Why we are doing what we are doing.Matthew 22:34-40, 20:26-28
Intro…I’m sure to the average person looking for a church it can be confusing…so many options…
Text: Matthew 22:34-40, 20:26-28
Big Picture: PLove God, love others and serve the world.
Here we are, almost 4 months into Crossroads.
• How did we get here? (Easter, combined service, pleased nobody, Look what God has done! )
• Where do we want to go? (We’d like to see our entire church grow healthy, both the contemporary service and the traditional. What a great opportunity we have to offer both!)
• How do we get there? By keeping it simple: Love God, love others and serve the world.
Let’s break that down:
We love God through our worship of Him.
• The Sunday morning service is still the primary front door to most churches.
• Through our corporate worship we learn the value of setting aside time for God, koinonia, communion, prayer, teaching, fellowship etc.
• It should be both our duty and our pleasure to worship God.
We love others through our small groups/bible studies.
• Right now we offer two mid week small groups…
• We will create new small groups as the need arises.
• We can be accountably in these groups and really get to know each other, pray for each other etc.
• I know it’s hard to get out on a weeknight…but it’s worth it!
Serve the world.
• That can start locally (SOS, outreach events etc.) and eventually expand to missions trips around the world.
• How many of you have been to other countries on mission trips?
• Be creative with how you serve others. It can happen in so many ways on a small scale and a large scale.
• Start in your home, your neighborhood, your work place, your school, your community.
• The power of service can never be denied.
• Jesus sets the ultimate example in Matt. 20:26-28
In our text today, the Pharisees tried to trick Jesus into making things more complicated than necessary.
• This expert in the law, a scribe said, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?”
• They were actually more interested in debating Jesus than learning the truth.
• They had over 600 laws they were trying to keep, so to them which one was the most important was huge.
• Jesus basically said, “Love God and love others.”
• The entire OT hangs on these two commandments.
• If we can love God, we’ll do the things that please God and live a morally upstanding life and naturally keep the other commandments.
• This is a positive spin on God’s laws instead of worrying about what we should not do.
• If we can love others, then we won’t be so selfish, and that naturally leads to wanting to:
• Serve others.
• Sometimes we want to make the Christian faith such a complicated deal.
• It doesn’t need to be. That’s why I’m trying to keep our mission as a church as short and simple as possible
• It’s a mission statement you all can easily memorize and repeat.
• That way we all know where we are going and we can track peoples spiritual growth or discipleship through those three basic steps.
• We always want to be moving people through those stages of Christian maturity. Each step builds on the other.
• The reason? It’s because we naturally tend to shift towards complacency and what is comfortable. Change is never easy.
• Sources of complacency. (This is what we want to avoid in our own Christian lives and in the life of our church.)
Nov. 14th Outreach
• Skip Frye, Jay Adams
• Article in The Coast News
• Flyers to houses, on business windows etc.
• New sermon series that Sunday, “Search for the Vintage Jesus.”
• Social networking (Please help!)
• Website
• We want people to know we are here, that we’ve made changes.
Plant new churches
Let’s keep the vision right on front of us as to why we are doing all of this.
• We want to see people become Christians and live their lives fully for him.
• It’s about a movement and getting people to follow Jesus.
Conclusion: Dancing nut video
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