God’s Design Week 1

We are beginning to look at God’s design for His Church.

Today, we will begin to look at God’s design for the Church.

Prayer

Hook-My initial engagement plan. There are many times we plan things only for them to not work out. “Man plans, God laughs.”

God set a design for His Church. His plan started with the disciples after Christ’s ascension. However, over time mankind has tried to switch things up to become more “relevant”. Along the way, many followers of Jesus have lost sight of the goal. There are two main passages we are going to look at this morning. The first is in Acts.

Acts 2:42-47

There are four vital parts of God’s design we can find in here. Let’s see what the design was and how we have gone against it.

1. Biblical Nourishment vs. “Motivational Speech” mode

a. God’s Word needs to be heard and done accurately.

b. God’s Word is encouraging, but if we only teach encouragement, we are in danger of teaching “feel good” sermons.

c. When we hear God’s Word, it should call for a change.

d. Non-believers are hungry for authentic teaching.

2. Loving Fellowship vs. “Sub-Division life”

a. Are you in fellowship with God through Jesus?

b. We need to rely of each other and live life together and it is more than just simply coming to church and Bible study.

c. The followers broke bread and prayed for each other.

d. Devotion is a two-way street that takes work from both.

3. Vibrant Worship vs. “Go through motions”

a. The disciples were together.

b. Vibrant worship does not mean the newest and best music. Vibrant worship is about an internal excitement to worship God.

C. COVID We should have the same feeling throughout every week, and not check church off a checklist.

d. Thom Rainer, “The typical church member” shift p. 23

4. Word and Deed outreach

a. We must share the gospel with others. Either through inviting people to church or sharing our story and the gospel.

b. We have frequently talked about the importance of our story. Remember, “Everyone can’t reach everybody, but everybody can reach somebody.” We also need to preach the gospel to others.

c. If you are unsure about how to share the gospel, we will be talking about it in a few weeks that will give you an easy and practical way to share the gospel.

d. We need to find ways to love our community well. When churches get into survival mode, they tend to focus inward which is understandable. However, we should look outward to reach others. (Nickerson?)

There is hope. God’s design gives us four purposes for His Church, and if a church follows these, they can be a healthy church. The purposes are Ministry, Worship, Discipleship, and Evangelism. We will spend the next four weeks looking at each specific function and learn what we can do. When churches begin to live out these purposes, they become a Kingdom focused church. A church that focuses on the Kingdom of God instead of becoming another “great” church.

MAIN POINT: GOD’S DESIGN FOR THE CHURCH STARTS WITH BEING KINGDOM FOCUSED

This leads us to our second passage: Eph. 4:1-16

3 qualities of a Kingdom-focused church

1. Healthy

a. Love each other

i. 5 qualities in first few verses.

b. Be unified in the big things

i. Doctrine, Mission, and Structure

c. Growing Disciples

i. Use your Gifts

ii. Everybody can do something. No one can do everything.

d. A healthy church is not revealed by their attendance. However, a kingdom focused church should be growing.

2. Growing

a. Spiritual growth should be taking place within a kingdom focused church.

b. Yes, throughout the book of Acts we see that numbers were added, but the disciples didn’t focus on it. They clung to each other.

c. A church can have 400 people and not be focused on the Kingdom of God.

3. Reaching Acts 1:8

a. We need to be reaching out to the community. A question we should ask if we want to be a kingdom focused church is: What does our church do that eternally impacts our community?

b. Jesus had two commands before he left the earth. They are summed up as this, “Go and be my witnesses.”

So, what should we do in response to this? We need to know that we are the ministers, and that God is not done using us. Remember, the church isn’t a building. It should be a movement of God’s people furthering His Kingdom! We can only achieve this by structuring the church around God’s Design.