Today won’t be our usual day in worship.

We’re taking some time to pause and reflect, and share with each other what God’s been up to in our church.

A month or so ago Sandra Fish told me that God uses about one service or so per year in her life. It’s not that the others aren’t important, just that there’s one that stands out as a very important theme for her life, something God works on over and over again. She joked that it would be nice to know which one it was going to be ahead of time, so she could just go to that one instead of showing up at all the others!

What Sandra said gets to something really important about our worship services here. They aren’t just about learning new things, about knowledge. They aren’t just about good feelings, a good experience, an emotional or spiritual high.

We want to change. We want to be different people who live different lives because of Jesus. We want, as Paul said in Romans, to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Today is a chance to remember and share with each other how God has been changing us.

Hopefully, many of us have thought about what God has been doing in our lives, and will be ready to share as we go through this service.

Our pattern will be pretty simple: Key verses from the past 4 months are printed in your worship folder. We’ll read them together, and have just a little bit of time to let them sink in.

We believe the bible is God’s word to us, that it speaks truth to us about how we should live. After a little time to reflect, I’ll share briefly about the theme we addressed together when we first looked at that passage.

Then, it’s your turn. Your turn to share how you’ve been changing in response to what we’ve looked at in the bible, to share what God is doing in you.

It’s important for us to do this! We need each other to show what it looks like to live like Jesus. So, as God leads, feel free to share with us.

Today, we’re also asking that you move to one of the microphones to do that. It can be somewhat intimidating, but I hope we’ll all get over that in order to help everyone be able to hear what God is doing.

Join me in praying for God’s presence and leading today.

1 John 1: 5-10

Read together.

When we looked at this passage several months ago, we talked about the power of confession and the freedom of forgiveness.

Some of you have never, ever felt that forgiveness, and you’re longing for it. Some knew it once, but now there’s a secret no one else knows that has been binding you, owning you, killing you on the inside, even as everyone else sees your smile and hears the “right” words from your mouth.

Freedom is waiting for each of us! What has God been doing in you? How have confession and forgiveness shown themselves in your life lately? [SPACE FOR SHARING]

1 John 3: 1-3

Read together.

Friends, we are loved by God!

We are embraced and chosen by God! We are welcomed into his family! It doesn’t matter if we feel it or not. This is the truth of God’s choice, not our feelings.

We are children of God!

To be chosen and loved that way is yet another key that unlocks the freedom of living differently. We don’t need the old habits and ways of live, the chains that used to get us by in a hard world, any longer.

We are accepted and chosen by God! We don’t have to escape rejection by people any longer, or work hard to prove our worth to others. So many of our habits and chains are wrapped up in those two things, escaping rejection by others or trying to prove our worth.

They are stripped of their power when we accept and embrace the love of God for us!

How have you experienced and lived in the love of God lately?

[SPACE FOR SHARING]

1 John 3: 16-18

Read together.

Near the end of April, we launched our official involvement with Love INC.

It’s a way for people and churches to come together and serve people with needs in our community of Newberg.

Since that Sunday, more than 150 of you have volunteered with Love INC. Deanna Lyda has joined Matt Hawblitzel to help coordinate our efforts. 13 of us have been a huge encouragement to Polly Siler, the director of Love INC, by volunteering in the office and already going through the training.

We’ve taken on collecting, splitting, and delivering firewood for heat as our church’s specific ministry offering to the community.

This is important! We are involved in meeting the needs of our community. We’re demonstrating love in very important ways, ways our community needs to experience.

If you haven’t yet signed up for Love INC and would like to, please call the church office.

God’s at work!

Sing, Beloved, let us love one another…

One of the really great ways we’ve loved others in the past year is MOPS, mothers of preschoolers. Today in your worship folder and in the library, you can learn more about MOPS.

Marta Sears will share a little bit about what MOPS does. Then Deb Clagett/Nora Adams will share how they’ve loved others by helping with child care.

1 John 5: 1-2

Read together.

Loving God and loving others means loving those in God’s family.

We applied 1 John 5 to other churches in town. In fact, we recognized that there is only one church in Newberg, Jesus’ church, and that it meets in many different places in Newberg.

We prayed in each service for specific requests from other churches here in town, and we showed pictures of many of the churches and asked God to bless them.

How has Jesus showed you the connections we have with other churches in town? [ASK]

Share the story with Nancy Rosback.

Romans 12: 1-2

All try to say from memory

Read Peterson.

We’ve spent the last several months learning how to offer our complete lives to God.

All of our lives-every day of every week, every decision, every action, every part-it all is God’s. We’ve talked about offering our minds, hearts, hands, mouths, and ears.

Are you finding that liberating? Frustrating? Easy? Hard?

How has the offering series made a difference for you? (ASK)

Vision cast for outreach.

We want to be Listening to Christ. We want to be Changing in the Spirit. We want to be Living Out love.

When we look back on where we’ve been, each of those have been a component of what we’ve shared. We’ve shared ways that each of those lines from our vision statement has been part of what God has done in worship in the last few months.

As we become different people, we become God’s ambassadors, God’s agents, the one who act in God’s name to bring the message of life change in Jesus.

That happens best in those informal moments, in those times where we are living life and building relationships with others.

The best way for new people to come into God’s family is through one on one connections, and I think we’re doing that.

I guess what I would like to say today is that we can also live out our vision of being a growing community by inviting others to worship on Sunday mornings.

We’ve seen today, as we’ve reviewed the last couple of months, that our worship together has produced good things. Our lives are being changed in many ways.

Is there someone you know that you could invite to join us on Sunday?

Next week, we’re beginning a two month series on the book of Colossians. For us, for us who are here regularly, we’re encouraging us to read the entire book of Colossians every week until mid-October. We want to live and breathe this book, as we go through it piece by piece together on Sunday mornings.

I’m going to make the commitment that the messages on this next series will be as understandable as I’m capable of making them to people who’ve never been at church before. As we plan worship, we’ll think in terms of people who’ve never been in church.

If you were ever going to invite someone to church, this is the series to do it in. Think about it.