Outdoor Service - Gather and Scatter

REMINDER OF THE RULES

Social distance - stay in or right beside your vehicles, or in your rows

If you need to use the bathroom, it’s available, please use hand sanitizer coming into and leaving the bathroom, we have it available at a table for you at the top of the stairs. When you leave to go to the bathroom, we’ve left wide gaps in front of or behind the vehicles - please walk down these gaps all the way to the end. Don’t cross between vehicles

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Check out our facebook page, facebook.com/parklandchurchmarathon, or our website, parklandchurch.ca/connect, for all the up to date information.

We are going to do an at-home VBS over the summer! It’s called Focus. It’s a ‘do it at your own pace, do what you feel like’ program. We will provide you lots of ideas and content to use, and you pick and choose what you’d like to do with your family.

We will provide the content, we will provide some materials.

It’s really easy, designed to be led by parents and done using stuff you can find around the house

We will be launching the VBS July 19th. It’ll run for 5 weeks.

REGISTER AT parklandchurch.ca/vbs to get in on it!

The Message:

Take some time to address the big question: When are we re-opening?

The short answer - we’re not sure yet. As it stands , we can’t: KIDS, SING, SOCIALIZE, HAVE MEALS.

Two priorities as leadership - we need to make sure that we’re staying on mission and still reaching the outside world, and we need to make sure we don’t make anyone sick or become a hotspot for infecting the community if there was an outbreak.

So we as leadership everywhere are trying to answer two basic questions - how do we do community, and how do we do mission. How do we bring people together, and how do we still reach the rest of the world.

i want to show you guys a bit of a pattern in the bible.

LUKE / ACTS - were written by one guy (Luke), as a continuous narrative to someone else named Theophilus.

End of Luke leads into beginning of acts - they’re meant to continue

Luke 24:46-49

Luke 24:46–49 NIV

He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

FIRST COMMAND OF MISSION - Go and preach. FIRST COMMAND OF COMMUNITY - Gather in city to receive power.

Now, in Acts, we see this play out.

Acts 2 has the disciples gathered together. But they’re there for a purpose - they are there to receive power, in order to go out on mission. Jesus said - You need to GO, so GATHER to receive power, then GO.

Then after this, Peter stands up, and he speaks to the crowds, and 3,000 people get saved.

There’s a clear cycle here - gather and go. And Acts 2 makes a strong argument at the end about how united the believers were.

And this isn’t the only time you see this.

Acts 4, Peter and John get thrown in jail. They get released, they GATHER together with the saints, they see the power of the Holy spirit come on them, and then they comit to going out again. They pray: Acts 4:29

Acts 4:29 NIV

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

And guess what happens again here - Acts 4:32-34 says this

Acts 4:32–34 NIV

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales

All through the book of acts, you see this pattern. Gather, then go.

God reaches a guy named Saul. On his way to imprison believers in Damascus. God breaks through to him, tells him what to do, GATHERS him together with the disciples, then he GOES out to preach.

Now, I want to point out a few things I’ve noticed about this, and here’s the meat of it.

1 - Gathering together is extremely, extremely important. Even the people travelling the earth like Paul or Peter - they would move believers home to believers home.

2 - There is no ‘how’ here. The early believers didn’t have church buildings or spaces, or standard service templates. Sometimes, it was the temple courts, but most of the time it was their homes.

3 - The purpose of the gathering is to get support, enter into prayer, and prepare ourselves for the GO.\

If you want to see the kind of amazing things the early church saw, you need the unity the early church saw. And if you want that - you need to be doing it way more times than 1 hour on sunday.

So what do we see in the bible is the real nature of the church? A deep conviction that meeting together however we can, whenever we can, wherever we can, for the purpose of going ourselves into the world and telling people about Jesus.

The early church was persecuted and scattered. They didn’t sit in foreign cities waiting for the chance to get back to Jerusalem. They said ‘we know each other, and we know everybody else needs Jesus. So we have everything’.

We have the reason to gather, and we have the place to go.

I don’t know what we’re going to do next as a church structure. We’re looking at the world, at the trends, at the rules, and trying to make a wise choice. But I can absolutely, completely tell you what God wants you all to do next.

He wants you to gather, and he wants you to go. And don’t wait around for this building to open up for the gathering.

INVITE people, CALL people, check up on people. Pray with people. Pray for people.

But don’t do it just to get your church feeling on. Go on mission. Get together every day, but with this express hope and focus. Right back to Acts 4:29

Acts 4:29 NIV

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

I don’t know for sure what we’re going to do to open the church. I have ideas, we all have ideas. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, God wants to see you gathering in your homes, getting together during the week, fighting for community, and everybody praying ‘God, you know the threats around us - enable us to speak your word to others with great boldness’.

and it’s a funny thing, that I’m certain of what God wants us to do next as a body, but we’re still determining what we should be doing as a building. Because being a follower of Jesus doesn’t tie you to a place, it ties you to a purpose. Following Christ doesn’t lead you into closed rooms, it leads you out of them. And God is trying to teach us all something.

Take a moment and just look around. Look at all the homes around us, that we can’t see when we’re inside those walls. God wants to send us out there. There are people out there who need to hear about God’s love. Who need to feel what it means to be forgiven from everything they’ve ever done before. People who need to know that there’s agroup where they can belong.

So we will keep in touch as we know what’s going on. Find us on facebook, or give me your email address after the service. But we’re making this commitment for sure as a church - let’s go.

PRAY:

Now, as we’re exiting, we have to make sure we’re still maintaining social distancing. The cars, you guys are pretty free to go, the people in seats, we’ll have a volunteer showing you what to do.