New England and the Need: Gospel Centered Churches

I was on the Resurgence recently, and I ran across an article by Jared Wilson, the pastor of a church in Middleton, VT, and a blogger at the Gospel Coalition. His article is entitled, Why New England is the New American Missional Frontier.

All of it was good, but one section grabbed hold of me. 

2. New England’s few existing churches are not gospel-wakened.

New Englanders have little desire for anything to do with Christianity or church, but even those who have it have little opportunity to explore it. While the landscape of New England is dotted with little church buildings, some quaint and some beautiful, more and more of these buildings now house liberal, practically Unitarian congregations, if they house church gatherings at all. And where churches are evangelical, the evangel has not yet captured the hearts of many congregations. As the cultural environment became more worldly, conservative churches became more insular, opting to self-protect in their religious “bunkers” instead of engaging their communities in gospel mission. The need for gospel-centered missional churches throughout New England is dire. The good news is that a movement is afoot already, but it needs more workers.
 

Read the article. it's worth it.... But don't stop there. While it was written by a Pastor, challenging Pastors and would be church planters, here's something every one of you can be doing. Pray! Pray like crazy. 

Pray that the Lord of the harvest sends out workers. Praying that God will be at work here in New England.

Pray that God will be building up Gospel centered, bible based churches that seeks to glorify God and build great communities (that's another way of saying Missional). 

Pray that God continues to Guide the leadership (especially the Deacons) as we seeks towards being to be a Gospel Centered Missional Church, and as as we seek to hone the mission of the church (the description of the church on Facebook is, "A Gospel centered, bible based church that seeks to glorify God and build a great community", and the working mission statement that is still under revision is First Baptist Church:  faithfully proclaiming the gospel to Medfield and beyond as we seek to glorify God and build a great community through gospel proclamation, personal conversion, deep disciple making, and faithful service to one another and the world around us).

Most of all, pray that ultimately, we will see revival in this place dotted by beautiful buildings but fewer and  fewer biblical, Gospel Centered churches.