Sunday was a great day at church. We concluded our Lifepoint 2.0 series and also had a delicious lunch of yummy italian food afterward to celebrate and thank all of those who worked so hard to make our new building possible. They showed a slide show of the before and after pictures and it is just amazing to sit back and realize how much work was done over just a few months time! There was this one picture that amazes me every time.....it's one of a huge pile of dirt sitting beside the toilet in the bathroom. The dirt is way higher than the toilet! It's crazy how much you have to tear up in order to put it all back together the right way. I guess that could be a metaphor for our lives sometimes, right?! In fact, that reminds me that our Pastor told us that he has been praying for God to totally mess us up.
So, our sermon was about what our core values are and how we have to partner together to fulfill our mission of helping people point their lives up, out, and in. We have to decide if we are just going to attend church or be the church. Our talents are on loan from God, to be invested in the lives of others, not to just be consumed by ourselves. We also need community. We weren't meant to do this alone. We want to be a part of what God is doing. The church in Acts 2 did everything together. You will see that word "together" repeated over and over in verses 44-47. They were unified around the gospel.
God wants us to be unified. Satan wants us to be divided. Just think about the way the churches in each town are. You can see them being divided. Also, we have a "me" version of Christianity. We shop for churches to meet "my" needs. That's not the right approach. We should look for a place, a church, where God can use us. One where we can contribute and sacrifice our lives in. That should be what we look for when we look for a church.
Having a relationship with God has to be more than just a personal relationship. It should be a shared relationship in community with others. We also talked about church "membership". Because our church is so new, we don't have any kind of membership yet. Our Pastor said he doesn't really like that term anyways because it implies that we are joining the church for its benefits and that's not what church is all about. He said more than likely ours will be called a "partnership". Philippians 1:3-6 talks about partnership in the gospel and about how we are in this together. We want our church to be less like a country club membership and more like a combat zone. Being the church is the greatest cause on the planet!
Lifepoint's core values will be these:
1. Love people when they least expect it and least deserve it. We won't accept His love, yet turn our nose up at others' sin.
2. Invest and invite.
3. Life-change happens best in small groups.
4. Service over "serve us".
5. Have a blast! Being a Christian is not about what we are against or being boring or down all the time. Being a Christian is about what we are united around, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our pledge is that we will do anything short of sin to reach people without Christ. We will be all things to all men (1 Corinthian 9:19).
We will accomplish more with less. A great example of this is our new church building. It's not fancy or extravagant, but it's functional, it works, and it's enough. We will also accomplish more together than alone. We want to help plant new churches, not build an empire that will seat 10,000. We will take the message of the gospel to places where it needs to be taken. If we do these things, we will make a difference.
So, our Pastor asked us:
Will you partner with us to help people to point their lives up, out, and in?
What's your next step? Some people need to be baptized, some need to serve, some need to get plugged into a lifegroup. We are complete in Christ, but when we do all of these things (pointing our life up, out, and in), our life will be in symmetry. The challenge is to find the next step......find one thing that you can do, not try to do everything all at once and then get burned out.
God loves you too much to leave you right where you are today!
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5 comments:
great post. sounds like a great church. and it spoke to me about things going on in our own small church.
I love reading what you learn at church. "We have to decide if we are just going to attend church or be the church. Our talents are on loan from God, to be invested in the lives of others, not to just be consumed by ourselves." I love this!!! Being unified around the Gospel, a shared relationship in community, is God's idea of His family joining hands to bring the rest of the world to join us. I loved everything about this post!! This is my heartbeat at the moment. "Being One in Christ!! All of us together!! Thanks for sharing this Kristin!
Such a good word! Wish I could attend your church with you! I love the pray about us being messed up. That needs to be our desire!
Isn't it sad to see Christian churches divided? Been like that since the days we read about in the Bible. Our church has membership and we have classes we had to take and they teach us about it being a partnership - both sides coming together and doing it together. I don't think many people think of it that way. Your pastor is right. It's more of a partnership. I was glad to hear our church look at it that way too
I always enjoy reading your recaps of your church service. It's like getting my second message in the week :)
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