From time to time I am asked by some in our church what I mean when I repeatedly declare that we are – and we must be – a Gospel-Centered Church. I think it may be the hyphen that confuses people.

To be “something”-centered is simply to focus on the relation an individual or a church has to a central value.  While there could be any number of things at the center of a persons or organizations values, in our case the point of emphasis is the Gospel (or the Cross).

As for what it means to be Gospel-centered, as an individual or as a church, I don’t think I could answer better than Joe Thorn did in a post titled: Gospel-Centered.  One of the things Joe points out is:

[T]he gospel-centered life is a life where a Christian experiences a growing personal reliance on the gospel that protects him from depending on his own religious performance and being seduced and overwhelmed by idols.