Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Fountains: Life In The Spirit- Savannah Charlish: Fellowship
Savannah Charlish explores Acts 2 and the Holy Spirit bringing us into fellowship with God and with others.
Hear the word of the Lord. It says and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. The word of the Lord Thanks be to God.
Speaker 2:This month, the Atlantic published an article titled the Antisocial Century, with the tagline that Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It's changing our personalities, our politics and even our relationship to reality. Our politics and even our relationship to reality. In his essay, derek Thompson outlines the increasing disposition of Americans to be alone, arguing that the increase of solitude in the 21st century can primarily be explained with reference to the increase of personal televisions beginning in the 1970s. He writes, television transformed Americans' interior, decorating our relationship, our communities. In 1970, just 6% of 6th graders had a TV set in their bedroom. In 1999, that proportion had grown to 77%. Time Diaries in the 1990s shows that husband and wife spent almost four times as many hours watching TV together as they spent talking to each other in a given week. People who said TV was their primary form of entertainment were less likely to engage in practically every social activity that counted Volunteering, church going, attending dinner parties, picnicking, giving blood, even sending greeting cards. Based on the data collected, he concludes that self-imposed solitude may be the most significant social phenomenon of the 21st century. He demonstrates this by meticulously outlining how this issue permeates and influences every aspect of our lives, even referencing the surgeon general, who has called loneliness an epidemic with a global reach, noting that both the UK and Japan have appointed ministers of loneliness to address the crisis. Put simply, the epidemic of loneliness is reshaping our civic and psychological identities in ways that have daunting and far-reaching consequences, affecting our happiness, communities, politics and our understanding of the world around us. And yet, despite all this, thompson notes, nonetheless many people keep choosing to spend free time alone in their home, away from other people. Perhaps one might think that they are making the right choice After all, they know themselves best but a consistent finding of modern psychology is that people often don't know what they want or what will make them happy. Time and again, what we expect to bring us peace, a bigger house, a luxury car, a job with twice the pay, but half the leisure only creates more anxiety. And at the top of this pile of things we mistakenly believe we want, there is aloneness. Thompson's essay, I think, is a poignant summary of one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Speaker 2:In response to this problem, top researchers and voices on the issue believe that the only antidote to the epidemic of loneliness caused by consumerism of self-focused media lies in a restoration of social institutions. Even the most secular and non-religious experts admit that institutions like a church would go a long way in addressing the issue. And, at the risk of sounding reductionist, the church truly is one of the last institutions in the US that is a social group that convenes on a weekly basis. As bowling alleys, movie theaters and even restaurants become increasingly less social movie theaters and even restaurants become increasingly less social the church remains as a kind of convention that pulls people out of their homes in most cases and into a social space where people participate in an activity with one another. Community is something that we hold as a church as a fundamental value, but when was the last time you were disappointed by a church community? How deep are the scars of your church hurt? I mean, I think it's a fair question to ask how can the church be the antidote to the epidemic of loneliness if it's one of the greatest perpetrators of communal hurt, injustice and failure to live up to its values? It's a question I'm sure many of us have asked ourselves when evaluating the wounds from church hurt and community as we're walking out the door. It's the kind of question, so large and overwhelming, that thinking about it too long or too hard can bring even the best of us into a spiral of cynicism, skepticism and even existential dread. It's the kind of question that seems to highlight where our lived experience and the truth of scripture seem to be at odds with one another. However, I think there's a way to make sense of how both can be true. Specifically, before we can understand and believe in the ideal step before us in today's scripture reading, we have to look at what makes it possible in the first place. So, with your Bibles in front of you, whether paper or on your phone, please turn to Acts 2, verse 1, with me.
Speaker 2:When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the house they were sitting in. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were in staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked aren't all these who are speaking Galileans, then how is it that each of us hears them in our own native language? Corinthians, medes, elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, judea, cappadocia, pontus and Asia, phrygia and Pamphphylia, egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, credoms and Arabs. We hear them declaring the wonder of God in our own tongue. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another what does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them and said they have had too much wine. Then Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd.
Speaker 2:Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I have to say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel In the last days. God says I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams, Even on my servants, both men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. Now the text goes on to cite more prophetic fulfillment, but for this morning I just want to briefly outline what's going on in this text that teaches us about the richness of what God is doing through Pentecost. That lays the foundation for the community that lives out of the Spirit. So, first, pentecost is not the introduction of something entirely new in God's kingdom. Rather, it's God's redemptive work, bringing back under his authority what had been lost at Babel. Turn with your Bibles to me. Turn with your Bible, turn to your look. Okay, turn back to your Bibles with me to Genesis 11. I got a little too excited there.
Speaker 2:Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said If, as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from all over the earth and they stopped building the city.
Speaker 2:Now, despite first appearances, babel is not a story of innovation and innocence struck down by an egotistical God. Rather, the story of Babel is a key moment in which the scriptures are showing the readers the effects of sin in human nature, especially at a communal level. In this particular case, babel is the embodiment of the imperial impulse to assert power and control to the point of self-deification. It is unity by force, fear and manipulation, and because of this, god gives them over to their sin and he scatters them. It's this story that serves as the backdrop to the first line of Acts 2, where we're immediately clued into the fact that God is going to do something miraculous amongst his people, as we read that during a Jewish festival remembering God's provision, jewish people of all descents are brought back from the corners of the earth and gathered together.
Speaker 2:And what is so stunning about Pentecost is that it isn't Babel reversed. Rather it is Babel redeemed. God and his founding of the church unifies difference, making all tongues intelligible to each other, and what the theologian Patrick Schreiner calls the miracle of universal particularity, where each seemingly inconsequential and beautiful difference is unified through Christ's love. Pentecost is God's redemption that demonstrates that the Holy Spirit both honors and unifies what humanity could not on their own. Put simply, schreiner writes at Pentecost, god embraces our differences, because God made humanity this way. Babel was about people building walls to keep others out and exalting their own way. God's response is to scatter them over the face of the earth. His plan all along. God does not punish the people with languages. He prods them toward a different kind of world.
Speaker 2:What we learn from this piece of scripture is that Pentecost is redemption, prophetic fulfillment and the birth of God's church, characterized by a different way of being that stands apart from the world around it. In so many ways, the rudder of history is moved by the descent of the Holy Spirit, because it's this moment that God has tangibly transformed what difference means to all of us, because it is only God who can both simultaneously glorify and unify the things that drive us apart. When we talk about fellowship and community and doing life together, as cliche and empty as these phrases can sometimes feel, this story of Pentecost is the reality that we are calling back to every week that we gather here together. It's this love, embodied in the miracle of universal particularity, that makes the Christian church so much more than just another social institution, the truth that forms the foundation of the ideal reflected in today's scripture reading. Without this grounding, it becomes easy to believe the narrative that the early church represents an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. On the other hand, this truth is also just the beginning of what it means to be a part of the community built on the Holy Spirit. Specifically, this truth, while essentially important for the foundation of our community, is functionally a catalyst for action that comes out of it.
Speaker 2:And at this point, because I know many of you very well, I can hear some of you in your minds saying this is great and all, but how do I get the A on my heavenly report card? That was such a bad joke, but I wrote it and it made me laugh so hard on my own that I could not part with it. So I apologize. And while terrible, I do think it does a good job of bringing to the surface a culture that we have within our home, princeton, that can seep into our church, where our biggest concern is doing things right or perfectly. A very action-based mindset. A very action-based mindset. It's what got so many here. And so, just like the students who walk into class on that first day and receive their syllabus and the first question they ask is how do I get the A? We can tend to come to the foot of the cross with the same question, and so I want to preface the remaining part of this sermon with the reality that I cannot offer you a prescriptive how-to model that hacks achieving perfect unity A shock, I know.
Speaker 2:Rather, in what follows, I want to offer you the core principles that I see Scripture lays out and acts to for what a church bound by the Holy Spirit looks like and is grounded on with an invitation to pursue each. All right, how are we doing? 10.30 am good. Well, I mean, we are doing this either way. So, first, a community marked by the Holy Spirit is one that is diverse.
Speaker 2:I know that I've already talked about God's redemption of Babel through Pentecost as a sharpening of our diversity as an opposed to an erasing of it, but I want to be honest that I, in good conscience, could not claim at all to be an expert on the nuances of diversity and our particular culture's understanding of it, or even assume that everyone here relates to that word in the same way, and so please hear me on this. Presenting this discussion with the care and respect it deserves is of the utmost importance to me, and so let me just begin first by saying I know that the church has been one of the greatest contributors to the historical failures of embracing this principle. Open up any history textbook and you need no more than five minutes to find a moment where the church has failed grievously. But can I just say that the failure to uphold this principle in a Christ-like way actually points to its absolute necessity and importance in our midst. To reject it on the whole or to turn to a modern babble will never bring about the profound and transformative power of diversity that is unified and honored in and by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:And so for those here this morning who need to be encouraged on what diversity really means in God's church, I just want to say two things that I know to absolutely be true about the kingdom of God, and the first promise is this it's in Galatians 3, 26 through 28. So, in Christ Jesus, all of you are children of God through faith, for all of you were baptized into Christ. Have clothed yourselves with Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. What this means is that, no matter how you have been elevated in society or put down because of unjust socio-political ideologies, in the kingdom of God you are equal and valuable and beloved, because every person in this room unequivocally bears the image of God in their personhood. So, no matter what you are told about yourself, you are a child of God and there is no power or might on this earth that can strip you of that truth.
Speaker 2:And because of this truth, it is equally true that each one of our differences in race, ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic background, language ability, disability and unique cultural experiences are brought together and are unified and glorified by the Holy Spirit through the power of Christ's resurrection. This is true because the indwelling of the Spirit changes our relationship to the things that are different to us and like languages we've never heard, somehow the barriers of comprehension are broken down and what was once foreign, strange and incomprehensible becomes an invitation to deeper understanding of the full image of God. And I think it's okay to start with the fact that, like Babel, many of us are afraid or uncomfortable by the things we don't know, and, just like them, our natural human inclination will always be towards homogeneity in thought, appearance, way of life and social labels. Going to experience the goodness of Christ's fellowship through the Holy Spirit, we have to press into the spirits, working out in our hearts the things that make us closed off to godly diversity. I think that one of the best places to start on this is the invitation of James 1, 19 through 20. He writes my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. If you're looking for a way to start, just begin with listening. Start, just begin with listening. It's a currency we're in desperate need of in our communities today. Ask questions Intentionally, seek out relationships with people who are different from you. I've come to believe that Princeton is genuinely one of the most interesting places to live. I mean talk about gathering from all corners of the earth together. We might not share each other's hobbies, food preferences or even political views, but what Pentecost teaches us is that pressing into that space through the Holy Spirit turns what normally divides and segregates the rest of the world into one of the best parts of being in God's family. Next, a community marked by the Spirit is biblical. Now, please hear me.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the church tradition that taught Father, son, holy Bible, and that is not what I mean here. Instead, I've come to be convicted that the Spirit and the Bible are two essentially complementary sources of truth and knowledge that never cease in working together to bring us closer to God. I know I've talked about this before, but I grew up in a church that believed that the works of the Spirit, as testified to in Acts, were gifts among the apostles and are not still happening today. And even though I've now come to believe something differently, I still find myself to be skeptical and even nervous in a room of unapologetic Pentecostals. And that's my lack truly, because what I find so convicting about today's teaching text is that viewing God's word as superior to or more trustworthy than the Spirit hinders my ability to fully engage with the depths of a relationship that Christ is calling me to with him and with others. It is something where I often use God's word to hide from God, but the reality is is the spirit and the Bible are both trustworthy and good. And just as I can misinterpret the Bible, I can misinterpret the Spirit, but my propensity to misunderstanding does not undermine the Spirit. And so, while simple, I think this paradigm shift is important because I think it helps us understand that the Spirit is not just a feeling-based experience, with the Bible providing a more kind of higher intellectual knowledge.
Speaker 2:The theologian Scott McKnight, having a similar experience, puts the following this way the sum of the matter in my church context, though not explicitly acknowledged, was this our theology was one of father and the son, and the spirit was ignored, neglected or minimized, and the Son and the Spirit was ignored, neglected or minimized. At best, the Spirit got third place in the God contest for supremacy. To put all of our nervous about the Spirit rationalizations into one tight bundle, we reduced the Spirit by resorting to reason, to intellect, to the mind and to the Bible. In doing so, we relegated the Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, to an idea that our superior logic and careful theology had made irrelevant. Behind our avoidance of the Holy Spirit was the fear that, if we were to let the Spirit loose, chaos was sure to result.
Speaker 2:A free-ranging spirit was unpredictable and uncontrollable, and so the invitation for you all in this same vein is twofold. If you're like me and you love a good exegesis and a very tame prayer, can I just from personal experience say there is so much more available to us if we are willing to suspend our skepticism for just a moment and even, at the risk of looking foolish, ask the Spirit to move through us. Through this series we'll be talking more about the gifts of the Spirit and the way that the Spirit partners with us to move in our communities, and in that I want to encourage you to ask yourself, through this series, is this an invitation for me? God, do you have more for me than I've allowed in the past? Begin there and just see what happens. And for those in the room who've been praying in a revival since birth, you have been a great gift that inspires and draws those of us skeptics closer to the movements of the Spirit in beautiful and tangible ways, and we need you in our community.
Speaker 2:But with a gift that great comes a responsibility, and that responsibility is to always be aligning yourself with the biblical text in the exact way that we see in this passage. I cannot tell you all some of the crazy things that have been prophesied over me in the name of the Spirit that I immediately was like definitely not because I knew where it explicitly violated Scripture. I'm sure many of us could share stories of times where things were spoken over us in the name of authority that was actually coming out of a place of great spiritual immaturity. So if you're gifted in testifying to the works of the Spirit, I want to encourage you to be a testimony as well to what Pentecost affirms, that no move of the Spirit will ever act in contradiction with God's holy, perfect, redeeming word.
Speaker 2:Third, a community guided by the Spirit is hungry. Verses 42-43 introduce the community birthed out of Pentecost as having devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and wonders at the signs performed by the apostles. When we read about the practices that mark the early church and the fruit that was produced by their hunger, we learn that a church performs miracles and wonders is one that is actively seeking God's presence through teaching, communion, fellowship and prayer. And to be honest with you all, I have found myself genuinely challenged in trying to kind of articulate and build out this section, because every draft that I've written feels like a bad summer camp youth group pastor from the 90s warning against lukewarm discipleship, and maybe that is my baggage projected onto you all, but I couldn't quite get myself to do it. So, after thinking about this text for a while, I've come to decide.
Speaker 2:I just want to ask you a simple invitational question what in your life are you being most formed by? And what I really mean by that is where are you spending most of your time? I think what the text is really getting at here is that what you give your attention to is what will have the most sway over who you become. Experiencing the goodness of Holy Spirit in our community in part comes about from who we are when nobody else is around. If we are people who read scripture, pray, prioritize coming together on Sundays and during the week, we too will be filled with wonder at how the Spirit is moving in our midst. But it also means that if we are people who spend most of our time consuming media narratives about the world through TikTok or YouTube or our preferred news outlet, prioritizing our work over the people around us, going through the motions of religion, we will reflect those patterns of formation as a community. And please hear me, I say none of this with any shame or condemnation or desire to guilt trip you. I bring this to the surface because I want us to address directly the things that prohibit us from experiencing God's goodness. So the question is merely an invitation to reflection. So the question is merely an invitation to reflection what in your life are you being most formed by, and are there ways that you can adopt the four practices of the early church that pulls you into deeper formation in and with, through and by the Spirit? All right, we are almost there, I promise. Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:Fellowship is marked by generosity. Verses 44 through 45 say all the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. In his book Made for these Times, justin Zarate lays out what he calls eulogy virtues compared to resume virtues. In it he discusses our culture's tendency to emphasize resume virtues as the kind of skills that make you appealing in your professional trajectory. By contrast, eulogy virtues are the kinds of virtues that make up the person that you are. They are the things that will be said about you when you pass. And he's right, I think, to point out that the development of resume virtues does not entail the development of good eulogy virtues. In explaining the gap between these two categories, justin hones in on the often neglected but utterly essential virtue of generosity.
Speaker 2:In discussing why generosity is important for both the receiver and the giver, he explains that acts of generosity release dopamine, the happy hormone, into your brain. If you've ever paid for a stranger's coffee, bought someone else's groceries or helped someone with their rent payments and you get that rush of warmth, contentedness and joy, it is your body's biological response to the inherent goodness of giving to others. Just as an example, the last few weeks we have had extra donuts and I made the decision to start taking them to the kitchen staff at Taqueria, as I go there literally every single Sunday after church and I cannot tell you who is genuinely more excited or happy. The second time that I walked through the door with a box of donuts and they recognized me and I watched a smile spread across their faces and one person actually cheered. Their joy caused a physiological response in me, because that is just the simple goodness of giving, and so I just want to keep this invitation as simple as possible, because there's so many things that can be said on this topic. Who in your life is God calling you to extend generosity to? Who is God asking you to pause what you're doing, look around and give generously to, perhaps, maybe where has fear or distraction, lack of work-life balance or maybe even entitlement impeded your practice of generosity? Again, I say this without any shame or condemnation. It is simply an invitation to look at what God is inviting you into. So what is God calling you to give so that you can experience the joy of generous fellowship? Lastly, you all have made it well done.
Speaker 2:A defining feature of the early church's community is consistency. The story of Pentecost ends with the lines every day, they continued to meet together in temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all of the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Every day, the people of the church met together and pursued together all these values that set them apart from the rest of the social institutions around them.
Speaker 2:Personally, I think one of the greatest contributors to the epidemic of loneliness is the cultural shift of the modern church from a communal model to a consumer model. And, to be honest, I don't know if any one person is to blame for that probably isn't. Much of the messaging we consume every minute of our lives is designed to sell us a narrative of satisfaction, one that we're willing to pay for. When this becomes the currency of every aspect of culture, it becomes incredibly difficult to distinguish how we relate to everything else, including our church. And so, while I don't have a causal explanation for the problem, I don't think the problem is any less tragic, because when we relate to our church and our church community as something that primarily needs to be, something that is giving to us, I think the healthy church will consistently be disappointing on that front. I think the healthy church will consistently be disappointing on that front. And if we come here only ever expecting to receive, not only do we miss out on the opportunity to develop deep and meaningful relationships, we rob the people around us of our spirit-unique, anointed gifts. Ultimately, when we lack consistency in our commitment to our church community, we never really get to experience the depths of Christ's church.
Speaker 2:I'm praying on this section. There are two groups specifically in this vein that come to mind that I want to prayerfully press into, and the first of those are those in the room who have church hurt. I've become really blessed to know many of your stories in my time working here at Ecclesia, and the diversity of age and experience of church hurt in our congregation is vast, and I think that one of the most devastating lies spun out of the pain of experiencing genuine and deep hurt at the expense of a church community is that churches are something that you have to be wary of and keep at an arm's length, and, trust me, I get it. For those of you who don't know my story yet, quickly summarized I got kicked out of church at 12 years old for being too argumentative, so I know exactly the pain that some of you feel, but and I say this with utmost humility and having had to have worked through it myself not joining the community of another church isn't the answer.
Speaker 2:The only metaphor that I could think of to paint this picture is that finding a new church is kind of like dating you join and your new relationship is either having to make up for the sins of your past one or can never live up to what has occurred, or a mixture of both, and so either way, the relationship fails because it can't overcome the unresolved hurt, and I think churches work in the same way. So if that's you this morning and you're someone who has come to Ecclesia, maybe even calls this church home, but your past has kept us at an arm's length. I cannot promise you that we will be perfect or easy or amazing all of the time. I care about you too much to lie to you, but what I can say is that the beautiful mess that is a community bound by the Spirit is one where your wounds truly can find healing. But it only happens if you give your church community the trust to work it out with you in the pursuit of these values with grace, knowing that in the pressing, god really does produce a new wine.
Speaker 2:The second group I want to speak directly to are those who are just so busy that getting involved in church feels like too much on the already overly long list of things to do, or for those who feel like they already checked the church box somewhere else and so plugging in just feels like too much too much. I can imagine that for some in the room this sermon has felt more like a long list of tasks on a list that already feels incredibly overwhelming. And so for those in the room who hear that and that resonates. I want to be really honest with you and again, with no shame or condemnation or any hint of guilt, just genuine honesty with you that that feeling will never go away, no matter how much you accomplish, because that's not what fixes it.
Speaker 2:My prayer for you this morning was to cast a vision for a different way of existing in community that relies on practical questions that help you navigate it. But to experience the goodness that scripture testifies is available to us comes with orienting your schedule and life around the community, not demanding that the community find ways to fit in the cracks of your availability To experience the ideal and acts of rich diversity, generosity, hunger and biblical truth requires you to show up and to give and look. You can come here and never do more than come on a Sunday, and we will be so happy that you are here. But life in which your church community gets your rushed hellos and lack of engagement is one that will most often feel like a chore, and it's not one where the Spirit gets to move through you, where God has so beautifully called you to be. So we will always be happy that you're here, but our prayer and desire for you is so much more than weekly church attendance. To close, as I invite the worship team up, I want to end with a story that I think beautifully captures what I've been trying to drive home this morning.
Speaker 2:Towards the end of last semester, I was talking with a college student in that brief week between Thanksgiving and Christmas break and her background in southern megachurches is a kind of cultural experience that's hard for me to comprehend as a failed church kid from Portland, oregon. And while we were talking about some of the changes of her experience of attending church while visiting home, she said something that I think just captures the vision of community that I've hoped I've shared this morning. She said I don't know if I could ever go to a megachurch like that again after Ecclesia, because I don't want to go to a church where I'm not known, and I don't say that to put a church where I'm not known and I don't say that to put megachurches down or anything like that. I mean we have our first overflow room this morning. Rather, I share this story because when listening to her talk about Ecclesia, her pressing in, watching her press in and pursue these values alongside others in community, it has made Ecclesia one of the places where she says she feels most known, and so, when we speak of fellowship, that is made possible through the invitation, the humble, gentle calling of the Spirit is to come and see the riches and depths of community made available to you through the Holy Spirit, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I thank you for a room that, despite its fullness and lack of insane temperature, you have called us all together this morning to press into your divinely inspired word and experience the goodness of your spirit in our midst.
Speaker 2:Jesus, lord, I pray that you make Ecclesia a church that looks like Acts 2, rooted in Pentecost, coming together, devoted to teaching, prayer, fellowship and communion. Jesus, lord, I pray specifically for the people who were laid heavy on my heart as I wrote this, teaching those with church hurt. Would you bind up their wounds and heal them with the miraculous power that the Spirit does? Would their experiences be made testimonies to the goodness of who you are, because there is nothing that you aren't seeking to redeem that has been lost.
Speaker 2:And, Jesus, for those in the morning who are feeling your kindness and the bite of conviction, who are sitting on the outskirts of our church, god, would you give them a vision for what it looks like for Ekklesia to be, more than just something they come to on Sundays. Lord, would this church be a place where we get to love those people, where people get to be known and know others. Jesus, I pray that this marks a shift, a turning point in our church. Would you breathe life into all of the ministries and work that you are doing? Would you bless the children of this community? Would you do a new work in us today? Jesus, lord, we pray this in the power that has left the grave empty, that is making all things new, and in the power of your resurrection. Makes good on the promise that there is new life. Amen.