What if the church left the building?

Dear Church Family,

On Sunday we finished our 50th message on the Church in our series on Acts. This series has been a wonderful blessing for me as I study and allow the Lord to work in my heart. Throughout this series our church like the churches in Acts has grown significantly. When we started this series last year we were running 35-45 people on a Sunday Morning. We are now running just over 60 people.

Praise the Lord for His work in growing our church. However, every growing church goes through growing pains, and we are in the middle of them. Our auditorium is full every Sunday. Our Children’s program has grown significantly and is in need of more workers. Our nursery was literally bursting out at the seams so we just had to expand to a toddler and an infant nursery. This expansion has almost doubled our need for nursery workers. The building project is well on its way and is consuming more and more of our time and efforts. All of these things add to the financial burden of the church. I truly believe that God is the one growing our church and when God grows the church He also provides the people to do the work of the church. God never calls us to do something that He also does not provide the power for us to accomplish His calling.

For this reason I have decided to put aside our series on the book of Acts for a while and begin a short series titled, “What if the church left the building?” In this series I am praying that we will learn that church isn’t a building but a body in which every member plays an equally important role. I have decided to begin this series by looking at a sermon titled, “Rethinking Church”. In this message we will look at the doctrine of fellowship. Early on in my Dad’s ministry when I was still a very young child someone asked me what a fellowship was. I used all of the experiences that I had watching my Dad serve as Youth Pastor and Assistant Pastor and answered, “That’s when every one sits on the floor and eats.” During my years as a Pastor I have learned that there are many adult believers that still believe the same thing, though they don’t eat on the floor anymore.

I believe this is an area in which our church needs to grow. Church fellowship is more than eating together. It describes the church’s collective fellowship with Christ. I pray that this series will cause us to stop simply doing church and start being the church. I hope that each of you will make an effort to be here this Sunday for our services. We will be defining the Doctrine of Fellowship in the morning service. After our dinner on the grounds we will be applying the Doctrine of Fellowship in the afternoon service.

In Christ,
Pastor Josh

P.S. Don’t forget about the work day Thursday evening at 6:00pm. We need as many people as possible to get this shed put together.