Wind + Fire
The shape of the church has dramatically changed. It feels like everything we thought about life, spirituality, and church has been altered or brought into question. And in the west, the Gospel of Jesus has often been replaced for an “American Gospel” fashioned in the form of one’s political allegiance rendering the church irrelevant. What is the future of the church? How do we return to God’s design for His Church?
If we are going to answer these questions we must go back to the first followers of Jesus and rediscover what the church was intended to be? And how this mostly Jewish Jerusalem-based community became a multi-ethnic international movement that changed the world as we know it. Join us for our series out of the Book of Acts as we look back at how the church began to discover what it really means for us to be the church today.
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Part 2 of Future Church
Part 3 of Future Church
Part 4 of Future Church
Part 5 of Future Church
Teaching Notes
The Birth of The Church:
- The ARRIVAL of the Holy Spirit. [Acts 2:1-13]
Pentecost: Also known as the Feast of Harvest or Feast of Weeks took place 7 weeks or 50 days after Passover. At this annual celebration Israel presented the first fruits of their wheat harvest to God and it was considered 1 of 3 great pilgrim festivals for the Jewish people.
Wind & Fire: Old Testament imagery for the power and presence of God.
“As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.” - John Stott
The Church is not a PLACE but a Spirit-filled PEOPLE.
- The PREACHING of the Gospel. [Acts 2:14-39]
Repentance: A change of mind that results in a change of action or direction.
“Repentance is the inner resolve and determination to turn from sin and return to fellowship with God.” - Tony Evans
The Church is the carrier of the MESSAGE of SALVATION.
- A New COMMUNITY formed. [Acts 2:40-47]
Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist on living a different way. – Philip Yancey
The church is not an event to CONSUME, but a community to PARTICIPATE in.
The Church is the Spirit-empowered community of Jesus on mission to invite the entire world into new life in the kingdom of God.