Category: Bruce’s Newsletter Articles

Back-to-school time is kind of like my New Year’s Day. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always thought in the terms of a school year. So, with a new year comes renewed purpose.

For the past year, I’ve been focusing on the idea that the church is the body of Christ. And just like any body, we have a purpose. In order to do that, we need to be connected. We all have gifts, skills, talents, experiences, and knowledge that prepare us as individuals to do various tasks, but when we get connected, we need to figure out how all that goes together so this body can live according to its purpose.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:18 that “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Not only are we all different parts of one body, but God has put us where we ought to be. That can get confusing, but again, if we think of this as a new school year, the uncertainty is just a part of growth.

The first day of school brings together a bunch of kids who don’t know what’s going on until the teachers direct them to specific desks or lockers. Kids have a general understanding of what school is, but they have to grow with the specifics. We’re the same way. We know we’re supposed to be together and heading in one direction. We don’t know specifically what we’re going to do from day to day, but we trust that there will be someone there to guide us. That’s why we have the Bible, the Holy Spirit, teachers, and other leaders, to guide us as we grow.

And next year, even though we might be back in the same uncertain position, we are a step ahead of those who have come behind us, and we can lead them to where we are. Our purpose as a church is to make disciples who make more disciples, people who love God, love people, and serve like Jesus. And the process begins with getting connected, first to God and then to others, so we can grow and serve together.

I don’t think my kids are looking forward to going back to school as much as Sandi and I are, but I love this time of year. I love school and the whole educational process, and I believe that it’s one of the central points of what we do within the church.

Paul makes this pretty clear in Ephesians 4:11-16. Verses 11 and 12 tell us there’s a structure in place to build up the body. Verses 12 and 13 say that the areas to build are in service, unity, and knowledge. Verses 14 through 16 tell us that the result is growth in understanding, love, and service. Verse 16 tells us that this growth works only as we work together, each of us doing our part. Basically Paul tells us that in order for people to have the life that God intended for us to have, we need to connect to God and each other, grow in our faith and knowledge of Jesus, and serve together like Jesus.

We have the structure in place; so the next step is to start building up the body in knowledge. We can do that by each of us getting into God’s Word through smaller groups, especially in our Adult Bible Fellowship groups on Sunday morning. We have groups for adults of all ages and in different stages of life. September 7 is the beginning of a new quarter, and each class has chosen their curriculum. You can read about the different classes and what they will be studying in the new ABF brochures which can be found at the welcome center. Then it’s just a matter of checking them out and making the connection.

As a side note, we are working to grow our ABF for young adults. Instead of focusing on college-age adults, whose stage of life doesn’t permit them to attend regularly, we want to build a core group of young professionals, couples, and parents. This will allow this growing segment in our church family to connect, grow, and serve together, and in turn, they can provide a stable “home” for college-age students as they transition from student ministry to adult ministry.

The current sermon series ?Real Revival ? has been kind of dangerous, in the sense that it brings up issues that we might rather leave alone, that it focuses attention on things that make us uncomfortable, that it calls attention to the places where we fall short as individuals and as a body. But that ?s probably a good thing for us.

When I got my first job with health benefits, the first doctor I visited, before he even introduced himself, said, ?Tell me why you don ?t want to see your children grow up. ? I knew he was talking about my weight and my unhealthy lifestyle, but it made me mad ?so I found another doctor. Fast forward ten years, and the newest doctor, in a string of a half dozen or so, tells me I am diabetic. I didn ?t want to hear it. It made me uncomfortable, but now I had to act.

James 5:16 tells us, ?Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. ? In the sermon on July 20, I said I wasn ?t sure how we should follow the example of the nation of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, where they publicly confessed their sin as a nation. I said we ?re too private and independent for that. But James tells us that if we truly want to be healed, we need to confess to each other. Maybe that ?s where we start. If we can trust our brothers and sisters in Christ enough to share our own individual struggle with sin and pray for each other ?remember, intercession makes an impression ?then God will heal us.

As God heals us as individuals, then our prayers for real revival will become more effective. As James 5;16 ends, ?The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. ? Let ?s get connected to each other and confess our struggles with sin and pray for each other. As men gather together and confess their sins, they will grow stronger in their faith. As women gather together and pray for each other, they will grow stronger in their faith. And God will heal us, and we will grow together as a body.

What a great week of VBS! Not only did I get to wear all of my Hawaiian shirts and grill all week, but I got to connect with all kinds of people, kids through adults, as we focused on God ?s Truth. The core of the week was based on Psalm 86:11, which says: ?Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. ?

While it was great to spend time with kids and adults from the church and to meet new people, the heart of ?Outrigger Island ? was to connect to God through his truth. The motto for the week was ?Know the Truth! Speak the Truth! Live the Truth! ? That ?s a great summary of the Christian life, and I ?m thrilled that kids, adults, families got to learn that together.

The key is making that connection to God ?s truth within our hearts. It ?s easy for us to run programs for Bible school, Adult Bible Fellowship, and mid-week Bible studies and stuff our brains full of Bible knowledge, but until we have the connection between mind and heart, we won ?t really be able to speak the truth and live the truth.

David shows us how important that connection is. Too often we find our hearts divided between the old life and the new life we have in Christ. And when we try to live with that kind of divided heart, we find we can ?t do it. It ?s like cardiac patients who have only a percentage of the full usage of their hearts; they find themselves weaker and with less stamina and with shortness of breath. It ?s not a full life. The only way to live the full life Jesus came to bring (remember Life360 and John 10:10?), is to have an undivided heart that knows the truth, speaks the truth, and lives the truth. So, by all means, continue to fill yourself with God ?s Word by listening to Mark ?s sermons and attending an Adult Bible Fellowship or another smaller group. But allow God to connect your heart, soul, mind, and strength so you can grow and serve.

At the end of June, Sandi and I will be taking the kids to Pennsylvania to my parents ? home for a family reunion. We get to go to PA maybe twice each year, and so we don ?t get to see my folks or other relatives very often. But one nice thing about a family reunion is that you don ?t really have to go through a lot of the stages of reconnecting with people because you ?re family. Just because you share a name or common ancestry, there ?s always something to talk about, there ?s a natural connection.

As we go through this current sermon series seeking revival from God, we ?ve been focusing on 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says, ?If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. ? We ?ve been focusing on the concepts of humility and prayer and other things that we need to do as we ask God to bring revival, but it seems like we may have missed one significant point.

God refers to ?my people, who are called by my name. ? According to Acts 11:26, which says, ?The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch, ? that ?s us. We share a name; we are family. If we want to experience revival, we need to ask God together to bring it among us as his family.

As we launch into Summer and all the traveling that often happens, let ?s not forget our church family. While we don ?t have Sunday and Wednesday night programming, we can still get together with each other. Get together for a grill-out. Families with kids can plan to meet up at a park and play together. Saddle up and join Mark on Thursdays in Hines Park for Bike, Bible and Prayer. And by all means, don ?t give up on meeting together Sunday mornings for worship and Adult Bible Fellowship ?no matter how nice it is. We ?re better together!

Many people outside the church accuse Christians of being hypocrites. Technically, hypocrisy is a matter of professing a set of beliefs that you don ?t really believe. However, our culture ?and many Christians ?believes that hypocrisy is a matter of saying one thing and doing another, being two-faced. While that might seem like splitting hairs, the subtle difference between hiding one ?s true beliefs and struggling with sin in our lives is lost on the people of our culture.

Regardless of the misunderstanding, the disparity between the preaching and teaching of Christians and the lives of Christians is a stumbling block to many who are not Christians. They hear the words ?love God and love others, ? but they don ?t always see it or experience it when they interact with Christians. Then they walk away.

The fact is, Christians don ?t really fit in this world, even though we live in it. When the world sees us trying to fit in, even though we claim we don ?t fit, they don ?t see the value of being one of us. If we want to close that gap, we need to be what we were made to be: holy.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:2: ?To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ ?their Lord and ours. ? The church in Corinth existed in the ?sin city ? of its day, and Paul ?s letter was intended to remind Christians that they were made to be different.

Even though that difference separates us from the ways and thinking of the world, it ?s not meant to separate us from other people. God ?s plan is to connect us to himself and to others through holiness. We can ?t hide the fact that we share with the world a common sin problem, but we also need to share the differences we have, the call to holiness. That common solution, which connects us to God through Christ, will connect us to others as well.

Since I was diagnosed to be diabetic in September 2007, I ?ve had to watch what I eat. As a result, some of my clothes are becoming so baggy that I will need to replace them soon. (As a side note, thanks to everyone for the encouragement along the way ?keep it up!) Oddly enough, as thrilled as I am with the weight loss, I have been hesitant to purchase new clothes. I think it ?s because I ?ve lost weight before, and I ?m afraid that I ?ll bounce back to where I was.

It ?s the same thing with sin. We ?ve become so accustomed to the ?weight ? of the sins in our lives and the habits of living with those sins that we hesitate to get rid of them. Even when we decide to follow Jesus and allow him to forgive our sins and give us new selves, we hesitate to get rid of the old ways because we ?ve bounced back there before.

In Ephesians 4:22-24, Paul wrote: ?You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. ? Paul says that we need to discard the old self, but then, we knew that, right? The hard part is in the word translated ?put on, ? which literally means to sink into. Some uses of the word translate it as ?invest. ? In a sense, Paul is telling us to invest in some new clothes, to sink into our new selves as if into a new set of clothes.

Verse 25 says to put off falsehood and put on truth because we are the members of one body. The rest of chapter 4 talks about different sinful habits to get rid of and what to put on to replace them. Ultimately, we all have the same problem ?can we call it ?sin handles ?but because we are members of one body, we need to work on losing the weight of sin together. Get rid of the old self; you ?re not going back because you ?ve got new clothes ?and spiritual workout buddies as well!

The sermon series that we are going through right now, ?Life360, ? has been exciting to preach. The sermon on April 27 dealt with ?Faith: Broadband Beliefs, ? the idea that our faith is developed when we hear, read, and study the Bible and then live it out. The exciting part of that sermon was the realization that, even though each of us has an individual faith, we are connected by the common beliefs of the Bible. OK, we ?ve probably understood that at a very basic level, that we share biblical beliefs in common. However, not only do we have common understanding of facts found in the Bible, but that foundational faith connects us together.

The sermon pointed out Hebrews 10:25, which tells us to meet together and to encourage each other. About what? We went back to Hebrews 2:1 for the answer: ?We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. ?

If we truly want to live the ?abundant life ? that Jesus promises us (John 10:10), we need to hold on to what we have heard from God ?s Word, and we need to read it and study it, and then we need to live it. But we don ?t have to do it on our own. We are members of one body, and we need to continue meeting together so we can encourage each other and make sure that ?we do not drifty away. ?

Obviously, we cannot neglect coming together to worship on Sunday morning. It ?s the best place to find the core of discipleship ?worship, study, fellowship, service, witnessing, and prayer ?all in one place. I ?d suggest, however, that the single hour is only a portion of what we need to connect to each other through the truth of the Bible. If you ?re not a member of one of our Sunday morning Adult Bible Fellowship groups, start checking them out and find one where you can connect with adults who are near your age or who are in your stage of life. These groups meet to study the Bible and to fellowship, encouraging each other so that we do not drift away.

I ?m not good at relationships, but I ?m getting better. How do I know? Well, God and I communicate a lot more than we did before, and more and more frequently, we communicate about other people.

I suspect that my prayer life has been a lot like most people ?s: about my needs, when I have needs. But that started to change dramatically when I began participating in a men ?s group in Cincinnati. We spent a lot of time in fellowship, talking about our week, sharing our struggles, encouraging each other, and studying the Bible, but we spent most of our time in prayer.

I had never experienced such prayer times before ?sometimes as long as half an hour. While that really isn ?t a long time, considering there were about six to eight of us any given night, it was a long time for a bunch of guys. We started praying those perfunctory prayers: ?Thank you, God, for this and that ? and ?God bless us all ?; we were just on auto-pilot. At some point, our prayers changed. Instead of praying for someone who had an illness, we boldly asked for healing. Instead of thanking God for his power, we openly thanked him for deliverance from addiction. We prayed about promotions, parenting skills, and even traffic tickets.

The thing is, I can ?t say whether our prayers changed because we got closer or whether we got closer because of our prayers. Either way, it ?s clear that there ?s a connection between our relationships and our prayers. In his letter of encouragement to Timothy, Paul writes: ?I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone ? (1 Timothy 2:1). If you would like to grow the connections you have with your brothers and sisters in Christ, grab a copy of the weekly prayer list at the welcome center or ask to have it sent to your email address and join us Wednesdays at 1:15 in Mark ?s office for the weekly prayer meeting.

For some reason, church membership is a tough topic. Reading the New Testament, it seems the early church understood that when you become a Christian, you are a ?member ? of the church. Just as when a child is born he becomes part of the family, when a person is ?reborn ? they become part of the church family. Just as there are roles, rights, and responsibilities to fulfill within a family, the early church seemed to understand the same for being a Christian.

Today we seem to believe that being a member of a church is like being a member of any other organization, and so we come and go as we please, withhold our support when we are angry, and pick and choose how and when we participate and even submit to the authority of the leaders. Maybe it ?s because we have a lot of choices among churches or because it ?s so easy to place, transfer, or quit membership. Whatever the reason, we seem to forget that being a member of the church is more like being a member of a body or a family. We recognize the tragedy of broken families, and we are disgusted by the thought of a dismembered body, but we don ?t always place such importance on the connections we have as the body of Christ.

Even though ?membership ? isn ?t a requirement for being a Christian, we must recognize the connectedness we have to each other because of our own relationships with Christ. Paul writes about this in Ephesians 2:19-22: ?You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. ? The church is not a loose association by simple choice; we are connected to each other because we are members of the body of Christ. Let ?s continue to work together as he builds us into that holy dwelling.