The Crossmark
Less short answer: We are a people of hope coming out of a history of sin. We want to reach people that have made mistakes and admit it. We want to help people who have sinned against God and man and are ready to discover the truth about the real Jesus. We also want to restore the name of the Church to what Jesus intended for it to be in our community and our culture. We love the Church, we sometimes just don’t like the church. We think the best way to fix the Church is by finding the real Jesus and making Him known in our lives, in our community, and in our culture. We want to be informed, reformed, and transformed by discovering Jesus afresh in a way that we have not experienced before. We admit that w are a people in process. The Bible compares the people of God to many things. One of them is a bride. This imagery is found throughout the Bible. We believe Jesus is now working in history redeeming and reforming a people for himself that he has called the Church which is symbolically his bride. The Church is compared to a beloved bride who has soiled her wedding dress. Though she is a unfit bride, Jesus loves her so much that he longs to clean her up and in fact He is! He is working behind the scenes preparing his bride for a marriage that last more than a lifetime. This is what Jesus has been doing for 2000 years.
Two thousand years ago Jesus began a reform movement to restore humanity to its original purpose. Jesus came on to the first century scene preaching of the new kingdom that had come into this world. It was a kingdom of hope [see Mark 1:15, Matthew chapters 5 to 8]! This kingdom was centered around the Message of God which was personified in Jesus. Jesus preached that he came to fulfill promises made to the Jewish nation, the first people called God’s bride, and to complete the requirement given in their Law that God had given them through Moses. He compared those Jews that followed him to a bride and compared himself to be their groom. He told them that he wanted to bring them joy. In fact his very first public miracle was turning water into wine. Jesus came to show people that he was the way to true joy.
He did not come to create another religion [Christianity]. He came to fulfill one religion [biblical Judaism] and free all people from every man-made religion. Many did not like this message. Particularly the most religious. Jesus was like a prophet in that for all three years of his public ministry he foretold that the leaders of the Jewish people along with the Romans would kill him by crucifixion. He said his death was the hallmark of God’s plan for human redemption. The cross would be the mark by which God would show his ultimate love for his people. Jesus said the mark of a true relationship with God was people believing in what he would accomplish on the cross. He promised that death would only keep him for three days in the grave then he would conquer death. Everything he said miraculously came true. His disciples carried on this teachings after he ascended to heaven promising that he would come again at the end of the world.
These disciples (lifetime devoted student-followers of Jesus) had set practices such as communion, listening to biblical teaching, prayer, and the enjoying of each others company (fellowship). They did these things regularly and so do we and they began to be called the Church. The shared their lives together weekly and on Sunday where they worshiped God together through devotion to Jesus. They believed Jesus offered freedom from mere religious duty in favor of a real relationship with God through Christ as Lord of their lives.
They worked hard not reduce religion to a formal set of rituals and practices instead they redefined religion as a system of benevolence that takes care of widows and orphans [see James 1:27]. Centuries began to past and the Christian Church carried this message throughout the world. This message did and is still changing the world for the better. Over a millennium the Church led by Rome lost focus on the Word of God. This was a dark time for Christians and the world. The reforming of faith that God had done in the life and ministry of Jesus began to fade in favor of human created traditions apart from scripture. In 1517 a German Monk who was Roman Catholic nailed a list of 95 sins that he saw in the Church as a whole. He wanted the Church to reform and reject these 95 sins so that it could return to being the reformed movement that Jesus had started.
This started the Reformation in the 16th century that has continued on to our own day and time. There are now many expressions of the Christian faith. Unfortunately by 19th century many of the reform movements began to be inundated with a slew of ideas about God and Jesus that were not of God. Some were sincere but still misguided. Others were and still are deceptive and patently false. As in secular life it seems that most every group has generally the worst examples that are the ones that are the most visible and vocal. Take for example televangelist. They really don’t represent most Christians any more than the lady in the moo-moo that is always interviewed by the national press after a hurricane or tornado represents most Americans.
Sadly, in the 20th century these high profile “Christians” through their own personal ambition, greed, pride and other sinful rebellion began to drag the image of the Church down. The Church came to be defined by sin instead of salvation. The church movements started in the 16th century began to loose their clarity in the 19th century. They began splintering over secondary and non-essential areas of understanding of the Christian faith giving us the plethora of denominations that exist today. Some are God centered while others are man centered. Additionally Christians began to take on many aspects of the world around them and lost what distinguished them from the wider culture. Preachers and church members began to care about wealth, sexual sin freedom, cultural acceptance, their struggles, and the message of Jesus got replaced by other competing messages. Some fearful of the sinful aspects of culture retreated from the wider culture and built on little moral communities that feared the worldliness and resolved to live super moral lives apart from the wider culture.
Much of what has come to be known as Christianity does not resemble what Jesus began nor is what the Reformers believed in, worked for, and died to restore. That in part is why God forming many new churches throughout this world and reforming others.
So what is Crossmark? We are a group of:
Hopeful Christians…
Christians was originally a cuss word used mockingly to describe the first disciples hope in Christ. They were considered mini-Christ and were mocked as the non-violent soldiers of Christ. They were mocked because of their love for Jesus and how they lived differently in their culture. They hoped that God would use them to change their world for the better. They were are a people of Hope. We think that is what true Christians should be like. This is why Crossmark church is a people of hope.
… who are being Reformed…
That Reformed movement began in the 16th century shows the Church of our age that God is still in the business of reforming. This gives us great hope in the 21st century because we believe God is just as busy in us as He was in Christ. We like the 16th century reformers believe that “God is always reforming.” This was there Hope and ours. We have disagreements sometimes even with each other over secondary issues yet we believe God is working through us.
… to live Missionally in our culture.
We believe we are to live like missionaries in our own culture. In our day Evangelical means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some think of right wing politics. Others think of left wing politics. Yet neither of these views is correct. Evangelical simply means one who believes the good news of Christ. We have adopted the relatively new term missional as the mindset of hope to live out a intentionally evangelistic life. At times we will likely fail at this because we are sinners. Yet we are hopeful that God will work through even that to help heal our culture and much more importantly win people to Christ and away from eternal death.
Crossmark is a Church of hopeful Christians who are being reformed to live missionally in our culture. Along the way we are doing life together, growing in our knowledge of Jesus, communing with Him and one another, and praying that God’s kingdom will come in this world like it is in Heaven. Crossmark simply is hope in God.
