There are more high school seniors today who would say they “never” attend religious services than in the last 50 years. Most of us care deeply about the faith of our children and grandchildren, but we’re not sure what to do about it. Simply making the world a more “Christian” place with Christian values won’t get the job done. What we need to do is become a more faithful witness to God’s Kingdom for the next generation, so they can clearly see what life in God’s Kingdom looks like and choose for themselves.

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Now the Church Stories belong to us. We are living the next chapter. But we are not the authors of the story. God is the one writing the story. . . . This is not a story about you. My life is not a story about me. All of life is a Jesus Story. . . . But that doesn’t mean that our lives are meaningless. Because God is so good. He invites us into His story. And He lets us be a part of writing the story in a kind of back and forth, improvisational way. But any actor will tell you, the most important part of acting is being present in the scene and listening to your partner well. So since we’re not the author or the main character, our job is to learn how to listen well to the lead actor. God’s desire is to co-labor or to collaborate with us. And He’s inviting me to join my life to what He’s currently doing in the world. But that requires me to have eyes to see and ears to hear.

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When Jesus sent His disciples out to do ministry, He sent them out two-by-two. This is something we see as a regular practice for the Early Church as well. Ministry is something we see in the New Testament as a communal act. Some scholars point out that perhaps the reason that Jesus sent the disciples in pairs was so that people in towns and villages could see the Kingdom in action.

This Kingdom is centered on loving and serving one another, so God’s goal was not to empower individual disciples to be “all-star” evangelizes—sharing a verbal message that gets understood—but to share the Kingdom by seeing it in action. The Kingdom is something you experience, not something that you understand.

So even when Paul and Barnabus disagree about how to do ministry that they can’t reconcile, they don’t give up on Jesus's mission or community. They both take on another ministry partner and spread the gospel even farther. They are committed to an interactive life with God together.

In our modern world, it can be easy to wonder, “why do I need to be a part of a Church?” There’s so much content online - great worship, great sermons and Bible studies - why do I need to be involved with people? People are the ones that bring Church hurt. But Jesus never intended for the Church to be a message we receive or content we consume. It’s always been about a community, centered on Jesus and His Spirit, and sent out on mission. So are you joining the mission of Jesus or just consuming content?

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A community centered on interactive life with God, is a community centered in prayer. One thing that is evident in the life of the Early Church is the surprising power of prayer. In Acts 12, Peter is arrested, and the Church gathers to pray for him to be released. Miraculously he is set free from prison, but the Church is not expecting this. When he shows up at the meeting place, they are convinced it’s his “angel” (or maybe even ghost).

Prayer is a mysterious and surprising thing, but it’s a central part of life with God. What would it take for our community to become a community trusting and relying on the surprising power of prayer? We don’t always know what God will do, but we can always trust that He listens when He prays, and that He often responds and moves when we ask for His power.

There are so many people in our world that are trapped in the prisons of their mental health struggles. What would it be for us to be a community that prays for God’s power to be released in our community for those struggling with their mental health? Our counseling center needs more than just highly trained and skilled counselors, we need the power of God to be released in the lives of people, so He gets the glory.

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The next surprising move of the Spirit is that God has extended the Kingdom beyond the Jews/Samaritans. The Samaritans were enemies of the Jews, but they at least had once been Israelites. With the inclusion of Cornelius, a gentile man, God was reconciling all ethnicities into the family of God. And then in Antioch we see the first picture of a multi-ethnic Church.

Wherever the Holy Spirit is at work in a community, people will cross boundaries that we’d never expect. People from different nations, ethnicities, and languages will find themselves as family with one another. It’s difficult work. But if we are to be a community led by the Spirit of God, we must not be comfortable until we represent the diversity of the society we live in.

Until our Church begins to reflect the diversity of our schools, our workplaces, our neighborhoods. Until men, women, and children of every color and language are able to find their place in God’s Kingdom here in our Church, and are able to embrace one another as brothers and sisters. This is us joining Jesus in the life He’s living now - reconciling people together.