Why the Schedule?

How are you growing spiritually? What is God doing in your heart and life? How are you being changed?

Goal

Christianity is not primarily about learning.

As the 5:10 study, we read more about the gospel message. We learn the implications of the message. We come to a deeper understanding of the life and hope God has given us in Christ. Our minds grasp and understand wonderful things!

Even though this is extremely important, this is not Christianity.

I hope that all our learning leads us on to true Christianity, but to assume learning is Christianity is dangerous. Christianity is not about learning. True Christianity is about Jesus Christ. It is about the one who died to bring us into the kingdom of God by grace, saving sinners by faith and renewing them together by faith.

Jesus is Christianity. That is why John can say "He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life" (1 John 5:12). Jesus saves the one who has faith in him. By faith, we who know Jesus are "being transformed in [his] image" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

If Christianity is about Jesus saving sinners and changing the saved together through what he accomplished for us on the cross, we should see that happening among us in the 5:10.

On Friday nights, we do not want to see just learning going on. As a group, we want to be meeting Jesus together, and we want to see him changing us together.

How?

How can we experience Christ and his gospel together? How can we experience our sin, God's holiness, and the power of the cross together?

This is where the plan for Friday night takes its shape.

The goal is to see our lives transformed by Christ's gospel through:

1) emptying our hearts before him in prayer (1st week of the month)

2) taking in the gospel together (2nd week of the month)

3) living out the implications of that free grace together by freely serving and reaching out to others (3rd week of the month)

We start each month praying and worshiping, emptying our hearts before him and eachother. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" becomes our text and we come to God aware of our brokenness and aware of His great provision in Christ (Matthew 5:3).

The next week, we look into that great provision, the gospel of Jesus. This gospel challenges us to forsake our sin and self-righteousness and find ourselves completely in Jesus.

This then motivates what comes next. Paul tells Titus that Jesus "gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works" (Titus 2:14). Jesus bought me, made me his, made me part of his own people, and this teaches me to be zealous for good works. ZEALOUS! Driven by passion to serve others.

Why? Because we want to be good?

NO! It is because Christ bought us, purified us, and did it all without charge. It's because we are becoming like him. As we understand the glory of the cross and all he has given us, we become generous givers of ourselves.

It is our prayer that this set up will help us to more naturally live and breath the gospel together in order that we will grow toward becoming complete in Jesus together.