Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART III: P LANTING U RBAN C HURCHES • 309

b. We are reconciled to call the world to be reconciled to God in Christ, 2 Cor. 5.18-21.

c. Our differences allow us to penetrate every culture and people group with the Gospel, and make disciples and plant churches wherever Christ has yet to be heard and followed. B. Cultivate a shared communal spirituality where a sense of belonging, ownership, identity, and answerability are highlighted and emphasized. a. Gal. 3.28-29 (ESV) – There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. b. Col. 3.11 (ESV) – Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 1. A shared communal spirituality

2. We are to cultivate our “adoption,” i.e., our belonging into the family of God.

a. Eph. 1.5 (ESV) – . . . he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

b. 1 John 3.1 (ESV) – See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

3. Ownership: indigenously “owned and operated” structures and patterns

a. We have a spiritual inheritance, Eph. 1.11 (ESV) – In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.