when |
Sunday at 11:00 A.M. |
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where |
Hamilton Hall, Room 100 |
[Directions] |
who |
You! |
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also |
Intensive Classes // Wallgroups // Events |
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The goal of Campus Crossroads is to redefine church to our generation. For too long we have been taught that church is a place you go. It is a building; it is an organization. Biblically, the church is none of these things: It is a living thing; It is an organism. It is the body of Christ. It is active. It is revolutionary. It changes people, places, and whole societies. It feeds the poor. It takes care of orphans. It defends the weak. It heals the sick. It spreads the good news of the gospel. It is not self-seeking, but selfless. It is more concerned with building wells than building steeples. But most importantly, it glorifies God in everything it does.
“Now you are the body, and each one of you is part of it.” -I Cor. 12:27
[Schedule of Readings]
Weekly Reading: Genesis 24-28:9 »
Latest News: A Courtship In The Making »
By Justin Wright on September 6, 2009 – 9:53 pm
As most of you know, Campus Crossroads has been primarily a student church on the campus of UNC for 9 years now. We count it a privilege to serve the students here. Something that you may not know is that we have been praying for quite sometime for God to open the door for our congregation to be more multicultural and multigenerational. Last year, we took on what started out as an experiment with Church of the Harvest in Carrboro. Troy, the pastor, and I have been friends for many years and in a way, he is responsible for the initial doors to open for Campus Crossroads. The experiment was for us to look at our congregations and see how they could compliment one another if we were to meet together.
We decided a little over a year ago to begin the experiment. We looked at it more as a courtship. We began to meet together, first at Church of the Harvest during the summer, then on campus for the entire school year. It has been an amazing adventure. Everyone seems to be so excited about the church and what each congregation brings.
After the initial year, we have began the process of forming a joint board to oversee this next year and to plan what other transitions should be made. It is so exciting to see such wonderful people working together for the kingdom of God. Please continue to pray for us as we venture down this road and that God would give us all wisdom in the decisions we are making.
Latest Devotion: The Balance »
By Cameron Harwick on August 27, 2009 – 1:31 pm
The balance concept of works is one of the most bedeviling concepts in pop religion. The idea goes, if I do more good things than bad things, God will accept me. It’s essentially Karma stripped of its Eastern flavor. Lacking the despair of one’s own salvation that is ultimately necessary for salvation, the balance model makes a lot of sense to the unregenerate mind.
Unfortunately, even Christians all too often buy into the balance model. Not so crude a balance model as exists in pop religion – we take James 2:10 “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” to mean that even one act of sin outweighs all the good works in the world. This is passably true on the surface, but it is still fundamentally a balance model. Ask most Christians if a person were to live a life entirely by the law, never breaking it and yet not knowing God, would be saved, they would say yes. It’s the loophole in their faith – an unattainable loophole, granted, but a loophole nonetheless.
Such a concept takes depravity as a matter of works, and salvation as a matter of belief: that we are lost because we act badly, and we make up for it by believing, since it’s impossible to right the balance by good works. God removes the sin from the balance, allowing us to effectually weight the other side with good works (if I’m not mistaken, Roman Catholic doctrine states – or at one point stated – this explicitly).
This conception, however, misses the nature of our salvation: neither depravity nor salvation are matters of works. There is no balance at all, even a balance irrecoverably weighted by sin. Our actions, both good and sinful, mean nothing in themselves, except as they indicate our nature. The essence of depravity is not that we do sins, it is that our desires are not for God, which leads us to sin. The essence of sanctification is not that we are freed to do good, it is that our desire is for God, which leads us to good.
That is not to say that actions are not significant as indicators of our desires; only that they have no significance in themselves. Thus our hypothetical man who lives by the entire law for its own sake is nonetheless unfit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Though his outer face is clean, even completely clean, his nature is nevertheless fleshly. His desire is not for God. There are no loopholes.
That means that neither is our own salvation an ad hoc salvific loophole created by God for those who could not keep the law. It is not as if keeping the law is the preferred method of salvation, and barring that, God lets us get on with a salvation by grace through faith. There is no “option”, as if we could either keep the law or trust in Christ to the same effect. All salvation at all times is only effected by the apprehension of the value of God, even if that apprehension is imperfect here on earth. The law is only the outward manifestation of such a valuation, and is always powerless to save – even in its perfection.