During His time on earth, Jesus often said to people “Follow Me.” That same invitation is extended to us still today. But, what exactly was He saying? There are many opinions of what it means to be a disciple, but Jesus had something specific in mind.

This week we began a new series where we will be exploring The Discipleship Challenge. Our desire is to rediscover what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. We’re challenge some commonly held assumptions about discipleship in the church today, and hopefully we will be challenged by the words of Jesus.

Today was all about laying a foundation. Not only for the series, but also the foundation of our relationship with Jesus and what it means to be a follower of His. Discipleship is a choice, and it isn’t always easy, but the burden is light (Matthew 11) when we join with Jesus.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

This past weekend was the concluding Sunday of our missions week. Not only were we able to hear about what God is doing in the country of Mexico, we were also reminded from Matthew 5:14-16 of the importance of being light in whatever context we find ourselves in.

We gathered and celebrated the saving grace of Jesus through singing, prayer, the Word, giving, and being together.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

This week we kicked off a week long focus on missions. As part of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, spreading the love of Christ around the world is a big deal for us. In fact, the CMA started as an alliance of people committed to the worldwide spread of the Gospel.

We take intentional steps to continually remind people of who we are and the importance of the Great Commission, including what it means for each of us. Being points of light is important not only around the world, but in our own neighborhoods and communities.

We will have a number of events this week, and we began by having a retired missionary to Mexico share about his experiences as a missionary, but how he continues to see God at work around the world.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

We began this year by worshiping together and remembering Christ. Our focus was on the centrality of Christ in and for all part of life. Instead of doing a lot of stuff to live “for” God, let’s focus this year on living “with” God and allowing all we do to flow out of that in our lives.

Our scripture focus was drawn from a number of biblical passages including Colossians 1:15-19, John 1:1-5, Revelation 4:11, Ephesians 1:3, Epheisans 2:8-9, John 10:10 and Micah 6:6-12.

We were a smaller group today. I had the opportunity to deliver the message, and so I had a guest worship leader today.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

Once every 5-6 years (depending on how leap years fall) Christmas Day falls on a Sunday. This year (2011) was one of those years. Our church chose to focus on a Christmas morning service this year instead of a Christmas Eve service.

As we gathered, we not only celebrated the birth of our Savior, but wrapped up our Advent series where we have been focusing on some of the things that came because of Christ’s birth. The final element was the coming of light that shined into the darkness of the world. Jesus lived a life of light. In fact, if you stop and think about it, it seems that the light of Jesus was noticed much more when we was doing the things of God as opposed to not doing the things of the world. That concept has great implications for us.

The Light of the world was born so that we could see the way back to God and become lights ourselves.

Here’s how we took time to remember and celebrate that: Continue Reading…