First of all, I would like to apologize for the delay in posting. This week has been a very trying week here in the Kimmons' household - Matthew lost his Grandfather this week (visit obituary here) among other things. Hopefully I will pull it together and be more "on it" next week. :) Many of you are also going through very difficult times as well. All of our challenges tie into last Sunday's message very well.
Last Sunday Matthew discussed intentional faith development as a part of his three part series on Visioning. For clarification, faith development is defined by Matthew as how you grow in grace and holiness in your spiritual life. Think of your faith development as growing to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus. I don't know about you, but I think this becomes a bigger challenge when we are struggling with life's challenges. It is easy to call ourselves "followers" when things are great, when life is going along just as we planned but when times get tough, we do one of two things. We either call out to God, asking for his help, but still stop learning about Him. Or we turn from God completely, because surely God would not let us suffer so. In either situation we stop growing in our faith. Our attention, while we may be asking God for help, no longer intentionally seeks to know about Him and to become more like Him. We are just try to get through the situation.
During the upcoming year, we are going to focus on being intentional in our faith development, as a church. We are going to be doing this in two very specific ways. First, we are going to participate in a program (Network) that will help each of us identify each of our spiritual gifts, passions, and personality. By identifying these things in ourselves, it will help us become aware of how God has gifted us to help build the kingdom. For example: Some of us have the gift of "Teaching" and should use that to build the kingdom, others may have the gift of "Helps" who quietly use their skills to help build the kingdom either through chores around the church, fixing things, or making the bulletins each week. There are many spiritual gifts and believe it or not, what you find to be your spiritual gift may surprise you....maybe not. Once you identify your spiritual gifts and what you are passionate about, we can together figure out how we can each best serve the church and the kingdom. Also, as a bonus, we begin to understand each other as well. We can become excited for each others' passions and gifts and begin to think about how each of those could work together.
The second part of intentionally growing our faith will be to offer a mid-week Bible study and topical studies that will help each of us grow in our faith and also grow in our relationships with one another. We must spend time learning about God and His Word so that we may become more like Christ each day. Our community will help us with this journey...God did not intend for us be alone in our faith, He intended for us to work and move together as the "Body of Christ."
This next year we want to grow in our faith, working as God designed us to work, as a healthy community of faith.
Are you ready to come join us?
Are you excited to being working in the Kingdom the way God designed you to work?
Are you ready to grown in your faith and to grow in relationships with others?
We are excited....are you?
~Jennifer
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