Posts Tagged ‘Acts 2:42’
Please do stop by FredMcKinnon.com for more setlists and sermon recaps from around the world…
Morning
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Come now is the time to worship (Brian Doerkson)
Alles vir my (Afrikaans) (Retief Burger)
Dula le rona (Sotho) (Paul Mpete)
Desert song (Brooke Fraser)
Give us clean hands (Chris Tomlin)
All who are thirsty (Brenton Brown/Glenn Robertson)
How deep the father’s love for us (Stuart Townend)
Firstly let me start by saying how much I love the fact that I live in a country with 11 official language…and how much I love going to a church that realises that and attempts to worship in different languages!
Ronel led worship this morning – was cool having the evening guys leading in the morning service…well, i thought it was cool. Morning service crowd has quite a different vibe from the evening service crowd so it’s very cool for me whenever we do stuff in the morning or when the morning service people visit the evening service.
Speaking of different people doing stuff together, Chris (the pastor) spoke on the church of Acts (chapter 2) in his series of church being community. He talked on unity in diversity…so basically people who are different coming together as one. The term used in the old testament for the trinity is also the term used in the whole the man shall leave his mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one…how cool is that. As the church that is the picture we are supposed to present…different people from different backrounds/ethinicities/tribes/tongues/etc coming together to praise and worship him in our togetherness…living together, sharing together, praying together, showing the world real unity/peace/love…
The vineyard church is very big on the theme of “everyone gets to play”…basically, we have pastors and leaders and etc but everyone is gifted in some way and everyone has a role to play in the church…the pastor has his part and each congregant has their part…if one person doesn’t do his part, we all hurt as the church.
Chris also touched on the church of acts vs the church in Paul’s letters. He talked about how the church in Acts was how it was the intended model (Acts 2: 42ff) and the church in Paul’s letters was the remedial model…the one that God allows because we live in a falled world and get things wrong and etc…and there’s a place for both…but sometimes we get so comfortable and dependent on the remedy that we can’t get back to normal…let’s leave the remedy and get back to health…to realising that church is not the building…we are the church…we are all part of the priesthood…we all have a part to play.
Evening
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For the evening service we had planned to go to the beach and have a jam sesion picnic there but the wind forced us to change our plans. We ended up going to play bingo at a local pub/bar/place and then after that we went to Brett and Val’s place and had game night with crumpets…and lots and lots of laughs…
Love my church family!
- In: being Christ-like | NaBloPoMo | thoughts
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[my thoughts are a bit scattered at the moment, so this one will be very reflective of my scatter-brain-ness...i mean more than my other posts have been]
So the early church…Brett’s favorite verse ever is Acts 2:42ff and as he said this past Sunday, all the enGAGE people have probably got it memorised by now cos he reads it so often in our services.
The early church was great at doing the whole community thing. They pretty much lived together and shared everything and everybody got along and sang kum-ba-ya together all night…ok, maybe i just made that last part up. All this to say, the church grew in thousands…people were joining the Church on a daily basis because of what they saw.
I think though today, there are more people talking about community but we’ve misunderstood it. Community is a big christian buzz word – the next new thing – at the moment (that and fighting injustice…think i already wrote on this one), everybody is wanting to live in community and they are throwing the word around like it’s going out of fashion (irony: it probably will be as soon as the next hypeworthy thing comes along)…but the concept of community isn’t new and buzzworthy…communities have been around as long as people have been around.
Community isn’t about a bunch of people living in a house together…that’s MTV’s “The Real World”, community is about people sharing their lives together. Community isn’t about excluding those outside your “culture” (including race, social class, education, etc), it’s about including them into your circle. Community is not about meeting once a week in a church building, it’s about BEING Church together…everyday.
[Point of clarification, I don't have a problem with getting a house with a bunch of people and living together a la SimpleWay style...in fact I would really dig to do that...what I am saying is that community is so much more than that]
The early church didn’t just meet once a week and discuss the bible, sing a few songs and then go back to their normal lives. They lived together, they lived on the word, they followed the Way, the gave their lives for the Way, they lived a life that made those on the outside go “hey, there is something different there, and I want me a piece of that”. They gave up their “normal lives” and chose to live Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-filled lives to the glory of the Father…and He blessed them, and multiplied them. We sit in our wonderfully comfortable pews and wonder why the world is not turning to the Father, it’s because they don’t see it in those who claim to be following Him. The name “christians” was first used in Acts and was used to describe the followers of the way because they were “little christs”…his mini-me’s…imitators of christ…reflections of Him…that’s what the word means. And that’s why the early church was blessed…that’s why their community grew…because they were following the Way…they were living for the way…it wasn’t about them believing a bunch of stuff, it was about them living out what they said they believed.
That’s what we as the church are missing today: the DAILY taking up our cross and following him part. We need to be Christ-followers. The world needs to see Christ in us. The world needs to see the God who is love through us. The world needs to see the broken being restored…the needy having their needs met…the lonely being loved…the untouchables feeling the comfort of human tough…and as we do that, as we display His love and His character to the world, they will inevitably be drawn to Him.
I’ve mentioned before that I think the church I am currently a part of (VCF/enGAGE) is really good at doing the whole community thing…so in part 4 I’m gonna expand a bit on that.
