August 12, 2016

“The Church God Wants Us To Be”

We will never change the world by just going to church; we will only change it by being the church!  So what does it mean to be the church? God calls the church “ecclesia,” or His “called out ones.”  This means the church is made up of those who have responded to God to leave Satan’s kingdom of darkness in order to live in Christ’s kingdom of light. To be the church also means we show the world what God looks like as we share with this sin-broken world the hope found only in Jesus Christ. Lately, I’ve been captured by Revelation 11:15 – “The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ and He will reign forever and ever.” To be the church also means we embody the essence of God’s coming kingdom.  Maybe that’s why Jesus told us to pray, “Thy kingdom come!” So what kind of church rightly embodies God’s coming kingdom? In his insightful article, “Facing a Post-Christian Culture,” Bruce Ashford notes that churches tend to choose one of four possibilities: The Bomb Shelter Church, The Chameleon Church, The Ultimate Fighter Church, or The Kingdom Preview Church. I hope you can be with us this Sunday as we dig a little deeper to discover which one of these is the church God wants us to be! With anticipation, pastor jamie