Treasuring_Christ_Together Building_One_People.pdf

Bethlehem Baptist Church is healthy and growing, and it is now time for the next steps of Treasuring Christ Together. So for the next 30 months, we will, by God’s grace, raise $18 million in this campaign.

We are asking people to pray, serve, and give as the Lord leads, in order to provide a 24/7 church home for our South congregation, reduce current debt associated with TCT’s multi-campus strategy that launched our completed North Campus, and share a generous tithe for church planting and for the world’s poor. We will strive for these goals, as the Lord provides, in the campaign we’re calling “Building One People” (www.buildingonepeople.org).

“Building One People” is about more than buildings or any one person. “Building One People” is about seeing our 5,000 people over three campuses—and the many more who, by God’s grace, may be added—built together by God and serving the Twin Cities together with a passion for Jesus.

Isaiah 57:14–15 makes it lavishly clear that God does not dwell in buildings built by human hands; but rather, he dwells with his people who are contrite in spirit: 

And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Treasuring Christ Together: Building One People is about God, who inhabits eternity, building a people with whom he will dwell.
Throughout history God has been building a people for himself. When I first heard the subtitle of our new Treasuring Christ Together effort, “Building One People,” a couple things came to mind: I like it—it wonderfully and sharply puts the emphasis on people not buildings.

I also wondered: Who is doing the building—and what kind of people are being built?

From the pulpit on October 16/17, Pastor Kenny beautifully addressed the “Who” question. The short answer to the question of who is doing the building is God, and he uses us to do it. (See Ephesians 4:1–16.)

Isaiah 66:1–2 helped me with the question, What kind of people are being built?

Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

The kind of people we’re asking the Lord to build, a picture of what we can aim at together, is a people to whom the Lord will look—a people that is humble and contrite—a people who tremble at his word. Join us to pray for the implementation of Treasuring Christ Together: Building One People and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for daily prayer requests.

Furthermore, if Bethlehem is your church family and if you have a passion to see God’s name and his fame fill our Twin Cities—from Mounds View to Lakeville and to spread across our nation and around the world—then we as an elder council ask you to join us in pursuing that vision by giving generously to Treasuring Christ Together: Building One People.

God has been building a people for his own possession through Jesus, and for the past 140 years he has been doing that work in and through his people here at Bethlehem.

As we build a site south of the cities, and as we seek to reduce our current debt related to this multi-campus strategy, we believe God is building us up together under a single theme: One God accomplishing one mission through one people united by one passion in him.

So we treasure Christ and we do it together for his glory, and for the advancement of our joy and of the gospel among the neighborhoods and among the nations.

Praying, giving, trembling, and building one people together with you,

Tim Johnson (on behalf of the elders)
Chairman of the Elder Council