Hey Eighteen22,
First off, thank you so much for being a part of God's ministry to the college-aged at WEAG. I am so blessed by your participation in our community and am even more blessed by your graciousness in allowing Jeremy and I to lead you in it. Secondly, thanks for taking the time to check out this blog post! This post is kind of a prep for the sermon that I'm going to preach this Tuesday in our "Spiritual Unrest" series. I want to present some ideas for y'all to be tossing around in your mind before you get there on Tuesday and also I'd love for you to respond and talk in the FB and Blogger comments. Let's talk about this stuff! Ok, soooo here goes the blog, haha.
Like I said above and Jeremy said last week, our new series on Tuesdays is "Spiritual Unrest". Jeremy and I decided to do this series because it sounded like everyone we were meeting up with during the week for lunch or coffee were experiencing a "spiritual funk" of some sort. We all struggle with that to some degree, but it sounded very widespread. Luckily, God has given us 4 main tools in Scripture to combat that and to give rest to our souls. Those 4 things are His Word, His Church, His Son and His Spirit. This Tuesday I'm preaching on His Church.
The first question my sermon raises is how do you define "church"? Take a second to think about before reading on, what is your primary definition of that word? Of course it has many definitions, especially depending on how literal or contextual you wanna be. But I believe the most important definition of "church" is simply "the meeting up of believers to intentionally live out the Christian life together." If that's your definition of church, than church no longer is just on Tuesday or Sunday mornings. It's Monday afternoons when two Christians meet up for lunch and talk and you can imagine all the other scenarios.
To add to that definition, I believe intentionally living out the Christian life demands authenticity and time. So the next question becomes: Are we (you and me) authentically and intentionally meeting up with other Christians to live our our faith?
Something that I've realized over the past year at Eighteen22 is that Tuesday nights only partially serves that definition of church. We have come to determine that the purpose of Tuesday nights for us is the celebration of the Gospel together with our peers. This does not replace the celebration of the Gospel with our multi-generational church body, it supplements it. So with that goal in mind we structure and plan Eighteen22.
So honestly, that means there isn't as much time for "church" in the definition I've given above. Yes, "church" as I've defined above does happen on Tuesday nights and we do set aside time for it. That's what our dinner time and hang out time after the worship service is for...but not everybody comes/stays for that.
For this reason is why we've found a new passion for small groups and Bible studies at Eighteen22. We NEED to set specific time aside to do the authentic meet up part of church. Because that's where Gospel-inspired change can be discipled and shaped. But there are problems with that. A lot of us Eighteen22ers are honestly busy. We have school schedules, work schedules, serious relationships, family situations that make it difficult to make time for anything else. Is it really worth it re-arrange my life for another kind of "church"?
On Tuesday, we'll have several testimonies in addition to my own on why we believe it is. The main text I'll be preaching from will be Hebrews 10:24-25. Take a look at it sometime before Tuesday night. And PLEASE feel free to comment on this blog or if you can't, back on FB. Let's wrestle with this together. To all my Eighteen22 homies, I love y'all, pray for y'all everyday, and am SO thankful for you.
-Jamal
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