Community Survey
Today our staff went out into the community to get their feel about how effective is the church really being. Overall, I feel that we have a good grasp on this community that we live, work and serve in. Like never before I am sold that our vision of redefining church through relationships and not religion is of God and mirrors His very heartbeat.
We asked 3 simple questions in three different locations.
1. Why do you think that some people are not interested in church?
2. Are you actively attending church?
3. What do you think is the greatest need in the area that the church is not meeting?
The replies that we got fit right into our core values at Fellowship. Remember them?
• Engage Culture
• Embrace People
• Build Bridges
• Apply Truth
• Empower People
• Living Authenticity
Almost everybody who attended church or didn’t attend church said that church today is boring, irrelevant for their life, it doesn’t apply, doesn’t meet them where they are, lacks application, all about rules and doesn’t fit their family schedule.
John always used to say we are the best kept secret in the Delaware Valley. I don’t know about you but I hate secrets unless I’m the one that holds the secret. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, how can the church reach more people? How can our teens connect their friends to a loving Jesus? I think the answer is not what we do but how we do it.
I think the value that I took from today is that our community needs a church like Fellowship. There are a lot of hurting people who don’t feel like they have connected to God, otherwise they would be engaged vs. disengaged from the local church.
I strongly believe that if we as individuals continue to make God a priority in our life and if Fellowship continues to make His name great than God will make Fellowships name great in the community. It is God’s church and I so believe after talking to the community that God is smiling that we have grabbed on to his very heartbeat which about a relationship with Jesus and with others.
I heard somewhere that the guilt of religion will bring people to church but the joy of a relationship with keep them in church. Don’t let Fellowship be a secret, share it, shout it, live it and make His name great.
We are in the middle of our one prayer series and this week we get to hear from one of the most creative, innovative and gifted speakers in the world. His name is Craig Groeschel and he is from Lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma.
This week he is talking about, GOD IS Love. You don’t want to miss it. One prayer has become one of my favorite series we do as a church. I love being able to hear speakers who are normally only at the conferences we get to attend pour into our people.
Don’t forget Sunday morning summer schedule is 10:30 am at the Garnet Valley Middle School.
Accept
I am talking about accepting people as they are without any conditions on Saturday night for UNITED. As I looked through the Bible to prep for this I realized that there are some seriously jacked up people, and that is just in the first 30 chapters of Genesis.
Genesis 4-Cain kills his brother Abel
Genesis 9-Noah gets drunk and naked
Genesis 16-Abraham has sex with his wife’s servant and gets her pregnant
Genesis 19-Lot gives offers his daughters up to the city of Sodom in place of the angels visiting him
Genesis 29-Jacob marries 2 women, has sex with 4 and has 13 children between the four.
Why would God put all those stories in the Bible? To show us that people are messed up but regardless He died for them just like He did for us. Accepting others I believe is a form of worship and brings honor and glory to God. The key is accepting them before they change not waiting for them to make the change.
There is a line from Transformers 2 that says, “Fate rarely calls upon us in the moment of our choosing”. I feel God rarely calls upon us in the moment of our choosing. Because we naturally we don’t choose to love the unlovable like Jesus did with the Lepers in Luke 11, but that is exactly what He has called us to do.
I wonder what it would look like for us if we put ourselves in other people’s shoes and see life through their eyes for just a moment? I wonder how much more accepting we would be? Who has God put in our life that needs to see the accepting love of Jesus through us this week?
Vision 2009
I love vision. I love leadership. I love seeing the local church step up and become what God created it to be. I can’t even begin to tell you how important this previous series we just did was. Gus did a great job communicating what the vision of Fellowship Church is. We are here to redefine church through relationships not religion.
As Gus said all of our resources, time and energy go into what we call the BIG 5: Sunday Morning, Life Groups, Children, Missions and Students…
Everything we do is focused around those five areas. The reality is we could do more, but to do more would cause us to a lot of stuff good but nothing great, we know what God has called us to do. The how is always evolving. That is why our six core values could change at any time as God changes our heart and our focus.
Our six core values are:
Embrace People
We welcome, include and love all people from all walks of life. We reach out to everyone without expecting anything in return.
Live Authentically
We are transparent and honest about who we are and where we’re at in our lives. We do not hide behind a spiritual mask.
Engage Culture
We value culture as a way to connect with people across generational and ethnic boundaries. We leverage culture to communicate our and God’s love for people.
Apply Truth
We seek to live out biblical truth instead of just gaining knowledge. We learn how to apply truth so it makes a difference in our everyday lives.
Empower People
We give everyone the opportunity to dream and be who they are, enabling you to participate in church life regardless of where you are at in your spiritual journey.
Building Bridges
We reach out to others to be good neighbors and meet needs in our local community and across the world.
Jump on board with us as we redefine church for the lost, broken, hurt, confused people in the Delaware Valley.
