Brownwood Church

Members of the Body Serving its Needs

As the first church in the New Testament grew, a major problem arose when certain widows who depended on the church were being neglected in the distribution. The twelve apostles, acting as the first elders of Jerusalem were made aware of the problem, but instead of attending it themselves, petitioned the congregation to choose 7 men who they could appoint to the duty, so that they could devote themselves more fully to prayer and the ministry of the word. Though the role of deacons morphed into priests in training, or the group who "ran" the church, or leaders of ministries, originally they were groups of servants appointed to care for the needs of the church so that the elders would not have to give up their primary service of preaching.

Then God Said, "Let There Be Light"

The eternal Word of God was in the beginning as the agent through which creation was spoken into existence. All things which came into being did so through the Word. Light itself illuminated the darkness of creation when the Word communicated that which was in Him, not merely as involuntary emanation, but by His eternal will. By His sovereign will, God spoke and it was. Time as we know it began, of which this light itself is inseparably connected. And although science has recently come into more discovery of this, that connection has always been on these pages of Scripture, as Genesis intricately connects light and time with that by which it is named: “Day.”

The Spirit of God was Hovering

God created the earth formless and empty so it could be formed and filled over the next six days. The darkness, or the evening of the first day, was over the chaotic waters that initially could not sustain life. But the Spirit of God hovered in oscillating movement, surrounding His newly birthed creation like an eagle over its young, indicating His love, protection, and plans for its formation and filling. The formless and void earth that God formed and filled over the next six days was not the result of a ruined and reconstructed previous earth that resulted from Satan's fall as Gap theory proponents began proposing 200 years ago to try and account for an unmentioned amount of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The formlessness and void was the initial state of an earth unable to sustain life until God formed and then filled it.

In the Beginning

Genesis is the book of beginnings. It is God's authoritative revelation of the beginning of space & time as we know it, matter & energy, light & life, history & humanity, peoples & nations, sin & judgement, redemption & restoration. In Genesis, salvation is promised and pictured in Hebrew sensory realities. For 2,500 years, the world that God created was not in possession of the record of its beginnings. For centuries the world speculated and mythologized, passing down their oral traditions of an ancient flood and chronicling the dragon-like creatures that roamed the earth. To this day, science labors to find the answer to the great mystery revealed in the very first verse of Scripture, and detailed on the pages that follow.

Make Disciples of All the Nations

The Great Commission is the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham to make His descendants as numerous as the sand and stars. From the mountain in Galilee overlooking the nations, Jesus sent out the eleven to make disciples. Though the mission of some is a Great Crusade or a Great Conservative Movement or a Great Colonization, the Great Commission is one command: to make disciples. Though many in history have tried to reproduce or legislate or war their way to this end, Jesus called us to make disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching all that He commanded.