Tag: Who We Are

Telling Our Story

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Yesterday was Resurrection Sunday!  We celebrated our risen Lord together by telling the incredible story of which we can be a part if we will receive Him as our Lord.  We celebrated our part in this great story as individuals, but also as a whole community as we finally put together the three key pieces of our identity into one clear and compelling idea: First Baptist is a place where people can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His kingdom.  Keep reading to see how this all unfolded.

 

Telling Our Story

Three weeks ago, we started a journey together.  It was a journey that came out of a conversation about who we are as a church; what our God-given identity is.  The idea here is that while each individual person has a unique, God-designed identity, so do whole churches.  The church is the body of Christ and we are individually members of it.  That means we each have a specific role to play in the body, but one local church does not by itself comprise the whole body of Christ.  That means that each individual local church is itself part of the larger body of Christ and thus has a specific role to play as a community in that larger body. Read the rest…

Reaching Further

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In this third part of our conversation about who God made us to be as a church, we talked about the fact that connecting and growing, while necessary, are not sufficient in and of themselves.  Thank you for taking part in this conversation with us and reflecting on God’s design for your own community.  Don’t miss next week as we put everything together and celebrate the thing that gives it all substance: The resurrection.

 

Reaching Further

Have you ever had a secret that was simply too good to keep to yourself?  It was news that you just weren’t going to be able not to share; you were just going to have to deal with the consequences later?  Or perhaps make this more personal: Have you ever gotten a bit of good news that you couldn’t possibly have not shared with the world?  In our social media-crazed world, some days it seems like most folks think everything is worth sharing.  “I got a promotion!”  “I ran a marathon!”  “My kid is on the honor roll!”  “My dog really like its new bed!”  “I woke up this morning!”  “I’m asleep now (my fingers are set on auto-post)!”  What starts to happen is that as everything gets shared, it can begin to seem like really, nothing is worth sharing.  I submit to you, though, that some things really are worth sharing.  What’s more, some places are designed to help us do that.  And I’m not talking about Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Read the rest…

Growing Stronger

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This past Sunday as we continued our conversation about who God made us to be as a church, the next key element of our identity is growth.  Keep reading to see how growing people has always been a part of God’s approach to humanity and how it is, could be, and should be fleshed out in our community.  Thanks for reading.

Growing Stronger

Growth is natural.  As it was nearing the first summer Lisa and I spent in Virginia, we decided we wanted to plant a garden.  Neither of us really had any idea what we were doing.  We got some help and advice from folks in the church who were themselves avid gardeners, but much beyond help with the plowing of a 30 by 60 plot in our backyard, we pretty much did all the work ourselves.  We planted way too much.  We wound up spending almost every evening and Saturday morning pulling weeds and picking produce (and trying desperately to give away the hundreds of squash and zucchini and cucumbers we had).  We canned more green beans than would fit in our meager pantry.  But, by the time it was all said and done, we had successfully grown a pretty nice garden.  Here’s the funny part, though, and if you’re a gardener you know this to be true: The work we did had almost no impact on the actual growth of the garden.  Sure, by pruning and pulling weeds and spraying for bugs and watering when it got dry we might have extended the life of the plants and increased the size of the harvest, but there was not a single thing we did to cause the garden to grow save putting the seeds in the ground.  Once they were in the ground and covered with dirt, the rest happened all on its own.  Again: growth is natural. Read the rest…

Making Connections

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This past Sunday we began a brand new sermon series called “Who We Are.”  For the next few weeks we are going to be taking a look at who First Baptist is; at who God made us to be.  Along the way we’ll be talking about identity as a church and how we can stand firmly in line with God’s design for us.  If you want a better idea of who First Baptist is or what it looks like for a church to wrestle together with God’s plans for them, you won’t want to miss a single part of this series.  Thanks for reading and listening.

Making Connections

Do you know who you are?  We talked back before Christmas about the fact that Jesus helps us become fully who God made us to be.  As powerful a truth as that is, though, if we don’t have at least some kind of a clue as to who that might be, it’s hard to move with anything resembling intentionality in that direction.  This applies to us as individuals to be sure, but it applies every bit as much and maybe even a little bit more as a church.  The funny thing about the church is that it is made up of individuals.  It is made up of individuals who might know themselves incredibly well, but who may or may not understand who God made them to be and how God designed them to work as a group. Read the rest…