We just celebrated the one year anniversary of the planting of Sovereign Redeemer Community Church. March 23, 2011 was their first prayer meeting as a separate church and March 27 was their first Sunday together. When we commissioned the church, I charged the church to be three things:

1. Gospel centered, Phil. 1:27a

2. Unified, Phil. 1:27b

3. Fearless, Phil. 1:28-30

Each of these qualities is communicated in Philippians 1:27-30:

Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me.

I exhorted them to act like missionaries and set themselves to displaying the goodness and beauty of the kingdom of heaven. What has happened is this: They are gospel centered and what happened in the book of Acts is happening through them, “But the Word of God grew and multiplied” (Acts 12:24).