I need other people. I need friends. I need Christian friends. I need to spend time with Christian friends. I need to spend time learning the Bible with Christian friends. I need their help. My life is so much better when I am with people who teach me what they know. I greatly benefit from input and insight from others. I love to hear what has worked and what doesn’t work for others.
I want and need advice. I don’t want to do life alone. I want to do life together.
Others need me to be their friend. They need to spend time with me. They want to spend time learning the Bible with me. They need my help. Their life is better together also. They don’t want to do life alone. They want to do life together.
You need other people. You need friends. You need Christian friends. You need to spend time with Christian friends learning the Bible and how it can help you. Your life is so much better when you learn from others and get their insight. You love to hear what has worked and what doesn’t work for others.
Others need you to be their friend. They want to hear about your life and what has worked for you and what has not worked. Their life is better together with you. They don’t want to do life alone.
It is important to always have someone in your life who is pouring into you and someone you are pouring into. This is true for all ages. We want every child that attends this church to have someone pouring into their life and we want every child to pour into the lives of others. We have adults at church every Sunday ready to pour into the lives of children. Make sure they are here on Sundays. Someone is here every weekend prepared to reinforce the values you are teaching at home (Maybe the values you struggle to teach at home).
This was core to our vision from the beginning: a community of Jesus followers who were in community and creating community and helping each other.
So we built everything around getting people into groups and equipping people to lead/facilitate groups.
Wanna know why? As Andy Stanley and life has taught me: We drift. We drift away from all things holy and wholesome. If it’s good for us, we drift from it: diet, exercise, budgeting, priorities, values, God. The gravitational pull of life is usually in the wrong direction. The current of life rarely takes us in the right direction. We drift. And commitment and conviction are many times not enough to keep us from it. If they were, we would be skinnier and richer. We would have less baggage, fewer regrets, and no secrets.
We are swimming upstream. But it’s worth it. But we dare not swim alone.