I wonder what your take home was from the sermon on Sunday? If you haven't had a chance to listen yet – remember you can catch up online any time at cityonahill.co.nz/sermons.
On that note – if you miss any of the Wholehearted Series talks it'd be great if you can catch up on them, because these talks explore the theological beating heart of everything we value as a church.
I'm hoping one of the take homes as we thought about Membership, what it means to be a member of Christ's body, is that our church community is not about you. It's not even about becoming the most thriving and healthy community we can be. It's all about Jesus.
So on that note, I hope you were encouraged to come to church not for what you can get out of it, but primarily to love and serve Jesus, who bought you with his own precious blood.
Remember, four tips for church membership:
Get to know Jesus
Join a Jesus-loving church
Come to church to love Jesus.
Open up to others – share food and share yourself.
Here's 2 more related tips that didn't make it into the sermon.
Firstly, can I encourage you - think especially about how you spend the first 15 minutes after the church service finishes. Think of that time as your time to meet someone new. Rather than go find your friends and catch up on how the week's been, look for someone who's not got anyone to talk to, someone new, or someone you've never had a proper conversation with. Your friends will still be around to chat afterwards. But that's the time when new people or people on the fringes will feel most at a loose end and might leave without having a warm conversation with someone from church. So that's a time to serve them.
Secondly, I heard friendship defined recently as “mutual disclosure”. A true friend is someone who knows the real me – not the layered and hidden me that I present as my public image, but the real me – warts, doubts and all. This kind of friendship doesn't happen overnight but it takes time and trust. So if you're looking for friendship, try finding someone you can open up to, and be that trustworthy person for them to open up to you. It can be scary, but because we're Jesus' people we can accept each other with grace – we're all works in progress.
Keep loving one another for Jesus!
Yours in Him,
Andy Williams