As we reflect on our church mission statement, we see that the last portion of this statement says that we are to “Equip People to Be On Mission.” But what does it mean to be “On Mission”? What will that look like in my personal life? We want to think about what it means to Live On Mission right here, right now, right where you live. My goals for you are to 1) help you overcome any anxiety/fear that you might have about being on mission for God, 2) equip you to serve God according to your giftedness, and 3) enable you to take ownership of your daily—even hourly—walk with Christ, because being On Mission for God requires more than one hour per week!
When we speak of the mission of Christ, our minds most often turn to the end of the Gospel of Matthew or the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles—“The Great Commission.” All four of the gospel accounts provide passages that clearly teach the mission of Christ. Dr. Luke also makes this mission crystal clear in Acts 1:8. In a nutshell, Christ’s mission was to seek and save the lost. But Christ’s mission is not found only in these books—His mission is found throughout Scripture. Our focus for this sermon series will be Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. Today, we will take a moment to explore Paul’s understanding of the mission of Christ and how that His mission should also be our mission!
Last week, we were studying from the first half of Galatians 5. We learned that we have freedom in Christ, but that there’s a paradox in that the freedom we have in Christ is the freedom to do what is right. The problem is that we often choose to do what we want rather than…
In the book of Galatians, Paul is addressing the issue of false teachers called Judaizers. In this text, Paul is encouraging them to stand against these false teachers because they were not called out of slavery to sin to become slaves to legalism. Rather, they were granted freedom in Christ to be able to love…
As we continue in our study through the One Another commands of the New Testament, we will focus our attention on the positive command to “stir one another up to love and good works” in the book of Hebrews. This idea of “stirring one another up” is a positive command, but in Ephesians 6 we…
Pastor Derrick came in view of a call and presented his philosophy of ministry that he has been working off of during his time as the student ministry intern. There is a necessity to grow into mature Christians who are teaching – Derrick’s discussed his goal to plant an excitement towards being a part teaching…
We are studying from Ephesians 4 and we want to focus specifically on the one another statement here in this chapter. In order to do this, we have to spend time looking at everything else in the chapter. We must always understand a text within its context, because a text cannot mean what it never…
Our journey through the One Another statements of the New Testament takes us today to Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. In order to fully understand the original intent of this passage, we must consider the context–or the text that goes with our text. When we do this, we discover that Paul is focusing…
The church should be “a group of individuals who, despite their differences, are willing to show love for one another through putting the well-being of others first. This will always mean speaking the truth and acting on the truth, but doing so in love. It will also mean having the humility to admit when we…
Brennan Manning pointed out, “One of the most shocking contradictions in the American church is the intense dislike many disciples of Jesus have for themselves. They are more displeased with their own shortcomings than they would ever dream of being with someone else’s. They are sick of their own mediocrity and disgusted by their inconsistency.”…