distinctives
Church planting manuals are nice. So are N.Y Times bestsellers on successful organization building. As are the how-to websites for starting healthy churches. But at Seven Mile Road, we have tried hard to allow God’s Word to shape our understanding of who we are supposed to be as Jesus' church. We have spent tons of time studying the Scriptures in hopes of laying a sound theological foundation that we can then build a faithful church upon. Theology must inform methodology, and so here are some of the core theological convictions that we have embraced.
Keep the gospel central to everything.
Seven Mile Road holds to the historic Christian Gospel like a pit-bull with lock-jaw. The Gospel is it. It is the center of our church. It is the center of our lives. It is the filter through which everything else in our church and lives is run through. It is the incredible, stunning, unexpected, life-altering, propositional truth that God has in Christ redeemed sinners like you and I from the curse of our sin. It is the story of a loving and holy Father sending the Son to take our place on a cross, pay our debts, forgive our sins, cleanse our filth, make us right, adopt us as sons and daughters, give us eternal life, and begin conforming us into the image of the One by whom we were created. It is such good news. We could talk all day about what the Triune God has done for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And we do. We talk about it. Sing about it. Preach about it. Study it. Meditate on it. Wonder at it. If you don’t want to hear about the Gospel, Seven Mile Road will drive you nuts.
Talk about Jesus all the time.
Jesus is what differentiates us from all the ‘spiritual’ mumbo jumbo that exists in our pluralistic culture. Talk about “God” and everyone is cool with it: he/she/it/they are all just different ways of saying the same thing, right? But mention Jesus and the questions come and the (good) sparks fly. Jesus is a line in the sand. At Seven Mile Road, we say the word Jesus more than any other. We proclaim His uniqueness as the way, the truth, and the life, as the only gate to God. And we affirm His atoning and bloody death on a cross in our place as the only hope for sinners to be freed from their sin. And we long to walk as disciples of His. And we look forward to His return. Seven Mile Road is about Jesus.
Maintain a high view of Scripture.
We serve a God who works through words. God created the heavens and the earth by saying the word. Jesus was the Word become flesh. The Scriptures are the inspired Word of God. Preaching (spoken words) is an instrument that God uses to convict our hearts and birth faith. And for thousands of years believers have responded to God’s Word with words of their own... songs, chants, prayer, praise and more. And so words are important to us at Seven Mile Road. Whether it is time spent reading and studying the words of the Bible, laboring over the words we will use in our sermons, or selecting the lyrics for the songs we employ in worship, out hope is to be shaped by the God who speaks and finds fitting word responses of our own. This whole exercise in words begins with His inspired Word, captured on the pages of the Bible. We cling to our Bibles and allow God’s revealed truth there to define right and wrong, good and bad, worthwhile and worthless for us. We long to sit under the text of Scripture, allowing it to guide, correct, inspire, convict, shape and teach us.
Work from a Reformed understanding of salvation.
Seven Mile Road holds to the Reformed understanding that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, all for the glory of God alone. The Gospel is about God, not us. His grace, first and last. He acts, we respond. And even our response is a gift of faith birthed in us by God’s Spirit. Yes, good works flow from the Gospel, but they are not the cause of it. God has freely chosen to show grace to us through no merit of our own. He called us, saved us, regenerated us, forgave us, justified us, adopted us, reconciled us to Himself. He did. We gladly go along for the ride. And even now, as we run after Him, it is His Spirit that enables our running, that sanctifies us, that pulls us toward holiness because He is a holy God who wills our holiness. These doctrines of God’s free, undeserved grace to us eliminate any arrogance and self-righteousness from creeping into our church life, and they also overcome all despair as we realize that life really is about the God who has given it, and not us. We rest in the fact that salvation belongs to God.
Value highly the importance of preaching.
Every Sunday at Seven Mile Road, we preach from a Biblical text. We are not ashamed of it, we don’t hide it, we don’t apologize for it. One of our pastors stands there and talks, and the church sits there and listens, and God shows up. He doesn’t walk in the back door or float in through the wall; His Spirit comes and works a hearing miracle in our heads and hearts and spirits when we hear the Word preached. Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ. This ‘hearing-miracle’ is not a one time thing. There can be a first-time faith response in our hearts the first time we hear the incredible gospel message. But faith can come in our spirits every single Sunday, every time we come with a humble heart and open ears and say “Speak, Father, I am listening.” That is why we take preaching so seriously. Here’s a great quote that captures our heart for having preaching and hearing be integral in the life of our church. “In the multitude of tasks of a pastor, his identity as a preacher may be lost, the quality of his preaching may decline as he fills other functions and neglects the disciplines required for effectual preaching. Confidence in the superior efficacy of preaching may fade as other ministries appear more redemptive. But, history proves that the church can exist without buildings, without liturgies, without choirs, without Sunday schools, without professional clergymen, without creeds, even without women societies. But the church cannot possibly exist without preaching the Word. Preaching has power like nothing else the church has or does. Moreover, preaching reaches more people than anything else the preacher can do, whether it’s visiting, administering or counseling. The time has come to restore preaching to its rightful place, its primary position in the work of the ministry. In preaching there is power. The power of the Spirit is the power of the Word and as the Word is proclaimed the Spirit is busy working in the mind and hearts of the hearers. Rise up, O men of God, and preach.”
Be governed by an elder-led ecclesiology with high congregational involvement.
We are convicted by the Scriptures that an elder-led ecclesiology in which qualified men shepherd the church and lead the members of the congregation on mission to the culture is a distinctly Biblical way of governing the affairs of the local church. Pastoring Seven Mile Road is no wussy desk job with long lunches and frequent golf outings. The Scriptures call pastors to fight like soldiers, train like athletes, and work like farmers. There is heavy lifting involved. God calls you to be a pastor, he calls you to be an ox, and hopefully, if you do your job well, you’ll pick your head up one day, look over your shoulder, and see a beautiful harvest of faith and obedience and redemption bursting forth from the soil you’ve tilled. Because it’s such an important call, we’re serious about calling only those who are clearly called, gifted, and qualified for the task, those whose lives reflect a clear and humble repentance and awareness of sin, a diligence to walk in obedience, a solid relationship with their wives and children, a good reputation with outsiders, a burden on their hearts to lead, and an incessant passion about Jesus.
Foster deep, authentic community.
Church for us is not just a Sunday event. American culture in general, and Massachusetts for sure, is not interested in attending a church event. Invite the average person on the street in Malden/Boston to church and they are just not interested. “I don’t get it, I’d rather be on my couch, I don’t care if it’s free, I’m not like the other people there, I’m not going.” And yet an invitation to Seven Mile Road is not an invitation to an event, but to a life, a new life, a different life, a different way of doing life. A church is not a place, it is a people, a people being redeemed, knit together and conformed to the image of God. Coming to Seven Mile Road is not just about showing up to a ‘religious service’ but about responding to a life-altering message in concert with a community of people who are responding the same way. Our goal is for Seven Mile Road to be a church where friendships run deep and our shared culture is different than anything that our unbelieving friends have ever seen before. We have barely scratched the surface on this, but we do have people gathering regularly for prayer and discipleship and also just to become friends... eating together, vacationing together, recreating together, reading the Bible together, and just being together. This reality has enabled trust, accountability, and a connectedness that has allowed us to move from being individuals to being a community.
Intentionally pursue church planting.
Read the New Testament and you will see that staring new churches is how the Gospel spreads. There is no better way to connect with unbelievers than by starting new churches near them. The local church provides the perfect context for effective evangelism: a bunch of people who love Jesus and are following him gathering weekly to hear the preached Word and walking all week through life together in Jesus-centered friendships. How are you going to beat that? Plus new churches become self-sufficient and expand the base for all kinds of other downstream ministries. Plus by nature they’ve 'got no one here' so in order to survive they have to push the limits on culturally engaging life. If we unearth anyone at Seven Mile Road who has a heart to plant and might make a good 1A leader, we start working immediately to discern the potential call and sending of that person where they can best lead a church plant, whether in the U.S. or overseas.
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Boston drivers drive crazy, rain falls in Seattle, and a biblically faithful churches become missional churches. Once a church discovers the Biblical meta-narrative of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration, it will be compelled join God in His work of the redeeming of His world from sin and its curse through the in-breaking kingdom of Christ. A church exists not only for its members to have a place to worship God, but as an instrument which God uses to save the culture that church is a part of. The book of Acts shouts this at us: its churches were strong as gathered communities, but were also incessantly engaging the people, cities, and cultures around them with the Gospel message. Seven Mile Road walks in their footsteps, called to contextualizing the Gospel in our time and place for the sake of those who don’t yet know about Jesus. For us that has meant fostering an environment that is welcoming, attracting and engaging to secular/non-Christian. We hope to:
Eliminate all stumbling blocks but the Gospel.
That’s what we’re shooting for: to be a church where a huge chunk of our culture, the chunk that doesn’t know Jesus at all, can spend some time with us and not stumble over our language, our suits, our style, our handbell choir, our felt offering bags, our traditions, our anything but the Gospel. People shouldn’t be distracted by or driven away by externals, but confronted with the core of the Gospel message. If it’s Jesus they stumble over, fine, but if they are not even getting to the ‘faced with Jesus’ part because the other things we do are wacked or confusing or irrelevant, we’ve got problems. If they never even ‘hear the Gospel’ because we spoke Christianese the whole time… we’ll, you get it. We want nothing at Seven Mile Road to come between our culture and its hearing and responding to the Gospel.
Constantly address myths that keep our culture from responding the Gospel message.
It is hugely important for our pastors and our people to be aware of the myths that our culture lives by, the myths that drive them away from Christ, and to hammer away at those myths. For our culture this includes ideas like: people are basically good, God never gets angry, all roads lead to heaven, all Christians vote Republican, love is all that matters, Darwin was right, I can earn my way into heaven, there is no such thing as truth, God isn’t there because there is so much suffering in the world, I am free right now, God is obliged to save everyone, Christians are really mean, the Bible can’t be trusted, and all Yankee fans are going to hades (wait, that one’s true.) By repeatedly addressing these convictions and deconstructing them with the truth, we can break down the barriers that prevent people in our culture from giving the Gospel a fair hearing.
Insist that everyone at Seven Mile Road is a missionary.
As a missional church, we see ourselves not only as a gathered people, but as a sent people, sent into the world to bear well the image of God, to carry our worship of Him into every moment of our lives, and to announce to our culture the good news of the Gospel. Our pastors are not the only people called to do this. Everyone at Seven Mile Road is a missionary, on mission with Jesus to see His kingdom break in on the kingdoms of this world. We encourage our people that the entire tenor of their lives should witness to the graceful redemption God has worked in their heart, from the way they work to the way they parent to the way they study to the way they recreate to the way they spend to the way they speak to the way they have sex to the way they consider the poor to the way... etc. And we are not only missionaries for Christ, but for Seven Mile Road. This doesn’t primarily mean that we have to invite every person we ever talk to to church; but it does mean that we should be living a Gospel-drenched life and having people be aware that it is a great God and a worn-out Bible and a good church that form the foundation of that life. Over the years our church is going to build a reputation in the community, and we want it to be one that attracts people to find out just what it is that has transformed our hearts and lives.
Pursue excellence in music and preaching.
Massachusetts is not a Commonwealth-for-dummies. (Well, we do vote Ted Kennedy in every sixth year, but hey.) In order to connect with our culture we have to do things with preparation, clarity, and excellence. That means organized preaching series with comprehensible themes (while remaining expositional in nature), preparing sermons that do a good job both with the content and application of the text, a humble and self-deprecatory vibe (humor is a must) from the preachers while maintaining an proper awe of God, relevant and tight musical responses, incorporation of quality art on signage and PowerPoint, having well-run Children’s and nursery stuff, and maintaining design-aware classroom and worship spaces. God is an orderly and creative God and so our church should reflect those realities. We also hope to have the original music that emerges from our congregation’s life together impacts an entire generation of worshipers.
Employ a kicking website and use of technology.
Ours is a high-tech culture, and so maintaining a top-notch website is a must. 95% of folks who join us at Seven Mile Road spend time first perusing our website. It is in that perusing that a thousand nuanced messages are sent about who we are and how we approach ministry and those message must be attractive and engaging.
Working toward becoming a multi-ethnic church.
In 5 years Malden will roughly be 1/2 white, 1/4 asian, and 1/4 black and hispanic, with Indians, Morrocans, and a host of others thrown in. Why should the public schools be the only place in this culture that looks like the assembled throngs that will gather in worship before the throne of Christ? Why is the cafeteria at Malden High the only place where that happens? How different would it be if Seven Mile Road was the size of Malden High, 1200 people, made in the image of God, reflecting His Trinitarian diversity together? We long to see our church reflect the ethnic diversity of our culture and the Biblical vision of the people of God consisting of those from every tribe and tongue in worship before Christ. We want a church rich in reflecting this reality of the kingdom. There are no buttons to push to make this happen, but we’ve already moved in this direction by being blessed to have pastors of strikingly different ethnicities leading us.
Work toward becoming a multi-generational church.
Seven Mile Road is a ‘young church’. There’s no doubt about this. Our lead pastor is in his early thirties. (His hair line doesn’t show it.) Our lead worshiper is 25. More than half our Sunday service is always under 30. This is great. It’s a part of our vision. It brings a certain edge and life and drive to our church. No one under 30 in Boston goes to church. We hate that. We want them here with us hearing the Word and being challenged and being transformed. But we are not a cool, J-Crew, singles only club for Jesus. At all. We believe that in the same way the body of Christ is not ethnically or gender divided, it has no age restrictions. 15 year olds need to see 22 year olds loving Jesus and obeying God. 22 year olds need to see 34 year old parents teaching and disciplining their children. 34 year olds need to see 55 year olds still worshiping God, still loving life and people, still growing in Christ. And 55 year olds need to see 22 year olds following Christ. We need a generation (defined not by their age but by the fact that they are alive at the same time together) of people, young and old, men and women, to lock arms and live the grace of God out like a family. And so, Seven Mile Road has babies, kids, teens, 20s, 30s and you can work your way up. Learning from each other. Mentoring each other. Inspiring each other. A family.
Cast a vision for biblical sexuality.
Our culture is a jacked-up sexual mess in desperate need of redemption. What is Seven Mile Road was a place that reflected beautifully God’s intention for our sexuality? Watch 2 hours of primetime television and you will see hundreds of sex scenes, but you will not see many between husbands and wives. What if Seven Mile Road was the opposite? Our hope is that Seven Mile Road would be having more sex than any church in America its size, and all of it is happening between husbands and wives in the context of a permanent covenant of marriage. (I don’t know how you measure that, but that’s our vision.) Such a vision would also lead to a congregation where there were weddings happening and babies being born all the time, multiplying God’s work among us.
Work toward becoming a giving people.
When it comes to money, there is something about our nature as faithless sinners that makes our hands ooze super glue: we don’t want to let it go. What if Seven Mile Road was a people that held their money with ‘kingdom’ hands? What if part of our forging a redeemed culture at our church was to be redeeming the way we give? What if ‘how much am I giving God?’ was the first question we asked when we got our paychecks, rather than the last? What if we lived like this life was the vapor that it is and, by faith, began storing up treasures for eternity in how we give? These are the kinds of things we are hoping for when it comes to giving and spending at Seven Mile Road. Our goal is to give more money this month than last for the rest of our life as a church. We expect our members to be giving joyfully, faithfully and sacrificially, able to pull out our checkbooks, point to them, and see faith-marked obedience.
Work for justice.
If God’s purpose in redemption is not simply to save individuals out of the world, but to renew and restore His creation, His people should be concerned about individual souls and bringing shalom to the places they live. For us this means a big-time commitment to working for justice in the city we’ve been called to, especially for the poor, hungry, abused, widowed, orphaned, homeless folks in our midst. Seven Mile Road is not of the world but it is in the world and for the world because this is Jesus’ world. And so we are committed to being a blessing and an influence for justice in Malden/Boston.
