Last Sunday I had the opportunity to preach at the Vessel in Oviedo. Their pastor – Louis Tamburro – is a Gospel focused, hungry for Jesus, grateful for forgiveness, true, friend. Louis asked me to preach on: Living the gospel daily. I did so from Romans 12:1-2. You can listen to it here: http://www.vesselorlando.net. It was GREAT to be with you Vessel. Praying for you – may God continue to build a Gospel centered community at Vessel. Thanks for your warm welcome and encouragement!
The below is written by Louis Tamburro
Vessel is the name of the church plant that I’m leading right now and it’s located in the UCF area. I’ve been called to reach one of the hardest to reach demographic groups in all the world, the younger generation. UCF is the heartland of the younger generation considering that it’s one of the fastest growing and largest college campuses in all of America and while most churches are scrambling to reach the younger generation, we aren’t. We are simply preaching the Gospel!
So many churches are trying to figure out what the younger generation loves, what they like, and off they go getting their skinny vanilla latte machines and smoothie bars installed in the church with the hope of attracting young adults, but that’ not us. That’s not Vessel.
We want to preach the timeless truths of the Gospel. God’s message hasn’t changed since the beginning of creation. It’s always been the Gospel.
As a church planter it’s always tempting to want to appeal to the culture you are trying to reach, but I said going into this thing that I’m going to build this church on the God of the Gospel and nothing else. “Yeah, but that’s not gonna attract the younger generation! You need to make things more appealing to them!” Gag me!
Remember Peter’s sermon in Acts 2? Wasn’t exactly a seeker friendly message, yet 2,000 people were cut to the heart. There was nothing flashy about his message. There was no flashy illustration, video clip, or disco dancing Jesus to entertain the masses. It was nothing but the pure Gospel of Jesus and God honored that preaching by cutting 2,000 people to the heart. Our job is to get the Gospel message out, it’s God’s job to do the rest and that’s exactly what we are doing at Vessel.
At Vessel we are over this consumerism nonsense where we have to find something attractional to draw people to the church. The Gospel is attractional enough for us and we are reaching the younger generation at Vessel by preaching the Gospel and offering God glorifying music every week, nothing more.
We are 4 months into our launch of Vessel and already we have over 300 adults in attendance with over 50% of those being the younger generation. It’s happening. The Gospel is advancing over here and it’s not advancing because we set up a latte machine. It’s advancing because we are preaching the Gospel, offering God glorifying music, and God has decided to honor that. So forget the lattes and PREACH THE GOSPEL!
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God bless you, Louis, and Tim; Stay the course and PREACH THE GOSPEL. Plenty of other churches doing everything else. Thanks, guys,