For our 2024 winter and spring sessions of Spiritual Life Coaching, we will take an in-depth look at the apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and, as a natural result of that study, what it means to be the church. What if the church does not exist for what we can get out of attending and participating? But it's more about how we can learn to love one another and accomplish something for God together. We will soon understand it is not about finding the right "model" for doing church but learning and then practicing what God means when He says the church is "His body, His temple, His building, His household."
We all recognize a deep and abiding tension between the values of our American culture and what it means to be a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ. Some of those value tensions are individualism, maybe radical individualism, and personal autonomy, which our culture esteems.
On the other hand, the Bible speaks of interdependent relationships that highlight our need for one another. Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 (the body of Christ compared to a physical body) is a primary example. The people we choose to do life with (community) and the spiritual life habits (disciplines) we practice create space for the Holy Spirit to work transformation in our hearts and minds.
As a unique person with a distinct personality, gift mix, temperament, life preferences, and history with God, our ongoing success will account for these differences and more. We focus on the daily process to realize our goal of becoming more like Jesus.
Holy Spirit is preparing us for a life of fullness in this next season, and the transformation He is looking to accomplish is another step in the fulfillment of His promise to build a "spiritual house of living stones as a habitation of God in the Spirit" (1 Peter 2:6; Ephesians 2:19-22). We hope you will join us for this critical and timely journey into experiencing what God is doing today.