Jeremiah Lepasana

If we are honest, many of us carry a healthy skepticism towards participating and committing to something like a church. 

We may worry (with good reason from past experience!) about the ways a church could become unhealthy and oppressive! In addition, we may also worry that committing could infringe on our freedom and autonomy in inconvenient ways. 

So, we have to ask, are there any benefits to joining and committing to a church?

Yesterday, I asked three questions: 1) what are the riches you miss by not committing to a church?; 2) how are these riches received?; 3) how are these riches sustained?

From Ephesians 4, we saw that:

1. The Church is the chosen container for cultivation of maturity, which is the "experiential appropriation of God's boundless love for you." This maturity, formed within this container, was meant to be an anchor and defender, when things seem unstable and uncertain. 
   
   
2. The riches of maturity are received within a "member-ship,” a people connected body-like that counterintuitively liberates us to grow deeper in our sense of individuality. 
   
   
3. These riches are sustained by words, marked by truth and offered in love. 

In Ephesians we see that a church is full of people that do not naturally belong together.

We arrive and participate in this community bringing with us different worldviews—narratives about how the world works—and personal experiences that make it easy for us to feel overlooked and neglected.

Therefore, a church must allow God's boundless love, spoken about in Ephesians 3, to transform our most visceral reflexes—of arrogance, harsh-ness, and impatience—towards others and lean into supernatural resources marked by humility, gentleness, and patience. When this happens, we live out of a countercultural reality of a people with a bias toward reconciliation.

Recap: Jubilee Sunday - Stories of God's Freedom and Healing

         This past Sunday we heard about God's healing in three parts.  

• Part I: Jeremiah gave a short frame for what we pray our church will be--a place, like the early church, where those of us and our neighbors who feel frustrated, diminished, and trapped experience Jesus' jubilee freedom. 
• Jubilee Song, 13.30: Ariana and Sam led us in singing Jubilee.   
• Part II, 15.26: Ralph shared his story of what God has done and has been showing him these past few months. 
• Part III, 24.30: Sam shares how God has been reading her journal and giving her new hope. 

Jean Park

Ariana Waters

Jeremiah Lepasana

Jeremiah Lepasana