Good Monday afternoon!
Though it's not brewing yet, I'm badly in need of a second cup of coffee. This is the ninth time I've preached on Easter, and every year I find myself half-catatonic after the day is done. The Monday after Easter has got to be the mother of all pastor's hangover days, I guess. So much prayer, thought, and emotional energy go into Easter that when it's over I'm always left with the feeling that I just ran through a brick wall, and then collapsed on the other side. I did get up and go to the Y today, but that was mainly because I ate waaaaaaaaay too much food yesterday, and was feeling extremely guilty.
So, in the spirit of keeping my disciplines going, I'm gonna push through the ham, deviled egg, and chocolate induced haze that surrounds my brain, and try to pump out a couple of thoughts regarding discipleship.
A couple of years ago we started putting together a small team to work on discipleship in the church. From that team the idea for our Immersion experiences was born. While they've taken different forms and shapes over the last couple of years, the essential mission has remained the same: to immerse ourselves in the story of God at work in each individual, and also in the world. To this end we've tried to make sure that our monthly Immersion experiences are designed to help us place ourselves inside the Scriptural story, and by doing so, to see what God has been up to in the past.
I really believe that these times we gather on Sunday evening can be a vital connection point for each of us to grow as disciples of Jesus. I do my best to provide sound teaching every Sunday morning, but the truth is that the one downside of a sermon is that it doesn't provide much space for interaction and feedback from everyone. I think that part of setting ourselves down into the story of God at work in the Scriptures is hearing ourselves speak about it, not just listening to someone else teach it.
Right now we're walking through Hebrews 11 and looking at some individuals whose faith was big enough and inspiring enough that God chose to record their names in the Scriptures as examples for us - they are, in the words of the author of Hebrews, the "great cloud of witnesses". We chose to look at the lives of these men and women because I believe we are at a place in the life of our church where God wants to stretch out our faith, and get us to think and believe that he could do impossible things in and through us. The reason we look back to the Scriptures to find God at work there is not just so we can boast a knowledge of Bible History, but so that we can be motivated by what we see there to take that story and live it out in our own unique ways.
And this is the first element of discipleship as I've been thinking about it lately: an immersion into the back story of the Scriptures. In a couple of weeks, on a Sunday night at 6, a few of us will gather to dive into the pages of Hebrews and Genesis, and we'll look at the story of Enoch, who walked with God (that's a pretty amazing statement to have said about him, or us). I'm going to invite you to take some time out of your life to be there with us, and to set yourself down in the story with us. I think you might be surprised by what you find there, and by how the time spent in the back story can energize you to keep writing the story of your own life. So, yeah, I guess this is a plug for Immersion on the first Sunday of every month as a way for us to get moving on the discipleship journey.
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