibilities, whether it be within the church or your home or in friendships, it all gets harmonized with this idea that let's aspire in all of these different spheres toward the same vision. And the cool thing about that is, is that you can You can bless your church by having a truth and beauty home. And you can bless your home by having a truth and beauty church. And it all kind of integrates and works. And your friendships, by the way, just your friendships get completely redefined if you have— some of us have very truth-oriented friendships and some of us have very beauty-oriented friendships. And man, if it just says, no, this is the whole vision for my friendship. I want it to be truth and beauty.

23 · The fourth implication grounds truth and beauty in community in Trinitarian theology, asserting that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit already exist in this pattern, and the church's pursuit of it means participating in the divine community itself

Number 4: the Trinity is truth and beauty in community. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existing in honor and love is truth and beauty in community. So what we're doing is we're integrating our vision as a local community into the ultimate community, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Puritans used to say, 'All truth meets at the top.' And what they're saying is, is like, you need to test stuff by whether or not it applies in the Godhead. And man, we're so blessed to be called into participation of this divine regard for one another within the Father and the Son. G.K. Chesterton said, God is not a symbol of goodness. Goodness is a symbol of God. So everything we're talking about here is just kind of getting on the same page and playing from the same sheet music that the very the founder and creator of the universe, placed from the Trinity, the Godhead, the maker of all things, is truth and beauty in community. I've been spending a lot of time in John 17, and Jesus says in verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. And so this idea that we would get to participate in a truth and beauty community is beautiful because it's bringing us into the very throne room of God where the Father adores the Son and the Son adores the Father, which is— that's the whole key of the gospel, is God's regard for God.

24 · The fifth implication draws on Edwards and Calvin to establish that Christ himself embodies seemingly contradictory excellencies in perfect union (truth and grace, holiness and mercy, prophet-priest-king), and the church's pursuit of truth and beauty in community reflects this same pattern of diverse excellencies unified

Number 5: Diverse excellencies on display. So a number of weeks ago, we looked at Jonathan Edwards, his discussion of an admirable conjunction of divine excellencies. And then a couple weeks after that, we looked at John Calvin as he described the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. Again, essentially the same idea. Edwards is getting at this idea that Jesus' excellencies are seemingly divergent, and you've got like truth and grace and things like that, and holiness and mercy, and yet in Christ they seem like they wouldn't work together at all, but in Christ they are one. And that's really what Calvin's getting at as well when he talks about the prophet, priest, and king. You've got these three basic kind of leadership roles that kind of order and care for creation. And Calvin saw that Jesus is all three of those things, and that all three of those offices and all three of those, if you will, personality types all point to the one Jesus who is the prophet-king and the priestly prophet. And you get the point. Like, over and over again, you'll find these theologians at their most worshipful when they arrive to this moment, when they see that God is all of the good stuff. Not that he just has the good stuff, but it's all him. And that our understanding of these things seem divergent because we're broken. But when you go to the top and you see all the truth at the top, you see Jesus is all of this.

25 · The unit adds Augustine to the theological lineage establishing diverse excellencies, quoting extensively from Confessions to show Augustine's worship centered on God's union of seemingly contradictory attributes, demonstrating this has been a central focus of Christian theology across centuries

So I gave you— I'm doing the Mount Rushmore accidentally. I didn't mean to do this, but I'm doing the Mount Rushmore of theologians. So I gave you Edwards. The way he describes that is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies. And then I gave you Calvin, and his description of this is the threefold office. Let me give you Augustine. The only guy whose first name isn't John on the list. Listen to how he begins what I think is the best thing ever written outside the Bible The Confessions by Augustine, 397 AD or so. Listen to how he begins. What are You then, my God? What but the Lord God? For who is the Lord but the Lord? And who is God save our God Most High? Most good. Most potent. Most omnipotent. Most merciful, yet most just. Most hidden, yet most present. Most beautiful, yet most strong. Stable, yet incomprehensible. Unchangeable, yet all-changing. Never new, never old. All-renewing and bringing age upon the proud. Ever working, ever at rest. Still gathering, yet lacking nothing. Supporting, filling, overspreading, creating, nourishing, and maturing. Seeking, yet having all things. You love without sensuality. You are jealous without anxiety. Angry, yet serene. Your purpose unchanged. You find what you never lost. Never in need, yet rejoicing in gains. Never covetous, but demanding service. You pay debts but owe nothing, and you forgive debts and lose nothing. You've got Calvin in the 1700s, you've got Edwards in the 1700s, Calvin in the 1500s, you got Augustine 300 years-ish, 400 years-ish after the birth of Christ. Everybody is gazing upon the same idea And that is, is that God is so attractive and praiseworthy because he is this perfect assimilation of all goodness.

26 · The unit asserts the church's identity as 'the thing which should not be'—the impossible union of diverse excellencies like Christ himself (resurrected body, tender-hearted king, courageous servant)

Got them captivated by the diverse excellencies of Christ, and that's the church's purpose. That's what we get to be. We get to be the thing which should not be. I don't think that's a good brochure line, but I like it. We get to be the thing which should not be. You know what a thing is that should not be? It's a resurrected body. It's the thing that should not be. It's a tender-hearted king. It's a thing that should not be. It's a courageous servant. It's a thing that should not be. Like, it's Jesus In the form of God, considering equality with God not something to be grasped, taking the form of a servant and allowing himself to die on the cross. It's the thing that should not be. And we get to be that thing which should not be. If you were looking for one line of the church's 2,000-year strategy for growth and goodness and disciple-making, if you were looking for one word, it would be surprise. It's real! Truth and beauty in community is just one way of describing the diverse excellencies of God at what kind of feel like culturally fountainheads of truth and beauty. We get to be the manifestation of diverse excellencies, to be the thing which should not be. David is looking for that one place where the beauty of God can be beheld and the truth of God can be inquired upon. And I don't think it's a massive theological overstretched. I think we're losing our footing and our confidence to say the local church is supposed to be that place. And we keep settling and we keep selling ourselves short. We keep letting other people define us and saying that's too big or too dangerous or too wrought with complications. And we're just barely hanging on.

27 · A direct pastoral charge calling the church to shift from survival mode to multiplication, from defense to offense, with the pastor vulnerably acknowledging he has the most to lose in making this pivot but asserting it must happen

Can we move as a local church from a sense of survival to a sense of multiplication? Can we move from playing defense to playing offense? Well, we need to. That's the deal. There's really no other option. Friends, there's a guy named J.D. Greer who said that a church that has abandoned its mission is not a church. It is simply a group of disobedient Christians hanging out. Nobody has more to lose by pivoting from survival and sustaining to aggressive offense than I do. That's where we need to be.

28 · The unit asserts that truth and beauty are foundational categories deeply embedded in human civilization and consciousness, not superficial or modern inventions, making the church's pursuit of both a fundamental human and theological necessity

Positive vision to become and grow into what we know will be difficult but is our calling, to show the improbable excellencies of Jesus within the context of the physical community. These categories of truth and beauty run very very deep within our civilization. Very deep. These are things that are at the bedrock of our values as human beings.

29 · A historical-cultural illustration from Greek mythology showing how pagan thought separated truth (Apollo/Stoics) from beauty (Dionysus/Epicureans) into competing systems, with generations and cultures swinging between them, unable to hold both together

In the Greek world, these two systems of truth and beauty were in some ways— this all gets very messy because mythology is very messy— But they were represented in some ways by the two sons of Zeus. You had Apollo, who represented logic and order and intellect. And you had Dionysius, who represented— he was the god of wine, a god of pleasure and festivity. And of course you had two schools of thought. And this seems to be the case when humans try to figure stuff out on their own. We can only ever get one and not the other. The two schools of thought that kind of had connections to this. And you had the Epicureans who were focused on the wine and the pleasure, and that's the home network, you know. And you've got that, and then you've got the Stoics who were very, you know, Apollonian in their thinking, very logic. And you always had to get one or the other. You know, this was just the way that you thought things had to be. Zeus has two sons, which one are you going to follow? You can't be friends with both of them kind of a deal. And generations tend to follow one or the other. Xers are very stoic and very Apollo-ish, and Millennials are very Epicurean. If you were a Millennial and you came to my wedding, you'd be like, where's the candy bar? And where are the ice cream cones with six different sprinkles? So on and so forth. You know, just very different culturally perspective on these things. And, you know, people just kind of have to— they wind up choosing one or the other, and cultures kind of move in that way.

30 · The unit shows how John's Gospel would have shocked Greek readers by presenting Jesus as both Logos (Apollonian truth/order) and wine-maker (Dionysian festivity/beauty), categories Greeks thought mutually exclusive, demonstrating Christ as the impossible union that breaks pagan categories

So imagine being a Greek guy or Greek gal and you're reading the Gospel of John, and you get to the first chapter and read that Jesus is the Logos, and you say, fine, he's Apollo. He's reasonable and orderly, and he's bringing order out of chaos. It's the logos, it's that idea. And then you get to chapter 4 and the same guy turns water into wine so that a party can keep going. And that's quintessentially Dionysian. And if you're a Greek guy or gal, your head explodes, which I thought would be another good line for the church brochure: the church that makes people's heads explode. But you just don't have categories for Jesus. You don't get the possibility that all of that could be one.

31 · The exposition of John 1:14 establishes the biblical-theological foundation: John explicitly presents Jesus as 'full of grace and truth,' which a Greek reader would understand as beauty and truth unified

And you see it in Jesus. But of course, in John 1:14, John lays this out. He foreshadows it. He says in John 1:14, 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.' glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And if you're Greek, you read the word grace as beauty. That's the whole idea there. And so in John, the first chapter of John, when he's outlining this is why Jesus is so amazing, he says Jesus is the fullness of truth and beauty. That's what we want to be. We want to be the reflection of the fullness of Jesus. We want to be a surprise, just like Jesus is a surprise, that this sort of thing can be, or that there's a group of crazy people who still believe all of the really hard parts of the Bible and also still like beauty. And like theater and like concerts and— whoa, you guys are weird. That's truth and beauty in community. And this is sort of the first sampling of what we'll talk about throughout the year.

32 · A structural transition signaling the shift from theological exposition to practical application, indicating concrete programs and practices will follow

But let me give you some application points in order to bring this sort of thing into fruition. We're gonna do a few things this year.

33 · The first application establishes invitation as the central evangelistic strategy flowing from truth and beauty in community: the church builds itself as a display of Christ's glory and then invites outsiders in to experience the surprising reality

Within this context of truth and beauty, you've got the idea that we're really building ourselves to display. We're building ourselves to display the glory of Jesus. And of course, as I said before, this is also what we want to do. We want to build our homes this way, and we want to build our friendships this way. So we want all of our relationships to sort of look like truth and beauty in community. And that means that invitation becomes a central piece of what it means to share Jesus with others. What we're doing is we're inviting people into the context in which truth and beauty are existing, and we're saying, 'Surprise!' It's real. Jesus is real. Look how glorious he is, and he's having an actual architectural, cultural effect on this place and these people and this home and so forth. So fundamentally, one basic tactic, one thing we've got to move toward and embrace is the art of invitation. We've got to see Inviting others into those community contexts, inviting them to church, inviting them to events, inviting them into our homes. We've got to see that this is sort of the outreach orientation of why we would even try to be truth and beauty in community. We're, we're, we're aspiring to reflect Jesus. So all of the work we do interiorly to become truth and beauty is now built to display that to those who spend time with us.

34 · Introduces the specific program 'Invite Your One' as a concrete tactic, citing the 80% statistic on willingness to attend church when personally invited by a friend who meets them there

So one of the things we'll do this year is we'll, we'll do this program. It's kind of a, a turnkey program. It's not something we are inventing. It's just called Invite Your One. And it just takes a couple of months worth of focus and attention, and we move into this position where we each take ownership and responsibility of inviting a friend to church on the same day. And did you know that across geography and generations, when asked in surveys, 80% of people say they would come to church if a friend asked them, if the friend would meet them at the door. Better yet, in the parking lot. So one of the programs, one of the simple tactics that we'll do is we'll say, well, let's— we just need to get better at, more focused on the act of invitation.

35 · Introduces the second program 'Pray and Go' focused on neighborhood-centered intercessory prayer, pairing with the invitation emphasis to create a dual strategy of prayer and outreach

And then simultaneous to that, we want to get better on and focused on the act of intercession. We just want to become more consistent in our prayerfulness regarding the opportunity to share the glories of Jesus with the world. So there'll be another program— again, not something we're creating, just something we're, we're picking up and using— and that's called Pray and Go, and it's a very neighborhood-focused intercessory program. Where we increase in our intercession for our neighbors.

36 · The concluding application connects the two programs to the spiritual disciplines of fasting (paired with intercession) and feasting (paired with invitation/hospitality), creating an integrated rhythm of prayer and celebration oriented toward drawing people into the truth and beauty community

There are two spiritual disciplines that accompany this. They fit right in line. I think you'll probably be able to see it right away. Those two spiritual disciplines are feasting and fasting. Did you know that feasting is a spiritual discipline? In the Old Testament, it's one of the first ones you see. Rest is probably the first, feasting is probably the second. Feasting and fasting are spiritual disciplines. And as you can kind of imagine, fasting is associated with intercession. Fasting accompanies praying for people, right? You got that. Well, feasting accompanies in Scripture what? Hospitality. The best meals you'll have, at least this should be the way it is, the best meals you'll have all year, whether it's at the church or in your home, should be the meals that you're inviting other people to. What would it look like if a church membership was full of people who were practicing throughout, not this year, but also years to come, the two spiritual disciplines of strategic fasting, interceding for their neighbors, interceding for the world, interceding for our church to embrace its mission, and feasting both together? And a lot of things can be called feasting. I think our Christmas Eve service was a feast. Right? It was, it was a feast of fun. But the exercise of inviting the outside world into the abundance of the church, whether that abundance be in a Christmas Eve service or just a great meal at your house— intercession, invitation, fasting, Feasting. They all work together to bring people in to communities where truth and beauty are harmonized in Jesus Christ.