Knit Together

This morning I want to talk about knitting.

In a NYTimes article from 2018, Alanna Okun encourages people to give knitting a chance. However, she points to the fact that there are a few reasons for why people try, fail, and never try again. One such reason “...new knitters give up is that projects can sometimes drag on, so try to give yourself a deadline for your first....” Also, she says “accept that it’s O.K. to be bad at something when you’re first starting out. As adults we so rarely try things we’ve never experienced before, and there’s truly something liberating in sucking for a week or two before finally getting the hang of it” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/smarter-living/how-to-start-knitting.html).

Another reason new knitters give up is that projects can sometimes drag on, so try to give yourself a deadline for your first: maybe you’ll want to wear the completed item on an upcoming trip or to give it to someone for their birthday.

Have any of you ever tried to take up knitting? I haven’t, but it’s something that I’d like to try my hand at someday. Now, depending on who you talk to you’ll either be encouraged and inspired to take a crack at knitting or you’ll give up before you ever start. And according to a NYTimes article written by Alanna Okun there are a few reasons for why people try, fail, and never try knitting again. One such reason “...new knitters give up is that projects can sometimes [take too long to complete], so try to give yourself a deadline for your first [project]...” Also, she says something that is counterintuitive to our success-driven culture. Okun says that we should make failure an option. She says that “as adults we so rarely try things we’ve never experienced before, and there’s truly something liberating in sucking for a week or two before finally getting the hang of it” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/smarter-living/how-to-start-knitting.html).

Last, accept that it’s O.K. to be bad at something when you’re first starting out. As adults we so rarely try things we’ve never experienced before, and there’s truly something liberating in sucking for a week or two before finally getting the hang of it.

Listen to these words from the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesian believers.

**************TRANSITION HERE****************

11 And He Himself (Jesus) gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers…Paul tells us that there are three reasons for why Jesus did this.

This morning I want to talk about knitting.

The New King James Version Chapter 4

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

for the equipping of the saints

This morning I want to talk about knitting.

Have any of you ever tried to take up knitting? I haven’t, but it’s something that I’d like to try my hand at someday. Now, depending on who you talk to you’ll either be encouraged and inspired to take a crack at knitting or you’ll give up before you ever start.

for the work of ministry,

Alanna Okun wrote an article for the NYTimes on the subject of knitting where she states her reasons for why people try, fail, and never try knitting again. One such reason “...new knitters give up is that projects can sometimes [take too long to complete], so try to give yourself a deadline for your first [project]...” Also, she says something that is counterintuitive to our success-driven culture. Okun says that we should make failure an option. She says that “as adults we so rarely try things we’ve never experienced before, and there’s truly something liberating in sucking for a week or two before finally getting the hang of it.”

for the edifying of the body of Christ,

Listen to these words from the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesian believers.

Not only does he tell us why Jesus did this, but he also tells us how long He intended for this to be in effect. 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; If you have looked at the Church at all today then you know that we still have work to do in these areas. Now, why does Paul bring this up? 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, instead Paul says, we must 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love ().

11 And He Himself (Jesus) gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers…Paul tells us that there are three reasons for why Jesus did this.

There it is! Knitting! “Knitting is a process of using long needles to interlink or knot a series of loops made by one continuous thread. Each loop or knot connects to another one...” (https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-textile-knitting-process.html). That last part is so important. The connecting of each loop to another loop. The Bible also speaks about knitting, not the connecting of loops, but the connecting of lives. When we talk about being joined/knit together we are talking about forming real and lasting community within the Body of Christ. So how can we be this kind of a community? How can we form bounds with each other that knits our hearts together for the sake of the Gospel? I believe there are a few ways this can happen.

for the equipping of the saints

In order for us to be knit together in community, first we must be invited. The invitation we extend to others must be inspired by the invitation we have received from the Lord. In Jesus invites us with these words, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That’s exactly what He did for a lady named Sofia Quintanilla.

In Jesus invites us with these words, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That’s exactly what He did for Sofia Quintanilla.

Sofia Quintanilla is a survivor of sexual abuse and now a Bible professor in San Jose, Costa Rica. She came to faith as a little girl and credits the gospel for helping her heal from the trauma of sexual abuse. In her doctoral research, which focuses on Biblical theology of hospitality, Sofia says that she discovered God’s heart. “He has a kingdom and He invites humanity to come into His kingdom” (BSM, p11). This is exactly what we find in the parable of the marriage feast (, NKJV).

In this parable a king invites people to the marriage feast of his son and the ones who were originally invited rejected the king’s invitation. They even went so far as to kill the king’s messengers. Well, the king retaliates by having those murderers killed and then he invites a second group. He invites people from every walk of life and they gladly accept the king’s invitation and the wedding hall is filled up! The people whom the king invited, they had nothing to offer the king. They had done nothing worthy of being invited. The king graced upon them an opportunity to have fellowship with Him and His Son.

Now here’s the thing, this type of real community is Holy Spirit – led. “Efforts to organize community artificially can only result in ugly, lifeless, caricatures. Only when we are empty and open to the Living One – to the Spirit – can [He] bring about the same life among us as [He] did among the early Christians” (Arnold, 1995).

Being invited into a fellowship, to have our lives knit together in Biblical community is an act of grace. It’s the understanding that we, sinful and imperfect as we are, have been asked by the Most Holy and Perfect Lord of all creation to come into His kingdom and have community with Him. That is what we celebrate at this table every week, that we have accepted the Lord’s invitation to have our sins completely wiped away and now we live in community with our Lord, but this isn’t the end of the story for us. “The welcome a community offers to visitors is an extension of the welcome its members offer each other. If our heart is open to our brothers and sisters, it will also be open to others” (Called to Community, p309). God is calling us into community with each other, that our hearts and lives would be so knit together that it would cause spiritual maturity in us and that the church would edify itself in the love of God.

And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles (, NKJV).

.

So listen, before we can have community with each other we must first have communion with God. That is what we celebrate at this table every week, that we have accepted the Lord’s invitation to have our sins completely wiped away and now we live in community with our Lord, but this isn’t the end of the story for us. God is calling us into community with each other, that our hearts and lives would be so knit together that it would cause spiritual maturity in us and that the church would edify itself in the love of God. Like Sofia Quintanilla says, “We have to transmit God’s welcoming heart to our congregation” (BSM, p11). But remember, ultimately knitting lives together, building community is the work of the Spirit of God. It was God who appointed leaders to equip the saints who would do the work of ministry so that the Body of Christ could be edified. “Efforts to organize community artificially can only result in ugly, lifeless, caricatures. Only when we are empty and open to the Living One – to the Spirit – can [He] bring about the same life among us as [He] did among the early Christians” (Arnold, 1995).

You can’t live in community by yourself. You need other people to come alongside of you and share your life. It’s the way that we are designed.

You

Second, in order to be knit together in Biblical community we must be involved in each others’ lives. Now for some us that might be a scary thought. You might be saying to yourself, “But I don’t like people in my business.” When say that we need to be involved in each others’ lives, I’m not talking about airing your dirty laundry, instead I believe this is about connecting at the heart. Let me try to explain, from scripture, why “…choosing to orient our lives around community for the sake of the gospel” is so vitally important (Common Book of Prayer, p56). Look at again. Paul says that the whole body is joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, by the effective working of every part doing its share. This he says, causes the body to grow and edifying itself in love.

As a church, as a congregation, we are disjointed without community! According to Stanley Grenz, “Church exists whenever believers join together with the purpose of walking with one another as God’s people, under Christ’s authority, and by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit” (Stanley Grenz, Created for Community, p210). Not when we are hanging on to our independence and limiting our interactions to a couple hours a week (Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People, p88). It’s what Howard Thurman calls “contact without fellowship” (Jesus and the Disinherited, p). The Body of Christ suffers without us being intimately involved in the lives of one another. Here’s what it could look like when our lives are knit together.

Look at again. Paul says that the whole body is joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, by the effective working of every part doing its share. This he says, causes the body to grow and edifying of itself in love

Let’s read 7.

44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, 45 and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.

46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved ().

46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

The New King James Version. (1982). ().

Listen, community is better when other people are involved. Why do you think there are so many coffee shops around town? Considering that there are only a handful of ways that you can brew coffee there’s got to be deeper reason and I believe the reason is because these coffee shops create spaces for people to connect. As a matter-of-fact, whenever I am preparing to preach I spend my prep time in a coffee shop. “There is something to be said for a ‘theology of place’ - choosing to orient our lives around community...” but doing it “..for the sake of the Gospel” (Common Prayer: Pocket Edition, p56). The truth of the matter is that WE have the most suitable place for community to happen. We were designed for the achievement of this end. We have to be involved in each other’s lives otherwise we run the risk of watering down the Gospel.

Paul told the church in Colossians that he wanted their hearts to be encouraged by being knit together in love (). Love for the church is our bat-signal to the world that we belong to Christ ().

We have actually created some opportunities for you guys to get started building community right here. For the past several years K-groups (Kiononia, fellowship groups), have served as a place where we welcome people from our church family into our homes and into our lives so that we can be who God has called us to be. Some of these folks may actually be strangers, the first time we ever meet them is when they show up to K-Group for the first time, but we show them hospitality. Our hearts are knit together when we are inviting our brothers and sisters to form relationships with us by extending the same level of grace to them that the Lord has extended to us. Our lives are connected when we are involved in each other’s lives and when these things are happening God grows the church.

For the past several years K-groups have served as a place where we welcome people from our church family into our homes and into our lives so that we can be who God has called us to be. Some of these folks may actually be strangers, the first time we ever meet them is when they show up to K-Group for the first time, but we show them hospitality. We treat them like a native born member, like they have always been a part of our group - with Love and Action.

Our hearts are knit together when we are inviting our brothers and sisters to form relationships with us by extending the same level of grace to them that the Lord has extended to us. Our lives are connected when we are involved in each other’s lives and when these things are happening God grows the church.

Community happens through invitation and participation and the outflow of this is that the church experiences an increase. The church multiples. Because here’s the reality, you can’t live in community by yourself. You need other people to come alongside of you and share your life. It’s the way that we are designed. Look at what happened to the church in Acts when their hearts were knit together for the sake of the Gospel. tells us how the believers were unified. They shared everything, they worshipped together, they ate together, they were in each others’ houses - this goes back to what I said about the need to invite others into our community and to allow them to be involved in our lives. What happened as a result is that “...the Lord [increased] the church daily [with] those who were being saved” (). 3000 at one time and another 5000 at a different time, “...the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord” ().

they had all things in common.

they shared all of their possessions with the needy among them.

they were united daily worshipping in the temple.

46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people.

They eat together in each other’s houses praising God and having favor with all the people.

“...And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” ().

The New King James Version Chapter 11

21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord ()

The New King James Version Chapter 11

21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

The New King James Version Chapter 11

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord

The New King James Version Chapter 11

21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

One of my wife’s friends who works for All Nations, an international ministry focused on making disciples and training leaders to to take the Gospel to the neglected peoples of the world (https://allnations.us/about-us/) shared a story with us about the work that God is doing in places like Syria. “Hussain is a Syrian refugee in Jordan who began following Jesus through the ministry of AllNations. The Lord used Hussain to bring another Syrian refugee named Oday to faith in Jesus. Oday later risked his own life by returning to Syria with his new faith. He did this because he wanted his family to know the redeeming love and grace of Jesus like he knew it. At some point Oday was arrested because he had left Syrian army. However, before his arrest God had used Oday to lead 5 entire families to faith in Jesus. In just a matter of months those 5 families had been used to lead 30 more families to faith in Jesus.

One of my wife’s friends who works for All Nations, an international ministry focused on making disciples and training leaders to take the Gospel to the neglected peoples of the world (https://allnations.us/about-us/) shared a story with us about the work that God is doing in places like Syria. “Hussain is a Syrian refugee in Jordan who began following Jesus through the ministry of AllNations. The Lord used Hussain to bring another Syrian refugee named Oday to faith in Jesus. Oday later risked his own life by returning to Syria with his new faith. He did this because he wanted his family to know the redeeming love and grace of Jesus like he had discovered it. At some point Oday was arrested because he had left the Syrian army. However, before his arrest God had used Oday to lead 5 entire families to faith in Jesus. In just a matter of months those 5 families had been used to lead 30 more families to faith in Jesus.

This would’ve never happened if Hussain had not accepted the invitation to the marriage feast of the King’s Son or if Oday had not allowed Hussain to be involved in his life. Now here’s the thing, this type of real community is Holy Spirit – led. As Eberhard Arnold states in his book Why We Live in Community “Efforts to organize community artificially can only result in ugly, lifeless, caricatures. Only when we are empty and open to the Living One – to the Spirit – can [He] bring about the same life among us as [He] did among the early Christians” (Eberhard Arnold, Why We live in Community, p13). We create space for community to happen, spaces like Sunday School, K-Groups, Mom’s group, Promises Keepers, Women’s group. We plant the seed and water the seed when we are knit together in the love of God for the sake of the Gospel, but it’s ALL on God to bring this community to life.

for the work of ministry,

I want to end by sharing a story with you from a young woman who received an invitation to join a K-Group just a couple Sundays after visiting our church. Her name is Safoah Thompson. She walked in to this building one Sunday not knowing a soul, but she left this place with her heart knit tightly to those she had been in K-Group with.

for the edifying of the body of Christ,

But remember, ultimately knitting lives together, building community is the work of the Spirit of God. It was God who appointed leaders to equip the saints who would do the work of ministry so that the Body of Christ could be edified.

Before you hear Safoah’s story I want to call up Robyn and James Salisbury. Robyn and James have been K-Group leaders for several years and they have been so faithful to lead the K-Group that Safoah was a part of before she moved. If Robyn and James would join me up here...

“I came to Britton Christian church looking for a church family. I had been a Christian most of my life. Living by myself, away from home and family and dealing with pressures from school I knew that finding a church that offers small group Bible study will help me stay on track with my spiritual life. At the end of church service the 1st or 2nd Sunday, I was approached by a kind lady and her husband who invited me to join K- group that Sunday. Little did I know these people were going to become my family away from home. I had no idea what K-group is. I wondered if this was a continuation of bible study / Sunday school in the morning and I thought, with my tight school/work schedule can I afford to spend another 2 hours Sunday evenings for group Bible study. l joined the K-group and realized it was different. What happens at K- group is the kind of fellowshipping Paul talks about in and . Meeting Sunday evenings for K-group fueled my spirit for the week. It is a learning environment for how to live life following Christ. I love the laughter, the food, the games, the discussions and the prayers we shared with each other. I love my K- group family and I thank God for bringing me to them!!!” (Safoah Thompson)

Not only does he tell us why Jesus did this, but he also tells us how long He intended for this to be in effect.

You have an opportunity today to start knitting your heart with the hearts of your brothers and sisters. I want to encourage you to stop by the sign up tables in the Welcome area and sign up to be apart of a one of our weekly Bible studies or K-Groups or you can click the link that I’ve included in today’s sermon notes in the YouVersion Bible app.

13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;

If you have looked at the Church at all today then you know that we still have work to do in these areas. Now, why does Paul bring this up?

14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, instead Paul says, we must 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love ().

There it is! Knitting!

“Knitting is a process of using long needles to interlink or knot a series of loops made by one continuous thread. Each loop or knot connects to another one...”.

That last part is so important. The connecting of each loop to another loop. The Bible also speaks about knitting, not the connecting of loops, but the connecting of lives. When we talk about being joined/knit together we are talking about forming real and lasting community within the Body of Christ. So how can we be this kind of a community? How can we form bonds with each other that knits our hearts together for the sake of the Gospel? I believe there are a few ways this can happen.

In order for us to be knit together in community, first we must be invited. The invitation we extend to others must be inspired by the invitation we have received from the Lord. In Jesus invites us with these words, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That’s exactly what He did for a lady named Sofia Quintanilla.

Sofia Quintanilla is a survivor of sexual abuse and now a Bible professor in San Jose, Costa Rica. She came to faith as a little girl and credits the gospel for helping her heal from the trauma of sexual abuse. In her doctoral research, which focuses on Biblical theology of hospitality, Sofia says that she discovered God’s heart. “He has a kingdom and He invites humanity to come into His kingdom” (BibleStudy Magazine, p11). This is exactly what we find in the parable of the marriage feast (, NKJV).

In this parable a king invites people to the marriage feast of his son and the ones who were originally invited rejected the king’s invitation. They even went so far as to kill the king’s messengers. Well, the king retaliates by having those murderers killed and then he invites a second group. He invites people from every walk of life and they gladly accept the king’s invitation and the wedding hall is filled up! The people whom the king invited, they had nothing to offer the king. They had done nothing worthy of being invited. The king graced upon them an opportunity to have fellowship with Him and His Son.

Being invited into a fellowship, to have our lives knit together in Biblical community is an act of grace. It’s the understanding that we, sinful and imperfect as we are, have been asked by the Most Holy and Perfect Lord of all creation to come into His kingdom and have community with Him. That is what we celebrate at this table every week, that we have accepted the Lord’s invitation to have our sins completely wiped away and now we live in community with our Lord, but this isn’t the end of the story for us.

“The welcome a community offers to visitors is an extension of the welcome its members offer each other. If our heart is open to our brothers and sisters, it will also be open to others” (Called to Community, p309).

God is calling us into community with each other, that our hearts and lives would be so knit together that it would cause spiritual maturity in us and that the church would edify itself in the love of God.

Second, in order to be knit together in Biblical community we must be involved in each others’ lives. Now for some of us that might be a scary thought. You might be saying to yourself, “But I don’t like people in my business.” When I say that we need to be involved in each others’ lives, I’m not talking about airing our dirty laundry, instead I believe this is about connecting at the heart. Let me try to explain, from scripture, why “…choosing to orient our lives around community for the sake of the gospel” is so vitally important. Look at again.

Paul says that the whole body is joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, by the effective working of every part doing its share. This he says, causes the body to grow and edifying itself in love.

As a church, as a congregation, we are disjointed without community! According to Stanley Grenz, “Church exists whenever believers join together with the purpose of walking with one another as God’s people, under Christ’s authority, and by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit” (Stanley Grenz, Created for Community, p210). Not when we are hanging on to our independence and limiting our interactions to a couple hours a week. It’s what Howard Thurman calls “contact without fellowship”. The Body of Christ suffers without us being intimately involved in the lives of one another. Here’s what it could look like when our lives are knit together.

Let’s read .

44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, 45 and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.

46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved ().

Listen, community is better when other people are involved. Why do you think there are so many coffee shops around town? Considering that there are only a handful of ways that you can brew coffee there’s got to be deeper reason and I believe the reason is because these coffee shops create spaces for people to connect. As a matter-of-fact, whenever I am preparing to preach I spend my prep time in a coffee shop. “There is something to be said for a ‘theology of place’ - choosing to orient our lives around community...” but doing it “..for the sake of the Gospel” (Common Prayer: Pocket Edition, p56). The truth of the matter is that WE have the most suitable place for community to happen. We were designed for the achievement of this end. We have to be involved in each other’s lives otherwise we run the risk of watering down the Gospel.

Paul told the church in Colossians that he wanted their hearts to be encouraged by being knit together in love (). Love for the church is our bat-signal to the world that we belong to Christ ().

We have actually created some opportunities for you guys to get started building community right here. For the past several years K-groups (Kiononia, fellowship groups), have served as a place where we welcome people from our church family into our homes and into our lives so that we can be who God has called us to be. Some of these folks may actually be strangers, the first time we ever meet them is when they show up to K-Group for the first time, but we show them hospitality. Our hearts are knit together when we are inviting our brothers and sisters to form relationships with us by extending the same level of grace to them that the Lord has extended to us. Our lives are connected when we are involved in each other’s lives and when these things are happening God grows the church.

Community happens through invitation and participation and the outflow of this is that the church experiences an increase. The church grows. That is both numerically and spiritually. Because here’s the reality, you can’t live in community by yourself. You need other people to come alongside of you and share your life. It’s the way that we are designed. Look at what happened to the church in Acts when their hearts were knit together for the sake of the Gospel. tells us how the believers were unified. They shared everything, they worshipped together, they ate together, they were in each others’ houses - this goes back to what I said about the need to invite others into our community and to allow them to be involved in our lives. What happened as a result is that “...the Lord [increased] the church daily [with] those who were being saved” (). 3000 at one time and another 5000 at a different time, “...the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord” ().

One of my wife’s friends who works for AllNations, an international ministry focused on making disciples and training leaders to take the Gospel to the neglected peoples of the world shared a story with us about the work that God is doing in places like Syria. Hussain is a Syrian refugee in Jordan who began following Jesus through the ministry of AllNations. The Lord used Hussain to bring another Syrian refugee named Oday to faith in Jesus. Oday later risked his own life by returning to Syria with his new faith. He did this because he wanted his family to know the redeeming love and grace of Jesus like he had discovered it. At some point Oday was arrested because he had left the Syrian army. However, before his arrest God had used Oday to lead 5 entire families to faith in Jesus. In just a matter of months those 5 families had been used to lead 30 more families to faith in Jesus.

This would’ve never happened if Hussain had not accepted the invitation to the marriage feast of the King’s Son or if Oday had not allowed Hussain to be involved in his life. Now here’s the thing, this type of real community is Holy Spirit – led. Eberhard Arnold states in his book Why We Live in Community,

“Efforts to organize community artificially can only result in ugly, lifeless, caricatures. Only when we are empty and open to the Living One – to the Spirit – can [He] bring about the same life among us as [He] did among the early Christians” (Eberhard Arnold, Why We live in Community, p13).

We create space for community to happen, spaces like Sunday School, K-Groups, Mom’s group, Promises Keepers, Women’s group. We plant the seed and water the seed when we are knit together in the love of God for the sake of the Gospel, but it’s ALL on God to bring this community to life.

I want to end by sharing a story with you from a young woman who received an invitation to join a K-Group just a couple Sundays after visiting our church. Her name is Safoah Thompson. She walked in to this building one Sunday not knowing a soul, but she left this place with her heart knit tightly to the people she had been in K-Group with. Before you hear Safoah’s story I want to call up Robyn and James Salisbury. Robyn and James have been K-Group leaders for several years and they have been so faithful to lead the K-Group that Safoah was a part of before she moved. If Robyn and James would join me up here...

“I came to Britton Christian church looking for a church family. I had been a Christian most of my life. Living by myself, away from home and family and dealing with pressures from school I knew that finding a church that offers small group Bible study will help me stay on track with my spiritual life. At the end of church service the 1st or 2nd Sunday, I was approached by a kind lady and her husband who invited me to join K- group that Sunday. Little did I know these people were going to become my family away from home. I had no idea what K-group is. I wondered if this was a continuation of bible study / Sunday school in the morning and I thought, with my tight school/work schedule can I afford to spend another 2 hours Sunday evenings for group Bible study. l joined the K-group and realized it was different. What happens at K- group is the kind of fellowshipping Paul talks about in and . Meeting Sunday evenings for K-group fueled my spirit for the week. It is a learning environment for how to live life following Christ. I love the laughter, the food, the games, the discussions and the prayers we shared with each other. I love my K- group family and I thank God for bringing me to them!!!” (Safoah Thompson).

Today, you have an opportunity to start knitting your heart with the hearts of your brothers and sisters here. I want to encourage you to stop by the sign up tables in the Welcome area and sign up to be apart of a one of our weekly Bible studies or K-Groups or you can click the link that I’ve included in today’s sermon notes in the YouVersion Bible app.

Try something new or try it again, but this time give yourself a goal. Try K-Group for 6 weeks or one semester. Living in Biblical community comes from multiplication, but we can’t multiple if we don’t participate in God’s community, and the first step of living in God’s community is to accept His invitation to be a part of His family - Jesus is the Invitation.

Knit Together

Call to Hear

Invited

Involved

Increased

Call to Respond

Invited

Involved

Increased

Call to Respond