Being an apostolic people - Part 2

Being an apostolic people - Part 2

In August, Regions Beyond which is Steve Oliver's Apostolic Sphere (which is a part of Newfrontiers ) held a Conference in the UK .

 At the conference Steve O and others shared on what the the apostolic, what is Regions Beyond and how do we relate as different apostolic spheres that share a common history, vision and values. 

This series of blogs is very useful to helping us understand who we are, what vision shapes us and what the future holds for us.

You can find the mp3 audio recording the sermons that we will be summarizing here by  City Church Gloucester website. This is PART 2  of Steve Oliver's second message

I want to give you some points and I will stress on only two today.

PART 2

1.      Eph 2:20 Christ is the corner stone. If we are to build anything He needs to be our Corner Stone. Everything we are doing is for Him and by Him. We can get caught up with many things and then forget that it is He who said “I will build my church”

2.      The Word Of God. People who come to church on a Sunday are constantly being told that the Bible is irrelevant and outdated. We need to have well worn and read Bibles and we need to speak form hit. It’s never wrong to tell people to read their Bibles.

3.      Prayer- It must be the foundation of your church. The size of your church is the number at your prayer meeting. Paul tells the Colossians to devote themselves to prayer/ Why? When new prayer together, we hear God, faith rises in our hearts. If we are light in prayer we are vulnerable.

4.      New Testament Leadership- I want to stress this one. This is my passion. We must see a new breed of leaders born among us. I have never known a time when we need robust leadership and men of courage more. The world is slowly locking people up. To change the world we need robust leaders. How do you do this across the globe? God will give us grace to work across the globe relation ally  God told me to “build a people who are there for one another’s success”

       Why are we leaders? We are here for the success of others. This is true New Testament leadership. This is Jesus’ model. The most freeing statement is “you will do greater things than me “Jesus is for us.

In Phil 2:1-4 (THE Message) If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”

This is it. We have got to get this into our hearts – a deep spirited love and honouring and truly loving one another. This is it.

How many church movements and churches have a history of broken relationships? This is because in our leadership styles we push ourselves ahead and have a wrong view of success and getting ahead.

To the next generation – all that we are doing is for you.

5.      Holy Spirit – “ If the Holy Spirit had to decide to leave the church, 90% would not notice” A. W Tozer

6.      Grace- Paul puts this in. We can only do what we are doing because he enables it.

7.      Community- it’s always relational

8.      Discipling of all believers- we want to make room for the next generation. At the HUB we have the next generation preaching. Fusi will be preaching at the HUB.

9.      Discipleship

1.   Passion for the lost

1.   The church- God has gathered a community. M. L Jones in Ephesians said about the manifold wisdom of God – the church is like prism held up in front of God and a light shines through it and it makes the whole nature of God known to the world. That’s who we are.

Today there is strange language out there that says we’re not going to call church, church because the world does not like it. Are you going to tell Jesus that? If I remember he said that I am going to build my church. Don’t hear me wrong – contextualization is one thing but I am thrilled by church and not embarrassed by it.

We will not dial down on our songs because the world won’t like it or stop speaking in tongues at our meetings.

Can I ask you to have a high view of church? Let’s be careful what we throw out because I am concerned about what we going to be to be left with. Are we going to be like a club that follows Jesus or are we going to be a power filled Christ followers singing in tongues ad proud of Jesus and His glorious church.

Before us lies the landscape of nations opening up or towns and neighborhoods. God has called us to this together. God has promised us this, this morning. We will do it as One New Man. It’s a promise in our hearts. WE got to go out there . There are so many nations to reach.

One thing I don’t find difficult to do in church is to ask people to give. God provides through people who know what we have is his anyway.

We are sending people off at our first Conference. How great is that?. We ask for generosity. We have a great administrative team and what we give gets out there and gets the job done.

   Word of Grace is an Evangelical (Born Again),  Spirit filled (Charismatic), Reformed, English speaking church in Pune that upholds the Bible as God's inspired Word for life. We are a church community that have people from every part of India and parts of the world. We are here to put the Great Command and the Great Commission into practice by equipping and releasing every member into works of service. To know more about us please log ontowww.wordofgracechurch.org.

    English Language Service Sundays at 10am. Please check google maps for directions!