Dealing with Yesterday

Some live for the moment, others are all about tomorrow. But many of us live lives defined by yesterday; by something that happened in the past, that has shaped our lives forever. It may have been a moment of triumph, or of deep pain and we’ve been left with literal scars or deep wounds to our souls. And we’re stuck. We can try to push these thoughts from our minds, but if we’re to ever move on to health and wholeness, we must deal with yesterday; the yesterdays of deep regret, unfulfilled dreams, unexpected loss or secret sin. During the month of February, we’ll be looking at our yesterdays and trying to make sense both of what’s happened in the past and how, with God’s help, we can move forward.

Practice Not Perfect

"Practice makes perfect!"  Most of us at one time or another have had heard this phrase hurled at us, often in response to our own resistance to practicing. Whether it was a sport, a musical instrument, or a performance, we have been told the more we practice, the more successful we will be in whatever we are pursuing. And there’s of course truth to that idea. The regular exercise of an activity or skill is the way to become proficient in it. Ethicists call it habituation. Athletes call it muscle memory. Popular culture calls it second nature. Journalist Malcolm Gladwell quantified it in his 2012 book 10,000 hours: You Become What You Practice. 

And this is true in our spiritual lives, too. God has given us both as individual followers of Jesus and as people gathered in one community - the church - specific practices we can participate in to help us become more like Jesus. God uses these practices to change us so that we can live more effectively into the reality of His kingdom and can fulfill His purpose for us: helping people find and then follow Jesus. There are numerous practices we join in as a church, but during the month of January, we will look at just four, as prioritized by the Apostle Paul, to one early church in Corinth: the practices of serving, loving, worshiping and giving. 
 
But instead of Practice Makes Perfect; we’re going with Practice Not Perfect! Because while these practices are essential for us pointing people to God in Minneapolis, we will never get this completely right this side of heaven.  Sometimes the fear of not doing something perfectly hinders us from even trying! But the reality is that unless we start somewhere, we will never grow. In order to learn to walk, we must first walk badly. In order to learn to tie our shoes, we’ve got to try it and fail. It’s a learning process. And in order to practice what God intends for us as a church, we’ve got to start by doing it imperfectly.  

But in this case, it’s not as if we will ultimately do it perfectly. Churches are made of human beings, and human beings aren’t perfect. The beautiful truth is that as we practice serving, loving, worshiping, and giving, we will see Christ’s Church built up - and others will be drawn into the life He offers - even though we practice it imperfectly.

I’m looking forward to practicing these behaviors with you, City Church!  Look for special opportunities to get more connected and to start practicing immediately after each service all four weeks in January in our Practice Room (The Commons). Only imperfect people allowed. :)

Amy Rowell - City Church Community Life Pastor

Sola

The Acts of the Apostles

The automobile tycoon Henry Ford once famously said, “history is more or less bunk.” Why look back when you can look forward? Get busy making history rather than reading stories of those long dead and gone? 
 
Fair enough, except that sometimes the stories of the past are the very thing that inspires us for the future. A man named Luke had a front-row seat during the early days of the Christian church. Like an investigative reporter, he had already captured the story of the life of Jesus into a biography we now have in the New Testament.
 
But Luke had a second book in him, a book about the early Christian church. The church grew, Luke believed, by the will and purpose of God in fulfillment of promises God made years before. His is an encouraging story, of how from a handful of Jesus followers in a single church, this movement spread beyond geographic, ethnic and racial boundaries. The message, that salvation is found in Jesus, raised from the dead and ascended to heaven, changed lives and communities everywhere it went. And the catalyst for all this change, Luke believed, was the power of the Holy Spirit, the gift Jesus left with the church when he ascended into heaven.
 
It’s an inspirational story and raises interesting questions for us today, none more important than this: How can we, at City Church, capture today something of the confidence, enthusiasm, vision, and power these early Christians and their leaders had? It’s a question we will explore in the weeks to come.