Encouragement From The Word

Doggie Bags

Last Sunday, our Pastoral Intern preached a message about the meaning of the Lord’s Supper in which she illustrated with the concept of taking home leftovers after a scrumptious meal at a restaurant.  I want to think about that idea with you for a moment.

If you, like most Christians around the world, celebrated the Lord’s Supper last Sunday, you probably received a wafer or a morsel of bread, and just enough wine or grape juice to wet your whistle.  It doesn’t seem like enough to require a doggie bag!

But when you feast upon God’s grace in this sensory manner, you are invited to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit, and to be filled – not with bread and wine, but with the Holy Spirit.  In this way, you have ‘leftovers’ to last you through the week…leftovers that you can share.

One of the realities that many of us church leaders have been talking about for the past several years is now becoming a reality, thanks to the accelerated change caused by the pandemic:  we need to take the church out into the neighbourhood.

Because the church is people – followers of Jesus and their children, gathered – it is possible to take the church away from the building.  Not to say that gathering together for corporate worship and fellowship are not important (they very much are!), but God’s people need to start thinking beyond the four walls, taking God’s love and truth, God’s justice and righteousness, into our neighbourhoods.

What can this look like?

It can mean hosting a Bible study (what we call a LifeConnect Group) in your home, and inviting your neighbours to join in.  (This is nothing new, by the way; my grandmother hosted a neighbourhood Bible study in our home in the 1970s!)

It can mean inviting neighbours to share a meal with you, in which part of the conversation opens a door to talking about your faith.

It can mean reaching out to a neighbour who has experienced some sort of illness, loss or life crisis with kindly deeds done in Jesus’ name.

It can mean sharing information by text or email among your neighbours and friends who are still fearful of stepping out their front door, inviting them to a watch party for a Sunday worship broadcast.

The list could go on and on, but the point is that if an invitation to cross the threshold of the church building doesn’t work, you can take the church to the neighbourhood.

This becomes the ‘doggie bag’ that you take away from a worship gathering, whether it involves the Lord’s Supper or not, because we can ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit anytime…and that infilling can overflow, and splash onto the people with whom you interact day by day.

God knows the difference you will make.

If you’re not sure you can do this, rest assured that you can’t do it on your own.  So ask the Lord to fill you with his Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised at his ascension:  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1.8, NLT).

Biblical Messages

The Mission

How does God’s mission get accomplished? The apostle Paul, in writing to the church at Rome in the first century, gave a clear picture of what that looked like for him, and there are things we can learn from his experience as we seek to undertake the work of God in our time. Based on Romans 15.14-22, you can watch the entire worship broadcast below, or just the message below that.

Biblical Messages

Think like a missionary

In celebration of 60 years of God’s faithfulness at St. Paul’s Church, Nobleton, we invited friends of the congregation from years gone by, and many came!  I shared this message, “Think like a missionary”, from Matthew 22, 28 and 13.  Watch on Facebook Live, or listen at the link below.

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Biblical Messages

What matters to us

Our elders at St. Paul’s Church, Nobleton have been discerning God’s will regarding our core values in recent months, and today’s message, along with next week’s, expound upon what has been set forth by the elders.  It’s based on Acts 2.42-47, and you can watch or listen here:

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Biblical Messages

Mission as Relief & Development

In this concluding message in our series on mission, we look at how relief and development can be a ministry of the gospel.  We looked at Micah 6.1-8.  Have a listen below, or watch the Facebook Live feed by clicking the link below that.

 

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Biblical Messages

Mission as Evangelism

Evangelism is something that not many church going people are good at, sometimes because we don’t know what it is, and sometimes because we don’t know why or how to do it.  In this message, from 2 Corinthians 5.11-15, we learn about that.

Near the end, we watched a video that you can find here.

 

 

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Biblical Messages

Mission as Service

There are different aspects of mission for the church, and one is service.  Today, based on 1 Corinthians 3.5-9, we look at how acts of service and kindness can build a bridge to Jesus.  Have a listen below, or watch the Facebook feed (no account required) at the link underneath.

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Biblical Messages

Connect, Grow, Serve

Our vision for ministry – what God calls us to do, flowing from the Great Commission – at St. Paul’s Church, Nobleton, is to help people connect with God, grow in Christ, and serve in community.  But how does that all happen?

Because, as Andy Stanley reminds us, “vision leaks”, it’s important to be reminded now and again what it is that God has Blue Logocalled us to be as a community.  Based on Ephesians 4.11-24, you can listen to the message here: