Saskatoon Gospel Communities

“Life isn’t meant to be lived alone.”

In addition to gathering together on a Sunday morning, we scatter all week doing life together in Gospel Communities.

We believe a Gospel Community is a family of missionary servants sent on mission by God to make disciples who make disciples.

Each of our Gospel Communities is seeking to be a devoted family of missionary servants passionate about showing and sharing Jesus with others. We view the church as a community and a network of relationships – not a meeting you attend or a place you enter. Our Gospel Communities are all about a shared life in Jesus in a genuine community of people.

Gospel Identity

We want to live as family, missionaries, and servants, and to do it from the overflow of what we’re experiencing in the gospel. God isn’t asking our people to add some great burden to their lives, but rather urging us to rearrange our lives around the Great Commission for Jesus’ sake, knowing that we’ll never be able to do that without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore Gospel Community isn’t a thing to do – it’s a way of life; it isn’t a program of Grace – it’s the mission of Jesus; it isn’t something you try to convince others to do – it’s how you be who you are, and see who the Spirit brings or leads you to pursue. Anything else is reversing the flow: doing a program in hopes of becoming, rather than being who you are by grace.

We don’t go to church. We are the church. We want our people to see church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments.

The gospel is the center of everything we are and do, and could be summed up like this: Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into joyful fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever!

This radical reality has 4 specific implications for who we are as God’s Church. Each of these implications flows directly from what God has done for us in the gospel. As Christians, we don’t do anything to earn God’s love, favor, blessing, or forgiveness; rather, God has given those things to us as a gift when he gave up his Son to pay the penalty for our sin and to heal the brokenness of the world caused by our sin.

As your read these 4 implications – what we call our Core Identities – take careful note of how each focuses first on what God has done, and then secondly on who we are as a result.
We are His:

Family – Because God has restored us to himself, forgiven our sin, and removed his wrath from us by placing it on his own Son, we have become children of God, holy, and dearly loved by our Father! Therefore, we are God’s children and his people in the world, a community that does for each other what God has done for us in Jesus, that the world might taste and see the goodness of our Father. (John 1:11-13; Eph. 3:15)

Missionaries – Because God has come to restore and redeem all of creation through Jesus, his healing work extends to people, systems, cultures, and all of creation! Therefore, we are God’s ambassadors or representatives, sent into our culture by the Holy Spirit, commissioned to proclaim and demonstrate that God is restoring the world to Himself through Jesus. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21; John 17:18; 20:21)

Servants – Because God has sent his Son as a sacrificial servant, taking our place on the cross and thereby healing and forgiving us in his substitutionary death, we then are freed from our self-love and self-reliance and empowered by him to serve those around us. Therefore, we model our lives after the Servant-King, increasingly being freed by Him from slavery to self and so empowered to serve others. (Matthew 20:25-28; 25:31-46; John 13:1-17; 1 Peter 2:16)

Learners – Because God has begun this work in us and by His Spirit promises to bring it to completion one day, we recognize the need to continuously be learning together from him and being changed by him. Therefore, we are students and followers of Jesus, learning from him how to live life the way God intended, and helping one another to do the same. (Matthew 28:18-20; 2 Tim. 2:1-2; Eph. 4:11-16; 2 Tim. 3:14 – 4:5; 2 Peter 3:18)

We are a family of God sent on mission to serve our world and continually learn how to live in the way of Jesus so that disciples of Jesus are made in order that the joy of the gospel would fill our city and beyond!