New Sermon Series: 7 Shaping Virtues
new sermon series:
7 shaping virtues
I love teaching our membership class for multiple reasons. One of them is listening as everyone shares their first impression of KingsWay. Without fail, multiple people highlight the way we take God’s Word seriously. May we always say with Simon Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). There’s a big difference, however, between a church that ascribes to the authority of the Word in a Statement of Faith and a church that lives under the authority of the Word in everyday life.
Our 7 Shared Values capture the distinctive tenets of our Statement of Faith as a Sovereign Grace Church. We are unapologetically reformed, gospel-centered, continuationist, complementarian, elder-governed, missional, and interdependent. People often come to KingsWay because that’s what we believe Scripture teaches. But I don’t believe that’s what keeps people coming back to KingsWay.
Imagine something with me. Imagine the members of our church continue to mentally assent to all these doctrines. But we stop being humble. Or we stop being generous. Or we stop walking in godliness. What’s happened? We’re still holding to the centrality of the gospel on paper, but the gospel has stopped shaping our relational culture as a spiritual family. That’s why I’m grateful we also have 7 Shaping Virtues in Sovereign Grace: humility, joy, gratitude, encouragement, generosity, servanthood, and godliness.
I’m convinced these are qualities that ultimately keep people coming back to KingsWay, members included. They are the choice fruit of the gospel. They capture the distinctive good works genuine faith produces in our lives as God’s people. If our 7 Shared Values summarize what the Word of Christ compels us to believe, our 7 Shaping Virtues summarize how the Word of Christ compels us to live.
Our recent study of Titus repeatedly emphasized the priority of good works. Titus 2:14 reads: “[Jesus Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Beginning this Sunday, we’re going to double-down on what those good works look like in real life by preaching through a seven-week series on our shaping virtues. We’ll consider questions like: What does it mean to be humble? How does the gospel produce humility? Where do we need to be uniquely careful as a congregation to walk in humility? The same questions apply to all the other virtues.
In many ways, these virtues describe the character God has graciously formed in our church family over the last 35 years. The sermon series is simply an attempt to ensure we never assume these cultural strengths but rather heed Paul’s admonition in 1 Thess 4:1: “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.” At the conclusion of every sermon, we will break into small groups and pray, asking the Spirit to work these virtues deep into our hearts and lives. For the sake of our joy and God’s glory, may it be so!
Matthew Williams