Welcome to the Victory Blog

Twenty years ago, as we were starting this church, we were faced with a challenge: Where do we locate it? Out in the suburbs? In the city? Then, as it is for the most part now, the Body of Christ (and the nation as a whole) was divided between those who focus on moral issues/righteousness and social issues/justice. Churches located in urban areas have typically been great champions of justice issues, but many have ignored moral issues. Conversely, churches in the suburbs have typically placed a heavy emphasis on issues of righteousness, but ignored pressing social issues. And rather than working together, these two factions, if you will, have often worked to invalidate and tear each other down.

This is NOT what God intended for his Church!  It is supposed to be a positive influence in BOTH of these areas. And so, we decided to locate Victory somewhere in between the urban and suburban areas of Metro Atlanta. This was a risky move; many said this location would be death to the church. But God wanted us to be a bridge between the two groups of people and the two types of churches and the two focuses. He put a vision and passion in our hearts to work toward reconciliation between the races and cultures…and that can only happen when we are founded on both righteousness AND justice.

Righteousness = living right; conforming to a moral code of conduct prescribed by God’s Word.

Justice = doing right; doing the right thing for other people; correcting the injustices of society; defending the poor and marginalized; caring about and for people who’ve had injustice done in their lives.

We need a church that is based on righteousness AND justice. It’s when these two things are working together that the throne of God is established. Every church should champion BOTH.

In order to illustrate this, let me mention two particularly hot topics on which much of the church in America is divided today:

1. Homosexuality
2. Immigration

What kind of thoughts did those two words stir up in you? Judgment? Compassion? I’ve preached whole sermons on both of these topics previously, so I’m not going to get into them here. Listen to what I said about them in my message this past weekend, or listen those messages in the HOT TOPICS series and you’ll get the point. We need to interact with these issues (and many others like them) from the standpoints of both righteousness and justice.

We as a church have been strategically placed right on the dividing line between urban and suburban, righteousness and justice, placing us in a unique position to address some of the key issues in our city and people’s lives.  But, in order to make it work, each of us must:

• Seek to understand rather than be understood.
• Let the Word be our standard for living and loving.
• Treat others the way we would want to be treated.