2018-08-05 - Thoughts

What do you do as a church? What do we currently do...

If you are a sporting club, you might do a bunch of things, but at the end of the day, you are there for your sport and everything else supports that...

Thoughts

Need to open with the video of “What do you do” as a pastor.

Revised Common Lectionary Proper 13

he appointed some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, others to be pastors and teachers

These people would all have really different ways of operating… What does each do? They would all annoy each other… Have different passions, different, approaches...

Revised Common Lectionary Proper 13

13And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ’s full stature.

What do we take from this… That there are things that we have to learn from each other...

Revised Common Lectionary Proper 13

15Instead, by speaking the truth in a spirit of love, we must grow up in every way to Christ, who is the head.

All of these different ways of serving all point to the one person… Jesus

The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)

The one body composed of diverse members can build “itself up in love” (4:16) only if believers “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (4:15).

The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)

For Paul, God not only accepts but also regenerates sinners by grace. Paul suggests this by means of his repeated use of the verb peripatēsai, “to walk,” as a metaphor for the Christian life.

God loves us as we are but loves us too much to leave us that way

The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)

The God-centered, trinitarian character of the church’s unity emerges overwhelmingly in 4:4–6. There can be “one body” only because there is “one Spirit” (4:4). There can be one church only because the “one Spirit … one Lord … [and] one God and Father” are three Persons who together are one God. This passage combined with parallel passages suggests that while Paul did not formulate a fully developed doctrine of the Trinity, he did conceive of God in a trinitarian way that is suggestive for the unity of the church.

Sisters and brothers in God’s family… Should I use “This I believe” from Hillsong?

Emphasis that the reason we use creeds and things when we affirm our faith, when we do baptisms, etc, is to remind ourselves of this shared identity. Not just with those who follow Jesus today but those who have come before us...

The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians 3. Provision for Spiritual Health and Growth (4:7–16)

Whereas in 1 Cor. 12:4–11 the “varieties of gifts” are the diverse ministries allocated by the Spirit to individual members of the church, together with the ability to exercise those ministries, here the “gifts” are the persons who exercise those ministries and who are said to be “given” by the ascended Christ to his people to enable them to function and develop as they should. It is not suggested that such “gifts” are restricted to those that are specifically named; those that are named exercise their ministries in such a way as to help other members of the church to exercise their own respective ministries (no member is left without some kind of service to perform).