Mission Upside Down

Sometimes people make a conflict between God’s eternal plan to save people and their responsibility to trust in Jesus. Instead of setting these two aspects in conflict, the Bible teaches both of them. Just as a train rides on a railroad of two tracks, tracks which run parallel, so our salvation has those two aspects—God’s plan, and our responsibility to respond to Jesus. The church has the duty to proclaim Jesus to everyone. Everyone who hears the good news then is expected to respond—either in faith or in unbelief.

Before we will be able to understand the “good news” found in the Bible, we must know the “bad news.” It is this: the root of our personal failures runs deep into our hearts, down to our most basic desires. We not only say and do wrong things, but we fail to love our Creator God above all, and we fail to love people. Only when we understand how bad the “bad news” is, can we appreciate how truly amazing is the “good news” found in the Bible.

Continuing with Acts 2:42, we explain the four “must haves” for any good church. These are biblical teaching (doctrine), biblical fellowship, biblical breaking of bread, and biblical praying. In this talk, we particularly focus on the last three items in that list. As we seek more biblical churches, we surely will be “turned upside down” in our thoughts and our actions.

Many people are “shopping” for a good church. In this episode, we identify four “must haves” for any good church. First and foremost is that a good church must have good teaching from the Bible. Probably every church will claim it has biblical preaching. This podcast will help you identify the main features of proper biblical teaching.

According to one expert, a good story must accomplish one or all of these things: it must broaden our perspective; it must cause us to act beyond that which has imprisoned us; it must empower us to live more of our potential. In this episode we show how the story in the Bible does all three of these things—and more! We also learn how our Creator calls people not only to love Him, but also to love other people in helpful and practical ways.

In this launch of our podcast, Randal introduces himself to our listeners. In these podcasts, we are attempting to explain what it means to follow Jesus and to be part of His kingdom. At times we will provoke our listeners, challenging some of their beliefs and traditions, but at all times we seek to be humble. As we will learn, the good news about Jesus can turn the world upside down.