Letter of John and Judy to Friends of Christview Ministries
Greeting and Blessing
John and Judy, called and miraculously enabled by God to found Christview Ministries,
To the saints who are our partners, advisors, students, and directors in the mission and ministry:
May the love of God our Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit be with you all both now and always.
Praise
Praise be to God who has given us the message of salvation by a wondrous grace. We have received forgiveness of sins to cover the past, the promise of the Holy Spirit for the present, and the solid hope of being part of God’s perfect new heaven and new earth in the future.
Thanksgiving
We give thanks for each one of you through whom God is shaping the vision for our common ministry. For Christview Ministries is not just John teaching the Bible and Judy leading spiritual formation exercises. Rather Christview Ministries is a movement of God working through all who are drawn together for the purpose of mentoring spiritual leaders for Christ’s mission. We are deeply grateful for what God has been doing through each of you to bring this ministry into being.
Our Calling
By the grace of God we exist for Christ’s church, which is to say that we serve the community of faith that began on the first Pentecost Sunday following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We represent the faith in Jesus to which the first disciples were called, the repentance that necessarily followed, the baptism into union with Christ and his church, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, we are continually re-made to be like Jesus in his relationship with the Father, in the nature of his inner being, and in his redemptive work in the world.
Character Formation
Character matters! Only one who has died with Christ to sin and self can exercise leadership in the humble and loving manner that makes all things work together for the good of all. Only one who has opened his or her life to the transforming activity of the Holy Spirit will be able to carry out the assignment. Character formation must be part of what we do together in Christview Ministries
Listening and Obeying
We are called to be a spiritual people, which is to say that we must be people who listen to and obey God. We do this through letting the Bible shape our thinking and spending prayerful time in openness to the Holy Spirit. The process of understanding the scriptures and of discerning the leading of the Spirit is one in which we grow with practice. Christview Ministries exists to coach this developing process. In response to what we hear from God, we will be called beyond ourselves into service to the whole church and to a hurting world. The love of God for the world which caused him to give his Son for our salvation must come to expression in all who listen to the divine word.
Spiritual Gifts and Leadership
By a stunning act of God’s grace, all believers are called to be leaders. For it has pleased God to distribute gifts of the Spirit to all who trust the gospel of Jesus Christ and who receive the Holy Spirit into their lives. We are like an orchestra in which each instrument must be prepared to play its part, and at times even tubas get solo parts. Each of us has a particular combination of gifts that is to be prepared and exercised for the good of the whole body.
Christview Ministries exists to help people discover their gifts and to prepare them for use in the body. A key leadership skill is learning how to find our place and way of working harmoniously in the whole body of Christ.
Some of us are called to overall leadership and some of us to leadership in more specific areas. Those with overall leadership are to understand that their job is to call forth the more specific leaders in the right time. In the body of Christ we submit to the spiritual giftings of one another. Even a conductor must submit in this manner and recognize the gifts of others, or the symphony will not sound right.
When all of this works together, we are each built up into mature spiritual leaders, and it all leads to the praise of the glory of God. For this purpose we live as children of God, and toward this end Christview Ministries seeks to build leaders.
As God Works through Us
What we are doing is in the practical, worldly sense impossible. It will work only as God works through us. We have on other occasions heard the words of the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians, and we listen to them again as words that we can make our own act of worship:
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever” (ESV).