The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR
Welcome to the TNC Podcast, where real conversations meet raw emotions and faith!
Join Pastor Joe Liles and the team as they dive deep into life's messy moments, exploring everything from overwhelming feelings to the surprising emotional landscape of God. Each episode is like sitting down with friends who aren't afraid to get real about spirituality, personal struggles, and finding meaning in the everyday.
Whether you're seeking inspiration, looking to understand your emotions, or just want an authentic chat about life and faith, we've got you covered. Laugh, reflect, and grow with us as we navigate this journey together - no perfect answers, just honest conversations.
New episodes drop weekly, bringing you fresh perspectives and heart-to-heart moments that'll make you think, feel, and maybe even see life a little differently. Tune in and join our community!
The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR
Sunday Message: "I am church shopping..."
Join Pastor Joe Liles as he starts a new Series called, "Church Shopping." This series is..
“An honest look at how church has changed—and why what we’re really searching for is something only God can give.”
Pastor Joe will explore the origins of the Christian church in this message about faith, community, and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Discover how the early Christians gathered, worshipped, and spread the Gospel despite persecution, and learn what it truly means to be the church beyond Sunday morning.
In this message, you'll:
- Understand the roots of Christian worship
- Explore the challenges faced by early believers
- Learn about the church as a community of faith
- Be inspired to live out your faith beyond church walls
This message is for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of Christian history and community. Whether you're a long-time believer or just curious about faith, this sermon offers insights that will challenge and encourage you.
So we're going to be starting a new series today as we look forward into the month of May, coming after Easter. And we thought this series would be great because as table was sharing right the day of Pentecost is coming. That's on June 8, it's actually going to be a day where we do baptisms in the church. And so we're going to go out to the river, we go out to McKissick Creek and we do baptisms. And so that day is meant as a day where really the Holy Spirit came upon all those who were gathered. That's why it's called Pentecost. And it truly is the beginning of what we would call the church. But I get a question a lot as a pastor, right? And I love this, because Easter just happened. And so we have people that only attend church on Easter. It's amazing. And I actually love that many people are like, they should come all the time. Like, I love it if you make it to church on Easter, congratulations. Like, that's amazing. You've been able to experience the heart of God in a worship that is vibrant, right? And life feeling and you come, and we hope that is a first step in a journey towards becoming deeper in your relationship with God. And so I love people that come on Christmas. We have people that only attend on Christmas and only attend on Easter, right? Do you know what the third biggest day in the church calendar year is? Does anyone know what that is the third biggest day in the church calendar year, Mother's Day, right? And guess what? It's right after Easter. So it's great. So we have that coming up, which can be really incredible on May 11. So it's gonna be absolutely wonderful coming up here. And, yeah, we have the photo booths and everything else, because people love to attenders. Father's Day is the fourth, no, it's not, but we're gonna change that. It's gonna be a moment, right? We're gonna do like a camping outside or something. I'm gonna get all the dads here on Saturday night so they can't leave on Sunday morning. It's going to be a great but I wanted to talk to you about the start of church, and I wanted to to begin by putting your heart into your church experience and the church experiences you've had growing up, maybe, and what those church experiences were, and just take back so I really want you to kind of go through a process. I want you to think about, how many of you grew up in church, right? Like, grew up going to church every single Sunday. Raise your hand if you grew up going to church. Wow. Okay, that's a lot of you. That's great. Okay? Every single Sunday, how many of that was like, what you would call a contemporary worship back in the day? That means, did they have a guitar? If they had a guitar, then that's a moment, right? Okay, so one of you, how many of us traditional worship? Tradition? Oh, wow. Okay, that's great. We have coming up on May 18, traditional Sunday, which is sacred Sunday. Give it up for traditional Sunday, which is gonna be wonderful. We're gonna have everyone here doing acolytes. We're gonna robe, we're gonna vest, we're gonna have hymnals in all the chairs. We're gonna come forward. I'm trying to get kneelers right for communion. Like we're gonna do traditional Sunday. We're gonna walk through a whole traditional worship. And we're going back to like, 1990s traditional worship, just so you know, because I haven't led the new traditional worship, so I know the old traditional worship, so I'm going to what I know and what I grew up and because I also grew up in traditional church. So I want to put your heart there first. I want you to start with this identity of the start of when you grew up in church, and those memories, right? And what those memories were, how many of you growing up in church? That's a good memory, right? It's a good memory, a foundational memory of growing up in church. Okay? Wonderful. So we have that right, and then I want you to fast forward a little bit, right? So when you had a little bit of independence in your life, right? Let's look forward to maybe high school, maybe college, right? How many of you attended church while you're in college? Right? Okay, I'm seeing about 75% we're going down a little bit right there. How many of you attended church every single Sunday while you were in college. Okay, now we're at 25% okay, that's good. Wow. You kept your hands raised, like you attended every Sunday. You lied. That's not true. But I want to, I want to take that moment so we have, hey, I was brought to church. I was raised in church. Right? Not everyone was right. Some people are discovering that. So we come with the perspective of church shopping, knowing what our church experience is like now we go and start to discover a church experience, because we're no longer brought by someone right. We're now having to make the choice to go to church. And that changes a little bit, because it becomes a priority issue. It becomes a balance of life issue. And you start weighing Sunday morning Sleeping in with Sunday morning church. And you love church, but you also love sleeping in. And you love sleeping in because you love what you did on Saturday night, which ended up taking Sunday morning from you, right? And so all of a sudden the priorities start shifting a little bit, right? And then how many of you at one point left the church like did not attend church for a season. Okay, a good so I'm saying about 25% still. So we're at 25% who don't attend church religiously after they did, and we're at 25% who left the church also. And then here's my question to you, what ended up bringing you back in? To the church. And I just want you to think about that. Why did you come back in? See the church is a cycle. The church is a season, right? The church is moving and ebbing and flowing with your life. And we know this is a church. We know that when you go through life seasons how you're going to come in and out of the church. We've seen it here as the neighborhood for 15 years, but it is across the big C church everywhere, about how we go into the life of the church right when you are independent and you're trying to structure your life and you're trying to start a career and you're trying to start a family and you're trying to get married, those are priorities, and it's really hard to then take that as a single person going into church. When you were raised in a family environment, going to church, then you were raised in maybe independence going to church, but had all like minded individuals. And now that you're just in community, it gets really tough. But then maybe there's kids involved, or have you gotten settled down, and now you understand that you need to also now have a foundation in your faith. And you remember, I had a foundation when I was raised in the church. So then you start to come back into the church, and we see people start to come back into the church as young adults, right? And young adults start to come back into the church, and it's wonderful, and they kind of grow through the church. And then when you get to a transition phase of like a high school graduate, maybe an empty nester, maybe a college graduate, all of a sudden you have parents rediscovering their relationship after 18 years, going, oh my gosh, we don't have kids to concentrate on. Who are we together? Anyone going through that? Okay? No, don't want to raise your hand. Okay, that's great. So that happens when you're out there, going, who are we now? And you rediscover your faith again. And then when you retire, you rediscover your faith again, right? And what that means, do you see all these major life transitions that happen, and that's not even saying about moving, about new jobs, anything else like that. Family changes. Family shifts, right? Breaks up relationships, all of those different categories impact your life in the church. And I have people come to me saying, We're church shopping. Has anyone ever said that before? We're church shopping? What do you think my response is? Right? Give me some responses of how you think I would respond to someone that walks in on a Sunday morning and says, I'm church shopping. What do you think I say to them? That's a good one. What kind of church you looking for? Glad you're here. Okay, that's great. I hope we make it. No, I'm like, I hope we make the top three. You know, like, come on here. No. What are some others responses? I'm church shopping. What would a pastor say in response to that? What kind of church did you grow up in? What's your church experience? Why are you church shopping? Right? That's good. Any others out there, we have a great sale going on. It's salvation, right? It's free. 99 you can get it any Sunday you come to the neighborhood church. It's for you, right? We give grace, yeah. What about I pray that God leads you to the church that he wants you to be in, right? That God wants you to be in. That's wonderful. So do you guys want to hear what I share with them? Okay, so here's what I share with them. When someone comes in and says, I'm church shopping on a Sunday, I say, That's amazing, because I too would have been a church shopper had it not been a pastor, and I would have gone to many different churches, and I would have discovered my faith over and over again in a really incredible way. And I said, but more than that, I'm glad that you're here, because I know a lot of the churches in the area, and if the neighborhood isn't what you're feeling, I'd be happy to sit with you and guide you to the church where you're going to feel most connected to God and deepen your relationship with God, right? And I tell them, and I say, so, let me know what you think. After this Sunday, we'd love to hear about your church experience, when why you came here, and then let's see if we can guide you either deeper here in the community or to a church that's really going to help you, right? And that is what I share every single time. I believe that we should be a church when we are church shopping for the local church, not the neighborhood church. Believe me, there's enough people. Like it's okay, like, I'm not worried that every person has to fall in love with the neighborhood church. I am worried that every person has to fall in love with Jesus Christ, and I'm worried that every person has to fall in love and deepen themselves and find a heart and connection that's going to carry them beyond these walls and be on a Sunday morning. I know that, and it's part of the reason that we started the church. So when we came here, we went to all the different churches before we planted the neighborhood, to get an identity of what the church was. And I had come from a background of church. I grew up in traditional Lutheran Church. Hymnals, Albs, stoles. I was acolyte so many times, 1000s of times, 1000 times. And every time I got to the bottom, and we called to the bottom, every time I got to the bottom of the aisle, because it was, like, on a slant, then it was a super long aisle. Would have this wick, and the wick was out, and they'd light you in the back, so you could light the candles. And all you do the whole time was like, Please don't go out. Please don't go out. Please don't go out. And you're just walking slow so and then you would hit where, like, one of the vents from the air conditioning was, like, right at the front. And then go, I and the pastor would look at you, which was my dad, and he'd be like, Ah, right? Because then you have to turn around and you have to go back and get re lit and try again. It was like this holy test of fire, right in church. And I was like, so much pain, so much pain from that. How? Many times did it go out, right? I did become really good at at the end, and then I fell into the Christmas tree once with a lip candle, and that was a bad deal. So, man. But I grew up going to traditional church, and grew up in this way, right? It was wonderful. And then I went to college, and I didn't go to church. I wanted to, I wanted that to be my heart, but I had different priorities, right? I was it. Was doing school, I was doing football. Had a girlfriend at the time, and she didn't want to go to church on Sunday morning. So I was like, I don't need to go to church on Sunday morning. I love church. Love church. But my priorities shifted. I didn't even realize it, and I got caught by it, and so I didn't go to church. And then my junior year, I realized that I just was not deepening my faith, and I was not committed, so I went back to church, and I attended a traditional Lutheran Church in the town of Salem, Oregon. Salem, Oregon, traditional Lutheran Church didn't make it long there, like I was discovering something different. I was trying to get involved, and I was in the choir. It just wasn't there. And then I attended a Salem Alliance Church because they had a college ministry that fed you one night a week. And I was like, I can get free food at ministry. And I was like, I am in. I don't need denominational ties. I'm just going for the food. Like, let's go. So I attended an Alliance Church. I attended a Four Square Church while I was there, and then I came back after college, and I was in Phoenix. Phoenix is where I grew up in traditional church, so on Sunday morning in Phoenix, is what ultimately led me to seminary. I attended the church I grew up in and sang in their praise band, right? And it was wonderful. We had a choir loft, right? And we had all music stands and everything else like that. Oh, alright, it was this good. It's just great choir singing, that's all. It was, right, wonderful. And then I went to the church my dad was leading, which was like a large mega church style thing. And I went to that church and I just sat and was present in support, right in support of the family, and just attended. And then I went to a third church on Sundays, which is a super large non denominational church. And I went to a large non denominational church, and this church is like, put Corvettes on the stage. And they'd be like, don't put sand in the gas tank of your faith. And I'm like, This is awesome. I was like, I didn't know. So I had all these experiences of church, and I realized that every single night I was trying to fill it with ministry. Every single Sunday, I was traveling for four to five hours across the Phoenix Valley to go to these churches. And I realized that every part of my life was trying to fill with a craving for faith and a deepening of the heart of God, and I just desired that I would find faith in community. And I'm going to tell you something that I believe about the church today. The church today is one of the last few places that intentionally creates community. It invites you into an intentional community, not on the surface level, but it invites you into a community that says, Hey, we are going to get to know you. We want to dig deep with you. We want to find out where we're broken and we're hurting, and where we can provide hope and peace and then even fill that with joy and a promise. And we want to walk that life with you. And we'll walk it with you on the good days, and we love that, but we're going to walk it with you on the bad days, and we're gonna tell you that we know that that bad day in our community is not gonna be the last one that you have, and because you came into the church, we're also not gonna promise you that you get peace all the time. We're gonna seek that, but it's not something that's always present. But we're gonna walk with you the church when you're church shopping should be a place that you look for community. And we're going to talk about that, because a lot of places that people go looking for a church home, they're looking to consume, not for community, they're looking to take in. And what can I get out of worship? That's not the identity of what church was intended to be ever and yet the church has done that also. So I give that up for the church. It's our confession, too, that we've made it a place where you can consume, take in, and then just walk out and not be changed. This is a place of community. This is a place of change, and we hope you get that through this series. So I want to open up a scripture and talk about this early church. So here's what we're going to do in this series. In this series, we're actually going to break down, and we are going to walk with the Church throughout the years of the church. It's going to be really incredible. So we're going to go through the church in 100 right? So, AD, 100 right after Jesus's death. And we're really talking about like 33 through hundreds of good estimation, but the early church really goes all the way up to like 325, is how you classify the early church, and I'll talk about that a little bit. But we're really going to stay in like these years of like 33 through 70 and 100 and talk about what this church was around Pentecost, and where the believers were, and what was happening in that time. And then next week, we're going to go to the Reformation. This was when the apostolic Catholic Church, right? So the apostolic succession, right from all the apostles, that is the Catholic Church, right? And in the 1500s we had the Reformation, which split off into Protestant, which is not Catholic. So then all of a sudden you had the split, and Lutherans were the first split from Catholic into the Protestant denominations. In front of that, you get Methodist and Episcopal and all these other denominations. That are out there too. And then you get down into other main line, which is like Baptist and different things that happen further on down the line. And so you get the split of the church in the 1500s so we're going to talk about that. You're the church. And then the next week after that, on Mother's Day, we're going to do 1990s Church, which I love. It's like the mega church, the multi site Church, the media church, like this whole advent of things changing with like the.com boom. And what's happening with that? So we're going to go back into 90s worship, and then we're going to have sacred Sunday on the 18th, and then graduation Sunday, the future Church, the future generations on the 25th so this is going to be an incredible series. I'm really looking forward to it, but we're going to open up and talk about the early church today. So I want you to open up to the book of Acts. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the Gospels, they tell the story in the New Testament. So the New Testament is really the story of Jesus Christ. It's the story of the apostles after Jesus Christ, starting the early church on throughout the different letters to different churches and communities of faith. And then you get into kind of an apocalyptic literature, Revelation, end times, at the end of the New Testament. But if you're finding Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Scripture, keep on turning. You get to Acts in Romans, right? And so you can kind of see that. And we're going to be in Acts chapter two, and this is right after Pentecost. So I want you to imagine that Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus stayed on earth for 40 days, if you didn't know, before He ascended into heaven, right? And so we have Jesus staying on Earth and talking with the disciples and still doing ministry and kind of showing people that the kingdom is real, that that it is truth, that he was raised from the dead. And then you have this moment where the apostles go on after the starting the early church, which was not really a church, and we're going to talk about that in a second, they're really more started communities of faith. And so they're starting these communities, and they're gathering. And then you have this Pentecost moment where the Spirit alights upon them, which we're going to hear about in June 8, the spirit alights upon them, and they receive the Holy Spirit. They now have the commissioning of the Holy Spirit to go out into the world, right, and continue this ministry that Jesus Christ started. And they start to become the church, and start to become Christians, right? And so with that, we're going to get in Acts two, Chapter 40. Chapter two, verses 42 through 47 and this is really going to talk through the first converts of the church, and then also the life among the believers. And we're asking the question, if we gather on a Sunday today for one hour, have you ever wondered how we got to that, like, how church on Sunday became to be why do we make Sunday sacred? Why were Wednesday nights used to be sacred, but are really hard now, right? We're losing time and losing those places and culture where we had it locked down, but Sunday is still one of those moments. We're asking that question throughout the series. How do we get to Sunday morning? So here's what it says in the first converts. And this is verse 42 through 47 it says this, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, and this is the first converts. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. If you're looking for what the start of the early church was, we're going to go back into that, because that just named it, right. We're going to get to that in a second. But here's what it says in verse 43 this is life among the believers. Awe, amazement, wonder came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles, because they had the Holy Spirit. All who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day, they 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 good will of all people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who are being saved. So why do you think people come to church? I pulled up a study from 2001 of why people come to church and and I was thinking about this from like the time when I was trying to discover a church and what that means, and trying to see if it's still true, 25 years later, 25 years later, from 2000 Why do you think people come to church? What do you think is the number one reason people come to church? Say it out loud, need a savior. Okay, we got need a savior. What's some other reasons that people come to church? They're supposed to so I call that obligation, right? I have to attend church, right? Say one more over here to hear the Word of God, right? They come for the word, maybe music out there. What's some other reasons people come to church? Beliefs? Right, to understand, oh, loneliness. Okay, that's great. Beliefs and loneliness, that was, yeah, that was moan. I totally hear beliefs that's great, but loneliness right to find community, right to find that moment. Yeah, one more made of forgiveness. Right? Salvation made a mess of their life. Here are the five reasons, according to this study, why people came to church right. Number one was this, 94% of the people said they come because it's important to worship You. The word and music. They literally were finding a space where they could live out their faith, and they decided that was church, right, where we're going to live out our faith. Sunday morning, one hour counts as our faith. I think we still do that, right? That that's a moment where we say, hey, we lived out our faith. We went to church this week. I feel like I checked the box in my faith. Here's the second reason, 63% to learn about their faith, right? They actually want to learn why they're in deepening their faith. They want to go through a Bible study. They want to learn that. Here's the third reason. This was 59% of people said christian ethics and values. I want to be a good person. I want to come learn what it means to be a good person. I feel if I'm with like minded good people, then that's great. We all know that we come here, not as perfect people, though. So what are we truly looking for in church? Right? Gotta ask those questions. Here's number, 54% said we want to serve our neighbors in need, serve our neighbors in need. So we have all these different realities of things that are happening. The last one was this. It comes in, it says 44% of people wanted to share their faith and share a test. Share a testimony, and have that be a reality of what they're looking for in the church. And I still think some of these are true in our life of faith, and some of these are here, but in the Scripture, it tells us how the early church gathered, and we have to see if that's what we still do today. So going back into the verses here, I want you to hear it one more time. This was verse 42 in chapter two, they devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching the Word and the music. They devoted themselves to fellowship, gathering with community. They devote themselves to the breaking of bread, the sacraments and prayers, and then they gathered all their possessions, sold all their goods, and served their neighbors in need, as any had need, the parts of worship That was the early church. But it wasn't easy. See, we live a sheltered church life here in Northwest Arkansas, here in America, we live a sheltered church life. The early church was not this way because they had two different realities that were fighting against them. One, the early church had Jewish Christians. These were the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day and the converts to Christianity weren't Jewish Christians. The converts to Christianity were Gentile Christians, non Jewish Christians, and they were coming in but they weren't really allowed in the temple. They weren't allowed in the synagogue because they weren't Jewish Christians. They weren't the Israelites. They weren't the people of God. They hadn't come from these 10 Commandments and this understanding of religious and growing up, and they were new, so they were not allowed. So these early Christians were like, I want to go to church. And they said, You can't come into the church. You don't know what the church is about. You don't know who we are, and even more importantly, we don't know who we are with you in our church, so you can't be here. And I think that is a heart of sometimes what we do in the church, I don't know who we will become if you become a part of us. So it's better if I just keep comfortable and know who we are. But then you had Rome, who was there, who had pagan gods and not Christianity as its primary religion. And so they saw these things that are happening and began to persecute the Christians. So when they tried to gather in the temple, as they began to be persecuted, they were get pushed out of the temple. And these, these Christian temple goers, right, that were really Jewish only, and the Gentiles trying to get in, all of a sudden didn't have a place that they could worship in and call home. And so they started to have to gather in places where they had to devote themselves to the teaching and to the prayer and the serving neighbors without a temple, without an altar, without a church. And did you hear anywhere in here that there was a building attached to those first converts and that first worship? They were devoted to teaching, to prayers, to the sacraments, to neighbors in need. They were devoted to community. That's how the church began. And then when they were persecuted, they had to go underground. They went into the catacombs. They went into places where they wouldn't be seen, so that they could worship together. They were in Upper rooms, behind locked doors. They they had this moment of Christianity where they had to fight for their Christianity. They had to fight to become a community of faith. It wasn't something that was easy, that was public, it was private. It was something that not even God intended about the church. But they had to begin in a way where daily their number grew and they found out how to reach people in these communities. And yet what we've done over the years is we've stripped away this moment of uncomfortable faith, and we have made it as comfortable as possible for you to consume church and consume this identity of church, and make sure it's something that you feel connected to God with, and that's okay, but it's not how it begin in the early church. Church, the early church fought for their faith. They had to live it out, and it wasn't easy, and when they spoke about it, they had to be convicted, because they were held accountable to their faith. And if they were held accountable to their faith, the Roman government said you can't be here with your faith, so they had to find these pockets of community, and that's where I started to understand that we need to look at the church a little bit differently. We need to look at the church about how we gather a little bit differently, how we think about church a little bit differently. Because I realized that really, the structure of our worship is no different than the early days of the church. When I came up through seminary, I was taught the four parts of our worship. When we lead any single Sunday, it's gather word meal and sending. That is the breakdown of a liturgical worship in its simplest form. If I go back into what the early church did, it's gather word meal and sending. It's that same reality. And so we're not much different, but we treat our faith differently. It wasn't fresh like Jesus had just rose from the dead. We're walking with a different identity. So I started to think about what is the church really in all the seasons of the church? Because you have to imagine, at this time, they're writing the Gospels like those are being written in like 70 through 90, the early church, after Paul had passed, right this conversion story of Saul to Paul, Paul goes around in his missionary journeys and starts all these communities of faith in the Roman provinces around. And then from that they get the stories of Jesus Christ, and those stories are compiled in the four different gospels in the next 20 years. So you have this moment of communities of faith, stories of the Gospels being written, being shared with churches, and more communities forming, and baptisms happening, and these communities gathering, and all of a sudden you have this, this bubbling of the church that begins. And I started thinking like, what? What is this like? And then I really realized that the church is truly at its most faithful moments, the breath of God. The church is the breath of God in your life. And here's what that means. This is after Pentecost, when they received the Holy Spirit. And I want you to imagine that when you take in that deep breath in your life, and it fills you that that's what Pentecost was, they get filled. But you can't keep that breath in, like you have to breathe that back out. You have to go back out into the community. See, I believe that the church is the breath of God, where you breathe in this Holy Spirit, and you receive the Holy Spirit, and then you are asked, and you are called to go outside of these walls and breathe that back out into the world, this moment of spirit. And when things get tough, that breath gets a little bit harder, doesn't it? If you imagine when you're working out and you're trying to get air into your body, when when your body's running a little bit harder, you're kind of, you're you're gasping for breath. You're taking in that breath. The same is true with the church. When we get into trouble in our life, where do we go? We go to take in from the church. We go to pull from that community and breathe that in, because we need that breath of life. We need to take it and then when we get done with that heart season, what do we do? We let out a deep sigh of relief and go, Oh man, and we breathe that back out. I really believe that the start of the church was the breath of life from God. It was this moment where we walked with Jesus, and then we took that story of Jesus and continued it. But it's a story of life. It's a story of resurrection from death. This is the early church, and I think as a church, if we get back to the simplest form of our worship, gather word, meal and sending, we will begin to take in that breath again and discover again where God is calling us outside these walls, because this testimony in the early church could not be contained. They had to plant more communities, because everyone was sharing their faith. That is how the church began to form, and that's what leads us for the next 1000 years in the church, all the way to the Reformation. So here's my question for you, how are you sharing your testimony? If it doesn't go beyond Sunday, then we might not be the church that we think we are a neighborhood. Your testimony needs to move forward in life. That's the beginning of the church, And all God's people said, Amen, let us pray heavenly and gracious Father, we come before you today knowing that we are called to be the church. The church is not a building. It is not a place. The Church is the Body of Christ. It is the people within it. It is the gathering and the fellowship and the prayers. It is the word is the music and the praise, and it is our neighbors in need. It is the sacraments, the body and the blood and baptism, Lord. These are the things that we still do as a church today. These are the things that we live into today. And Lord, as I think through what you're calling us to, I know that it's to come back to you in a space where we see that every moment our life is meant to be in shared community of faith. So here's my prayer for our community. Lord is that we would find the spaces where we can truly deepen our community, where we can have those around us who walk with us through all different different life seasons, and that we can take that community beyond these walls and share the testimony of how God is interacting in our life, Lord, we confess that at times we keep this testimony to ourselves. We confess that at times we keep this this faith that we have attached to a Sunday morning only. And so we release that now, Lord, we release it to you, knowing that what comes next is the identity of having faith that grows into a community, that grows into a calling, Lord, it is in these things that we pray in Your holy and precious name, And all God's people said, Amen. You guys, enjoy the start of our series, start of the early church. You.
