At Odds With The World’s Social Order

What is a Servant?

March 26, 2023 • Pastor Ben Pitney • Acts 17:24–25

God is not served with our hands or mouths, arms, legs, brains, gifts, or anything else. God is not served, as though He needed anything. Most people serve as though God needed them in our churches, and by doing this, the act of trying to honor Him depreciates Him. God is disparaged and denigrated, even depreciated and trivialized when we serve Him as though He needed anything! A servant of God understands that he is the getter, not the giver.

What Is A Disciple?

March 19, 2023 • Pastor Mat Miller • Hebrews 5, Colossians 1, Colossians 2

The standard definition of “disciple” (noun) is someone who adheres to the teachings of another. It is a follower or a learner. Someone who takes up the ways of someone else. Applied to Jesus, a disciple is someone who learns from him to live like him or someone who, because of God’s grace, conforms his or her words and ways to the words and ways of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus means to serve like him. It means to serve, primarily by engaging with your brothers and sisters in Christ and serving them in acts of love, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it is at odds with the world’s social order and expectations. Disciples of Jesus are servants who love one another. Jesus says to His disciples, “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.” This means that Jesus’s disciples are on a mission. It means, in the broadest sense, that they are empowered to step into this world as his witnesses. A disciple of Jesus makes disciples of Jesus.

What is a Worshiper?

March 12, 2023 • Pastor Kevin Canterbury • Matthew 15:8–9

To follow Jesus means to worship Him exclusively. This is at the core of Jesus’s ministry. As He told the woman at the well, the Father is seeking true worshipers — not fake worshipers, but true worshipers — people who worship him in spirit and truth. If we want to follow Jesus, we must worship God — through Jesus, because he is our peacemaker and Jesus is God. A worshiper understands that the worship is not about himself.