Covenant Life Church

We’re coming to the last couple of messages in the CL 168 Series until after Easter, but we must continue to put into practice all that we have learned. We must work hard to become a church that leverages every hour of every week to move the needle on the Kingdom of God — not just the one hour of the week that we are together.

Our foundational scripture in Ephesians 5 tells us that we all have something God wants us to do and that we all must live thoughtfully and wisely, maximize every Kingdom opportunity, come together for corporate worship and have a private personal connection with the Lord ourselves. This week, we are exploring what a CL168 life looks like on a daily basis.

We are in a series called CL168, exploring the fact that the American church spends more time focusing on the one hour per week that we HAVE church than on the ways we can BE the church during the other 167 hours each week. Last week, we learned about being an empowered church and talked about the need to wade out into deeper waters in the river of the Holy Spirit.

As you start to put this into practice, you may think of the fruit of the Spirit and get overwhelmed by all the qualities you don’t currently possess, or you may think about being a witness for Jesus and get overwhelmed by fear. This week, we’re going to look at the one thing all of us can do to begin or deepen our journey with the Holy Spirit. To move the needle for the Kingdom of God every hour of every week, we must develop love first!

We’re continuing our CL168 Series, exploring how we can be a church that leverages our one hour of corporate worship to empower and equip the body to be the Church for the other 167 hours of each week.

This week, we’re looking to the Bible to learn more about the person and purpose of the Holy Spirit, so we can understand why we are encouraged so often in scripture to be filled with the Spirit. If we’re going to be a 168-hour-per-week church, we need the power that the Spirit provides.

This week, we're continuing our CL168 series, learning how we can leverage the one hour we spend in church together to prepare us for the other 167 hours of the week. We must become a church that moves the needle on the work of the Kingdom every hour of the week — not just during our services on Sundays.

To do this, the leaders of the church are called to train and equip, but because we don’t fully understand what this means, we often fail to do it properly. This leads to people getting hurt and deciding that they don't ever want to serve again. They suffer because they never find out what God has created, called and gifted them to do. If we're going to be a 168-hour church, we need to examine what the Word says about this topic, so we can do better.

We’re continuing our CL168 Series, exploring how we can be a church that leverages our one hour of corporate worship to empower and equip the body to be the church for the other 167 hours of each week.

This week, we’re talking about what church membership looks like biblically. Instead of deconstructing church membership in order to refute some of the common membership myths, we’re getting to the heart of the matter and discussing three important characteristics membership for a 168-hours-per-week church.

To ensure that our concept and understanding of church has not become skewed, we must first figure out who the church is. There is a capital Church and a lowercase church. You can be part of the Church and not be a part of Covenant Life, and if that is true, you might be right where God wants you. However, what you don’t want to do is be part of Covenant Life or some other lowercase church and not really be a part of the capital, overall Church.

This week, we’re continuing our CL168 series, exploring the idea that we should leverage our one-hour church service to be effective in the other 167 hours of the week. The goal is to align with the biblical concept of church and be a congregation that moves the needle on the work of the Kingdom of God all 168 hours of every week.

This week, Pastor John is sharing the annual State of the Church message, looking back at our ministry impact in 2021. Together, we’ll explore what we saw in the areas of attendance, giving and The Jericho Project, and we will discuss our church’s three areas of prayer for 2022.

There are 168 hours in a week, and we spend 167 hours in some place other than church. To be both more effective and more biblical, we need to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” and change the way that we think about church.

We spend all 167 hours of the week focused on getting ready for the ministry of a one-hour church service when we should be spending our church services preparing for the ministry of the other 167 hours. This week, we’re exploring the changes we need to make and the fact that our church service should not be the sum total of all the ministry energy we exert.

Last week was officially the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, as established by President Reagan in 1984. In Genesis 1:27, we find that God is the Creator of persons, and in Acts 10:34, we find out that He is no respecter of those persons. That verse in Genesis is all we need to know about why human life is sacred. It says we are created in the image of God Himself, which means that we have this divine resemblance that makes our lives different than any other created thing.

Christians believe that life and personhood begin at conception, but believing in the sanctity of human life means that we believe there is inherent value in every human being — regardless of age, gender, social status or any other reason we may use to rank order the value of other people. Their value is provided to them by their Creator, and the fact that they deserve to be treated with a certain level of decency and dignity that transcends their actions, attitudes or circumstances.

Last week, we talked about how prayer should not be a last resort for followers of Jesus Christ; it should be our first instinct. As we face each new day, challenge, opportunity and blessing, we should pray first, but as passionate as we should be about facing every situation with prayer, the phrase “pray first” is incomplete.

What happens after we pray or while we’re praying has just as much to do with our spiritual health and success as the praying itself. This week, we’ll discuss the missing step in our prayer lives and examine what should happen between faith and works, between praying and doing.