Is Your Experience of Church More Like a Movement or a Museum?

Is Your Experience of Church More Like a Movement or a Museum?

 

Good Morning Friends,

 

In England, my family and I visited a museum that once was a church and I wonder if others will visit the places in which we now worship in such a state. Oh we need to honor our past but perhaps more important we need to finish well and teach younger men to be men and younger women to be women. We need to be better at our calling to serve God’s church not so much in an institutional pond but as a body of believer who collectively are part of a living movement in the rolling river of Holy History. Here we need to pray for one another and know that the story of the glory of the church is not to overshadow the glory of God. Friends, we are to be included in God’s continuing creative acts in history… we are to honor both our foundation and our future. But there is challenge in renewal. So, Is Your Experience of Church More Like a Movement or a Museum?

 

Scripture: ¹²For thus says the Lord: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees.

 

Isaiah 66:12 (NRSV) Top of Form

Bottom of Form

 

 

²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,

 

Ephesians 4:23 (NRSV)

¹⁸O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea;

 

Isaiah 48:18 (NRSV)

 

²Do not be conformed to this world,^* but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.^*

 

Romans 12:2 (NRSV)

 

⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Philippians 4:7 (NRSV)

 

Message: I have never met a person that did not want to experience personal peace and because we know the Creator who brings us peace in abundance we need to share our experience. Others need to experience that glad stream of life that flows down from the river of heaven. Friends, God brought the river to our doorstep. The movements of His kingdom are inextricably intertwined with life itself. Our God is a God of History and either we go wherever He is going or we are going nowhere. Here we learn to surrender to God’s sovereignty allowing Him to wash us in the waves of His purposes through the events and circumstances in our lives. Here we learn to cultivate our character with integrity though our friendships. Here we learn to receive the redeemer in our lives and rejoice in the romance and marriage that God has with those who believe in Him. Here we are immersed in the moving and living body of water that defines the family of God.

 

Pray we are filled with the enthusiasm and joy of personal renewal. Pray we have a love of God that is shared in concern for the well-being of others in renewed relationships. Pray the Spirit of God sustains us in a renewal of our missions. Pray we are passionate about living in a way that spills out into the culture of our communities. Pray we are structured in ways that keep us growing. Pray we pour new life into old institutions. Pray we engage youth and young men and women in the foundation of our faith and its future as well.
Pray we together are not building a museum of worship. Pray we never simply go through the motions but are part of the right movement in our time.

 

Blessings,

 

John Lawson