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All right, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome again to Gospel Fellowship. So glad you all got the memo. Hope you didn't show up this morning. Grace Lutheran's got a little different schedule today, and so we needed to worship at this time. And I'm sorry we also don't have our usual fellowship meal. And not only is the time of service different today, but the sermon is different today. We're gonna take a break from our Proverbs series, and we're gonna start doing something that Pastor Michael and I have been talking about for a while. Every quarter or so, we're gonna take a break from our series that we're doing through a particular book of the Bible, and we're gonna take a Sunday, and we're gonna address and preach on either one particular aspect of our church's mission and vision, kind of our philosophy of ministry, or a particular part of our doctrinal statement. And the reason why we're doing this, and it really kind of highlights one of my weaknesses as a pastor, one of my weaknesses as a leader. Our gospel fellowship, there's a lot of things we're very convicted about and passionate about, and we do things a certain way. We've got these mission and vision and philosophy and all this. And because this is the world that I live in with Visionary Family Ministries and being a pastor, I think about this stuff. It's kind of my job, if you will, to think about these things as I go through my week. And so I naturally assume, well, you all do too, right? I mean, that's all you think about, right? That's how you spend your day as well, thinking about our church's philosophy and mission and practice and why we do what we do. You do that, right? Maybe not so much, and that's okay, that's all right. But sometimes it's important for us to spend time talking together about why we do what we do. And so one of the conversations that I've been having over the last few weeks with a lot of you has to do with this particular practice that we have of being together with all ages. during our worship service. You look around this room, you see a lot of people of a lot of different ages, right? You particularly see a lot of children. And then when we have our fellowship meal together, same thing. We've got all these different people. We've got kids and parents and grandparents and adults and everybody in between all together. So what I'm gonna do in this message is I wanna, first of all, the first part is I'm gonna lay out the biblical reason why we do it this way. The second part of the message, I'm gonna be extremely practical, and I wanna talk about some very, very specific things that we can do as kids, that we can do as adults, that can help this model work and achieve the vision that we have for it. Before we dig in, let me give you one interesting story on this particular issue of what do we do with our kids that impacted me. Two years ago, My family and I, we were in Russia on a mission trip, and we met with a senior, senior pastor. When I say senior, senior, I mean 90-something-year-old man who had been a pastor in Russia, and he talked to us about how when he was real little with the Communist Revolution in the late teens and the 1920s, He talked about how one of the first things that the communists did, and of course they wanted to establish atheism in the country of Russia, one of the first things that they did was not to blow up the church buildings or make it illegal for Christians to worship. The first thing that they did was to make it illegal for the Christians to bring their children to church. See, the communists, the atheists, had a philosophy that was, okay, you adult Christians, you superstitious people that believe in God, we'll let you keep going to your little church building, and you can do what you want to do in private. You'll be dead soon. Our objective is to make sure that your children are atheists and wards of the state. And this pastor, one of the things he said that was so interesting to me, he said, so when the Iron Curtain fell, when communism fell in the late 80s, we now had the freedom to worship the way we wanted to worship. We were no longer under the constraints of the communist law. And he said, all these Western missionaries flooded into our country and taught us to separate our children from the worship service. So the communists used to make us keep our kids out, and now we do it voluntarily. because we've been taught that this is better for them. And of course, he was of the perspective that this isn't better for them, that the pattern for history and in scripture was to keep kids with them. So what I wanna do is I'm gonna go through a few biblical texts. Normally, when we preach our gospel fellowship, we have one particular passage, we exegete it through. Today, I'm gonna skim over a few. You'll probably have a hard time kind of staying with me in your Bible. I'm not even gonna ask you to turn to them. Maybe you'll just take some notes because I wanna paint the big picture. The simple reason that we include all ages together in the worship service is because when the saints and the believers in the Old Testament and New Testament gathered for worship, they kept all ages together. That's the reason why we do it here. Let me show you a few of these. In Exodus chapter 12, and in fact you just read it, in fact your Bible may even be open there, Kiara just read this for us a moment ago. In Exodus chapter 12, God gives the people of Israel instructions how to celebrate the Passover. The Passover was a worship service, if you will. And he gives them instructions of how to do it in Exodus chapter 12, verses 24 to 28. God says, you shall observe this rite or this service as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come into the land that the Lord will give you, as he's promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Egypt and Israel when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses. And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. Then the people of Israel went and did so, as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, and so they did. So God gives them instructions. Here's how you have this worship service. And what does it say about the children? Where are the children supposed to be during this worship service? They're supposed to be a part of it, and they're supposed to be participating in it as well. You go forward into the book of Deuteronomy, and God institutes another worship service. He calls it the Feast of Weeks. And I know I'm going through these fast, so bear with me. But this is what it says in Deuteronomy 16, verse 11. It says, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who's within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, the widow who are among you, at the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there. So you're to come together to rejoice before the Lord for this feast of weeks, and what are you supposed to do with your kids when you get together for worship with them? Or get together for worship, where are the kids supposed to be? Supposed to be there, supposed to be with you, good. There's another one, it's called the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles. Listen to this, this is Deuteronomy 31, 10 to 13. At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all of Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, little ones, and the sojourner within your town." So not only were the believers invited, men, women, and little ones, but visitors and guests. That they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and be careful to do all the words of this law. And their children, the children of the sojourners, who have not heard the word of the Lord, might hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God. Did you get that? So not only are the kids of the believing families included, but the kids of the visiting families or the sojourning families included. See, one of the big things going on in the evangelical church today, for churches that say, no, kids don't belong in the worship service, is they say, well, what would happen if visitors came? These kids who haven't been in church, these kids that haven't heard the gospel, well, they certainly don't belong in the church service. We definitely need a separate area for them. Lo and behold, here at this worship service in the Old Testament, God's explicit. No, no. Everybody, believers and visitors, guests, come together, all ages together. God commanded Israel to worship with their kids at the time of Joel. There was a serious, solemn worship service called in Joel 2, verses 15 and 16. Listen to what it says. Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly. This is a serious worship service. Gather the people, consecrate the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, even the nursing infants. And let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. So again, and I'm only hitting a few of these Old Testament scriptures. The people are called together for corporate worship. And what does God say to do with the children? bring them in. He's very explicit about it. Now here at Gospel Fellowship, we believe the Bible's God's word and that there's no errant words in there. There's no extra words. Every word matters. Every word's important. So look what God's doing over and over and over again. All the men, all the women, all the children gathered for worship. We also see this pattern in the New Testament, not just an Old Testament thing. You may remember Jesus when he, the first life experience I guess we find of Jesus. He's a boy, he's 12 years old. And where is Jesus when we read the history about when he's 12? He's at the temple at the Passover. He's celebrating corporate worship, the Passover, as a 12-year-old, with the adults, with his parents, in the book of Acts. You find the first Christians, when they gathered for worship every Sunday, the day of the resurrection, all ages were together. We've shared this scripture a few times at Gospel Fellowship, so bear with me if it's review. But this is Acts chapter 20, verses seven to 12. In fact, go there in your Bible with me because this is so entertaining. Acts chapter 20, verses seven to 12. Flip over there with me. It says, on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, that means to celebrate the Lord's supper together, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech or his sermon till midnight. Now, there were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. So how late's the service going? Midnight, long sermon. and a young man named Eutychus. And by the word young man here in the Greek, this would be bar mitzvah age-ish. That's what this young man word in the Greek means. So he's 12, 13 years old. So a young man named Eutychus is sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, He fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. Now I'm very thankful for Grace Lutheran, but this is the only fear I have about meeting in the second story over there in the gym. Those windows are small, I don't think we can fall through, but it does present, we're on the ground level here, we're all safer. So this kid, he nods off during the long sermon from Paul, falls out of the window, dies. Paul went down, bent over him, taking him in his arms, said, do not be alarmed for his life is in him. And when Paul had gone up, had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while until daybreak and so departed. And they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted." So the kid falls out of the window, kid dies, Paul goes down, prays for him, God raises him from the dead, and he goes back up and finishes his sermon when? the next morning. Now, just because we try to do things biblically doesn't mean we do seven, eight-hour sermons here, okay? I'm gonna be 35-ish minutes. And some of you may fall asleep even in that short window, I get that. But again, here's a worship service in the New Testament. Where's the 12, 13-year-old boy? He's there, okay? Children were included. Another text we have, children were included in the churches in Ephesus and Colossae. We just had read a moment ago the scripture, the letters that were written to the church in Colossae, the letters that were written to the church in Ephesus, Ephesians and Colossians. I'll paraphrase the text. The pastor, the preacher, reads the letter written from Paul, and he says, husbands, love your wives. just as Christ loved the church. Wives, respect your husbands. Children, honor your father and your mother. It's the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God has given you. Now fathers, before you get too excited about God telling your children to honor and obey you, don't exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. So this is a sermon in the early church, and who's it talking to? Everybody, right? all ages, all stages, all positions in life. There's no idle words in scripture. And this, I just wanna give a reality check, okay? A couple of reality checks. For 1,900 years of Christianity, no one ever even asked this question, what should we do with our kids during the worship service? 1,900 years. And I guess you can go back to Abraham if you want to go back 2,900 years or 3,900 years, whatever it is. It wasn't asked because there was a universal Christian understanding and a universal Christian practice. Beginning in the early centuries of the church, in the New Testament church, leading all the way up to the early 1900s, kids worshipped with their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles in the church service. Now let's have a, I wanna have a blunt, I'm gonna do this a couple times today, so be prepared, a blunt family conversation among those of you that are a part of Gospel Fellowship. Gospel Fellowship is a little different in today's church culture, and it's hard to be different. Whenever you're different, you always have to explain yourself, right? Everybody always wants you to give an explanation. Well, why are you different, why are you different, why are you different? 100 years ago, every Christian church looked like this. Everyone. This was not just normal, this was universal. That when believers gathered for the corporate worship service, they did it all ages together, they worshiped together, if they ate, they ate together, they fellowshiped together. And in fact, This wasn't just a church thing, it wasn't that many generations ago that all of society really was connecting the generations. Businesses connected the generations. There'd be teenage boys or girls that are apprenticing with mom or dad or grandma or grandpa. So you even had the workplace with younger people involved. Neighborhoods with younger people involved. Education. How was education done? One big room. Ever heard of the one-room schoolhouse? We did this for a few hundred years. All the ages together, learning together. Now, this is a sermon for another day. It's a history lesson for another day. But the root cause of the change in this is the rise of what we might call social Darwinism, or an outworking of the evolutionary theory in human development, which demanded age and stage training. or development, what we might call developmental psychology. Based on statistics, this is what every three-year-old needs. Based on statistics, this is what every 12-year-old needs or should do. And again, that's a history lesson or sermon for another day. So here's the simple fact. A church like this, practicing this New Testament model, was completely normal for 1,900 years. And really, only within the last 30 to 50 years has this ancient historic practice fallen out of step. with what a lot of churches are doing. So, that is a quick survey of the biblical foundation. And just a reminder that what we do here, this is the normal way of doing it. Make sense? Okay. Now I'm gonna shift gears and I'm gonna be real, real practical with you. Rubber meets the road. How do we in the world do we make this work? How in the world do we make this work within a worship service? And we're not doing our fellowship meal today, but when we have our fellowship meal, what are some practical things that we can do to help this generational vision that we have come to fruition? So a few bullet points. And I'm probably going to, this sermon will be online for you, but I'm probably gonna write this up by way of a kind of a bullet point handout or a part of the email because some of these specific things I'm gonna go through right now I don't want you to forget. So what do we do when we get here on Sundays? How do we make this worship service work with this vision? First thing I want to encourage you to do is that when you are welcoming each other or greeting each other out here in the lobby or upstairs, to welcome and greet everybody. Now, I don't mean every single individual here, and I'm speaking to you adults right now. Sometimes you may walk up to another adult who you know, and maybe their niece or nephew or grandson or granddaughter or son or daughter's there. The tendency sometimes for us as adults is to walk up just to the adult and say, hey, Drew, how you doing today? Oh, hey, Rob, that's great. And maybe Kate is standing next to Drew. Well, I shouldn't just greet Drew. I should say, hey, Kate, how are you today? I'm so glad that you're here. And if I don't know Drew's daughter's name, I say, hey, I'm sorry. I forgot your name. Can you tell me your name? So we're greeting everybody. And we're being respectful of everybody in trying to learn names. Another thing that we can do is offer to help a parent or grandparent here in the worship service who may need some help. Sometimes you've got a parent or grandparent or an aunt or uncle who has their hands full during church. Raise your hand if you've ever seen or experienced this yourself. Okay, very good. It can be really helpful if you sense that that's what's going on around you. You can ask that mom, or that dad, or that grandma, or that grandpa, hey, is there anything I can do to help you? Now, what to not do, adults, is to look at the pew of wild and out of control people and to give a snide glance toward the father or the mother and to go, or even have the attitude in your heart, I just can't believe that these people cannot control their children. Okay, that I'm telling you right now, if this church has that sort of judgmental edge toward kids, that is poison. Poison to a church like this. We got to give each other grace with our parenting methods and parenting decisions Okay, every family that comes to our church is gonna do things a little differently They might have different expectations for how their kids function in the worship service, and that's okay It's a great opportunity for us to extend grace. Number three, feel free to take care of your own children and grandchildren as needed. Okay, we've got that family room back there. It's being utilized right now. Worshiping all ages together does not mean keeping screaming children in here. Got that? So if your child needs assistance, you are free to assist them. You're not gonna upset anyone by getting up and walking out to care for a child or help them to get a more quiet place. Now, we tell you this a lot, but it's true. This whole issue, some of you are here like, I have not made it through a sermon in 18 months. Is this ever gonna stop? Yes, it will stop. As we help our kids learn to engage in the worship service and learn to sit still, it gets better and better and better. I'll never forget, Amy and I were on a mission trip down in Alabama when our W was two years old. Sorry to pick on you here, pal. Our W is two years old, and we were in this big African American church, and it was a long, long, long, long service, and our W, at age two, was having a little bit of a challenge, right, sticking that service out, and so Amy's chasing him, he's running back and forth in the back of the service, while all of the kids who attend that church are down with their parents and down in the front row, sitting there for about two hours. The two-year-olds, the three-year-olds, and it dawned on us, oh my goodness, a two-year-old could actually do this. These two-year-olds are doing it, now ours isn't because he hadn't been trained. He is trained, now look at him, he's the model of, he's sitting through the whole service, I'm so proud of you, son. It wasn't you, we had failed to train you. But it's an example of kids and parents, as you work through this and as you stick this out, you're gonna do better and better. Another thing to do, engage all the ages of people around you during the prayer time. Part of what we do in our service is give you a chance to pray together. So adults, you're probably going to get that time started. If you have young people in the circle with you, go ahead and ask them, is there anything that we could pray for you for? Kids, feel free to speak up with the prayer requests that you have, or feel free to ask other people if they have prayer requests. Adults, be okay, let's say that you ask a young person, I might say, Andrew, is there a prayer request that you have? And maybe Andrew just sort of shakes his head and doesn't say anything. Don't be afraid or uncomfortable if a kid is shy or doesn't wanna talk, it's okay. It's another opportunity for us to be graceful with the little ones. Parents, another specific thing you can do is to help your kids navigate through the service with the Order of Service Bulletin, or if we're going through scriptures, help them open their Bible or help them turn on their Bible to the place that we're studying. And I just wanna reiterate something I've nibbled on here a little bit, but to accept the phases and stages of this. There's gonna be seasons of your family's life where being together in the corporate worship service can be very easy and wonderful, and there's gonna be seasons of your family's life, probably when you have little ones, where it's gonna be really difficult. And even just getting to church every week is this Herculean effort. Okay, and sometimes I've had conversations with you. Rob, we leave church more exhausted than at any time during the whole week. I get that, because you know what? It's hard work. I'm gonna get back to this later. This model, folks, of keeping our ages together for worship and fellowship is harder. It's harder. But I also think the fruit's better. And we're gonna talk about that in just a minute. Let me give you some practical suggestions with the fellowship meal. Practical suggestions with the fellowship meal. First one is this, give some help to those parents with their little ones going through the food line. Have you ever seen one of the dear mothers at our church? with like a six-month-old and a nine-month-old that they both had. I don't know how that works, but they had them like back to back, okay? And they're trying to help fill plates for the other little ones going around. If you see a dear mother in that position or a grandmother, it might be helpful. Could I help you get some plates for your little ones, okay? And one of the things, this is a little bit of a side note, but one of the things we're realizing with our food is that our teenagers are doing an awesome job waiting to the end. But the problem we've got is our 8 to 12-year-olds who are going through early, are not having a lot of parental supervision. and they are piling it high and deep. So I'm just giving you an encouragement. If you've got kids in that eight to 12-year-old range, we need a little bit more grandparent or parent supervision on portions. Okay. Another thing to do during the fellowship meal is follow up on prayer requests. Right in your bulletin today, do you have the prayer requests that were sent through email this week? You have those? Folks, this is a great time for you to look at those prayer requests During the fellowship meal if you know one of those families that submitted a prayer request Let's say I know that the dinguses have a prayer request on the card this week be great Go up to Paula go up to John go up to Stephen go up to Nathan hey, I prayed for you this week, or hey, how are things going with this? Those prayer requests are not just for private prayer, so the dinges never hear about it. The reason we have all this time together is so that we can go up to each other, inquire, and ask how we can pray and how we're doing. Another thing to do, very, very practical stuff, folks. When you're seated for that fellowship meal, learn the names of the people seated around you. If you were at the women's ministry meeting on Tuesday night, you heard something amazing from Yui here. Yui has made it a mission to do everything she can to learn the names of everybody in the church, including the children. And she's praying by name for everybody in the church as she goes through her week. Now folks, that's amazing. Amazing, but here it is, it's a godly woman taking seriously her call to pray, but also to do the really hard work of learning names. Last Sunday at the fellowship meal, I sat down with four six to 10 year old boys. They were seated in a little clump, so I'm like, oh, that looks like my crowd. So I go and I sit down with them. That's where I feel most comfortable, okay? And so, first thing I sat down and said, hey boys, how you doing? Can I sit with you? Oh, sure. I sat down and said, do you boys know each other's names? Nope. Now, they're having the time of their lives, don't get me wrong, okay? It's really unnecessary, right, for the six, 10-year-old. But I say, okay, how about we try that? So, of course, we go around, and they learn each other's names for the first time, even though they had already dove into conversation. So, I wanna encourage you, when you sit down, learn the names around you of adults and the kids. If you know me, you know I'm not in the gifted program when it comes to learning names. It takes me a long time. And God forbid, if I learn your name wrong, That is gonna be forever stuck. I'm gonna learn it once, and if I learn it wrong, I'm really sorry. But you've all had this experience with me at some point in your life after you've met me. I came up to you the second week, hey, I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Can you tell me your name again? Oh yeah, it's Steven. Week number three, I'm really sorry, I forgot your name again. Can you tell me your name again? Yeah. It's Steven, I am really sorry. I am gonna try to remember that, okay? And finally, after eight weeks, I come up to Ken. Ken, I'm really sorry, I forgot your name. Look, you don't have to tell me 10 times. Nine, you gotta tell me nine, and I'll remember. You see, if you don't do that, you become a hey you person. You know hey you people? Hey, you. How are you? Good to see you. And then you do that for a few weeks and you can't go back to, hey, I forgot your name. Do you understand? Like then the mountain you've set up for yourself is almost impossible. So it's okay, you just, if you don't know a person's name, you just go up and you just say, hey, I'm really sorry I forgot your name. I know you told me before. All right, I'm gonna give you a little inside baseball. I probably shouldn't do this because I have tricks that I use that I shouldn't divulge, because then they cease to become a trick. But this is a family conversation. I never say nice to meet you to anyone. I always say nice to see you again because I might have seen him before. You understand that? And the worst case scenario is saying nice to meet you to someone who says you've met me. So I never Ever Say it. I say nice to see you again, and they say we've never met I say oh, that's great. I'm sorry See, I'm gonna eat humble pie either way. That's just the less humble of the pies to eat Okay Kids this goes for you, too kids not only learning each other's names but learning the names of the adults in the church and so that when you're at the fellowship meal, when you're in here in the worship service, you're able to say, hello, Mr. O, how are you today? Hello, Mrs. Dinges, how are you today? Okay, and you actually learn the names of the different families in the church. Another thing that we can do that will help us in the fellowship meal is to have everybody be on the lookout for safety issues. It's a really important part of a church like ours that keeps all these kids together, that it really requires all the adults to help out. We have a rule, some of you may not be aware of it, No running in the gym. We need everybody helping out with that. Adults, if you see kids running, gently say, no running. Now let me give you a heads up on this, adults. If you yell at a kid, or if you're harsh with a kid, that kid's going to think you're a mean person. and that you don't like them. And so if that happens, then you've really set up a huge barrier between the chances that you might have in the future of being a blessing to that child or being someone who's gonna care and nurture that child. Now, adults, listen, let's just say that another one of your well-meaning friends yells at one of your children. This is another opportunity for you to show grace to another person. Yes, what they did was wrong. Yes, your dear child had their feelings hurt. I get it, all right? But it's an opportunity for us to work through these things. I'm gonna continue on this theme. Something else we can do during our fellowship meal is to help our kids build friendships. Candid conversation, here we go. Sometimes what happens at the fellowship meal is that we go through, we get our food. At some point after eating, a pack of five-year-olds drifts off to the corner of the room. where they spend the next 90 minutes while we have our meal and supervise them by glancing in that direction every 20 minutes. Amen? Amen. And then the ride home, we're shocked to discover that this little boy did this and this little girl did that. To our horror, our little boy added this to the problem. And there were hurt feelings and all the stuff that went along with it. And this, I mean, this does shock me. Personally, I would expect a pack of five-year-olds to spend 90 minutes completely unsupervised and have no problems. Is that a fair expectation? Probably not. You get the point. If we wanna build real relationships with each other, it's gonna take a lot of time, and it's gonna take a lot of work from everybody, particularly the adults, as we help our kids. We're gonna have to help the kids work through conflict. We're gonna have to help them share. We're gonna have to help them keep their hands to themselves. It might require an occasional phone call between parents on Sunday night, saying, hey, I think our kid's had a little problem today, and can we gracefully talk through it and work through it? This same principle applies to all the adults in the church as well. You see, here's what happens, and you already know this. I'm just stating what we need to say explicitly. This normal way of doing church It creates hours of personal time with each other on a given Sunday. And the more time you spend with other sinful people, the more problems you're gonna have. Amen? Amen. Here's the deal. This is the math that I wrote down. If you're taking notes, write this down. I got a little equation for you. You ready? If I had the PowerPoint, I'd have it up top. Real relationships plus a real church equals, got that so far? Real relationships plus a real church equals real problems, real growth, and real blessing. You got the equation? Real relationships and a real church equals real problems, real growth, and real blessing. I'll never forget in the early months when Gospel Fellowship started, I was talking with my daughter, Lissy, And we were just talking about, hey, how is church going? What's your experience been like? We had come from a larger church and more of a youth group setting. And she made a comment I'll never forget. She said, dad, this is harder, but better. I'm like, what in the world do you mean? It's harder but better. She said, well, in my old life, when it came to me spending time with my girlfriends, we would have five or 10 minutes before the program started, the youth program, and we'd kind of chit-chat, and then we'd have a program for an hour, an hour and a half, where we're just watching stuff or listening to stuff, and then we'd have five or 10 minutes to chit-chat and have our relationships. Here, we've got this Time upstairs, we've got this whole meal where sometimes we're with mom and dad and we're with friends and grandparents and our friends. We've got two whole hours of relationships. And so we're getting to know each other deeper and more, but that also means we're having more problems. We're having more conflicts. We're having to deal with more issues because we're just spending more time together. And I thought that she really, really nailed it. So remember my math? Real relationships plus a real church equals? Real problems, real growth, and real blessing. Real blessing. Wrapping up, we also hope that some of what happens on Sunday overflows to Monday through Saturday. If one of your friends isn't in church on a given Sunday, do you notice? Do you call him? Do you text him? Do you email him? Hey, I missed you. Miss seeing you. Is everything okay? We also hope that the fellowship time that we have at the mealtime overflows to you getting together on your own. I know, shocking. Like, hey, love to meet you for coffee this week, or hey, I'd love to have you over sometime, or I'd love to get together to get to know you better. Conclusion and prayer. This whole vision of trying to be a New Testament church, and particularly on this issue of being a multi-generational church, it doesn't happen because of our structure. Let me explain that. Building multi-generational relationships, passing faith to these kids and grandkids doesn't just happen because we put everybody in the same room. It's not the structure that is somehow magic. Well, we worship together and we eat together, therefore, all these kids are gonna fall in love with the church and be close to us and follow Jesus. All our structure does, we're just following this New Testament, Old Testament structure. All the structure does, all this program, if you will, does is give us the opportunity. It gives us the opportunity week after week, person after person, relationship after relationship, problem after problem, blessing after blessing to build a spiritual family here for the blessing of each other and for the glory of God. Let's pray. God, thanks for the blessing even today of the youngest to the oldest being together for singing and teaching of your word, and in a few moments, communion and prayer. God, we know that this is the normal way of doing church, all the Old Testament, all the New Testament, 1,900 years of Christian history. But today, sometimes it's a little different. And so Lord, I just wanna ask on behalf of everybody in this church, Lord, would you please and knit our hearts together through the generations in this church, that we wouldn't just look to the structure or the way we do things as some sort of magic formula, but God, that we would see this as an opportunity to build real relationships across the generations in our church, to worship you in spirit and truth across the generations of our church, and that you'd use gospel fellowship for the generations to come to advance your gospel in the world. In Jesus' name, amen.
All Together Church
Sermon ID | 1029141650301 |
Duration | 37:36 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Exodus 12 |
Language | English |
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