Discipleship/Worship

Last week we looked at Jesus' words about discipleship. This week we will be looking at a short story about David and worship.

With discipleship, we looked at Jesus' clear expectations. He is asking us to hold nothing back. If our family has been first in our lives, he is saying they aren't any longer. If education was first, or work was first, or our sweet cars were first, they are no longer in that spot. Essentially, discipleship is the decision that God is your first priority.

This coming week, we are looking at an aspect of discipleship. Worship, in my opinion, is sacrifice. It can be corporate and it can be individual. It is essentially our waste of time on God. What do you think about worship?

Mission

This week we are going to be looking at what "mission" is. It isn't so much about "missions" or "mission trips" or anything like that. The way I see it, the world is in disarray. People are full of hatred, sadness and pain. God created a good world with good creatures. Somewhere things went wrong.

And this is where the mission of God comes in. God is sad that people are estranged, both to himself and to others. So God continued creating, this time he created a plan to bring his beloved children back to himself. He came up with a way to be a righteous judge and a loving savior all at the same time.

So now, I believe the Mission of God in the world is being manifested in the church. Sometimes we do it well, but most of the time we do it very poorly. We have altar calls and we invited people to "get saved" but then we have very little follow through on what it means to be continually saved. God wants to continue saving us, day by day.

What do you think about the Mission of God? How can we do a better job?

Church

This week we are starting a series on church, what is it, what should it be, how do we get there? Hopefully we will all take some steps that will make us into a better church, and hopefully we will all learn some about what it means to be the church.

In theology, this is called 'ecclesiology' and in my opinion the American church has a very weak view of what it means to be the church. We really drop the ball on quite a few things, so here is a basic rundown of the areas we will be looking at.

Mission. God's mission, our mission. What does it mean to be church on a mission, what kind of mission are we trying to accomplish, how do we do that? Everything else we say about the church has to do with God's mission in the world.

Discipleship. God's goal for every person is that they become a disciple of Jesus. How can we be good disciples? What separates a good disciple from a bad one?

Service. Can we truly be disciples and not seek to serve? How did Jesus approach leadership? How does this flesh itself out in life?

Worship. What does real worship look like? How can we be a church that celebrates God? Can we truly worship without sacrifice?

Fellowship. Do we have to like one another? What if we don't?

Hopefully this series gets us thinking and doing what it means to really be the church and not act like one. Hopefully we can be a church on the journey, and hopefully we can minister from our brokenness not from pride or anything like that.