Guard the Gospel
This blog post was originally shared in the March 2025 Newsletter for Doulos — our young singles ministry.
FCBC Walnut just celebrated its 40th anniversary this past Sunday. We demonstrated appreciation for past members and leaders of the church, encouraged the current generation to carry the baton, and of course, ate In-n-Out burgers. It was a great day.
One of our themes is to empower to future. What then does the future hold for us, especially for you as young adult Christians? When the Apostle Paul considered his young protege Timothy, he encouraged him to guard the good deposit (2 Tim 1:14). What is the good deposit? It is none other than the gospel of Jesus Christ—the gospel that saves.
The church is called to be a witness for Jesus (Acts 1:8). To witness, by definition, is to simply present what is. You don't elaborate, you don't understate. You tell the truth. The church's witness is the gospel—specifically, the gospel as described and preserved in the inspired Word of God. This is why Paul instructed Timothy to keep preaching the Word (2 Tim 4:2).
How then are we empowered to carry this baton into the future? We hold fast to the Word of God. We make sure that the church gets the gospel right. We ensure that while the church may take on many endeavors of good works, we will never skimp on proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ.
One practical way to guard the gospel is to take church membership seriously. Membership empowers the witness of the church. Membership is all about the gospel. When we vote on each individual on the ballot, we are guarding the gospel by assessing whether or not this person has truly understood the gospel and followed Jesus as Lord and Savior. In other words, each vote is a proclamation that the gospel is true.
And in order to do this well, each one of us must do the hard work of knowing the gospel ourselves (especially the definition of conversion, faith, and repentance), and take the time to know the candidates. The candidates will be sharing their testimonies during Sunday School, and all active members of FCBCW should carve out time to sit in, listen, and ask questions.
And remember, we do this not to act as elite gatekeepers of the Christian faith. We do this because we desire God to be rightly worshipped and revered by each individual in our church. We want our Christian witness to stand true to the gospel of Jesus Christ and our proclamation of Him as Lord and Savior to remain undefiled. And we want to ensure that these candidates genuinely worship Jesus Christ. We don't want to give out false assurances. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of the church is not to expand its numbers but to bring glory to God. Let us then steward this responsibility well as one body.
