That Church
Philippi
September 1, 2019 • Ryan Hartzell
The Church isn’t a building, it’s a people. It isn’t something we go to, it’s who we are. It’s what we do. Jesus came to create a movement that would change the world, a people that would become outposts of God’s kingdom on Earth, the family of God. Like every family, this one would have clear identifiers, family traits. And the greatest one of all was made clear by Jesus: our love. We wouldn’t be known by our beliefs; we would be known for what we gave, for thinking of ourselves less and others more. We would be known by a word that before Christ was an insult. We would be humble.
Ephesus
August 25, 2019 • Trevor Barton
Few churches had the dynamic beginnings, excellent leadership, and influence to match Ephesus. Founded by Paul, led for a time by Timothy, and the church of John. Paul commended them for their excellence, and most importantly their love. 40 years later something had happened. Something shifted. They had all the makings of a great church but they lost the most important thing.
Corinth
August 11, 2019 • Trevor Barton
Jesus prayed that His people would be unified, that we would be known by our love, a culture-defying example of unity in diversity. It’s the only prayer Jesus prayed that we have the power to answer because He knew that our credibility with those outside of the Church is directly linked to our unity inside the Church.
Antioch
August 4, 2019 • Trevor Barton
We’ve all encountered people that we look at and say to ourselves, “I want to be like them.” On the flip side, we’ve all met people and quickly came to the realization that we don’t want to be like them. The same is true of churches. There are good churches and bad churches. The question is: what kind of church do we want to be? How we answer that is important because knowing the church we want to be and don’t want to be helps us to be the church the time requires us to be and God desires us to be.