Good for the Group

All three parts of our church’s name are best embodied at the Lord’s Table. Knowing what I do now, I still don’t think we should have named ourselves, Communion Church. I also don’t think that every other name for a church is wrong. But, I still get a kick in the joy pants by our name.

We are Trinity Evangel Church. In the drafting stages we thought about “Evangelical,” and while that would have avoided a bunch of people misreading “Evangel,” it would have introduced other confusion, since the nuts in the soup of Evangelicalism don’t always belong.

But here’s the root of it: professing Christians, including many pastors, have truncated/minimized/simplified what is so “good” about the good news, the evangel, the gospel. We’ve got it in our name so that we would remember the good fruit that is forgiveness unto fellowship.

Sin is so offensive that God sent His Son to die. The cost of sin is Jesus’ life.

And what Jesus secured was not just our release from guilt, our deliverance from eternal suffering in hell, our transition out from under God’s heavy displeasure. Jesus secured our peace, our blessing, our adoption as sons.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18a ESV)

And don’t miss the group gift: bring us to God. We pray to “our Father” in heaven. The evangel means there is no condemnation, amen! The evangel means there we have communion, amen!