Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will stay with me for the rest of my life. Words matter.

Join us in our conversation about our speech!

1/3 of your waking life is taken up by work.

Proverbs: Words To Live By

Hard work is a virtue.

Faith should influence how you work.

-Cut corners?

-not take as seriously?

-Built others up?

Work is a marathon.

-immediate gratification?

Money is a byproduct, not the purpose

-Make your work about something bigger than money

Work isn’t a punishment for life on earth. It can be a gift.

How have you seen these things to be true in your work-life? Have any of these been a challenge or untrue for you in your work-life? How do you make faith a part of your work?

This week on take a break we are talking FRIENDSHIP! And who better to talk about friendship with but everyone’s friend, ADAM BAKER!

Pastor Tim Ziegler preached about this topic online and at McCausland. Adam preached about it at Webster.

In Proverbs we learn that there are things like intentionality and vulnerability that helps us establish and make new friends. When we sustain those relationships we are investing our time in intention ways around persons who are going to be able to help us grow closer to God and to one-another.

Take a moment to consider your current friendships. How do you feel about the number of friends you have? What about the quality of those relationships? In what way would you like to see growth in your friendships?

Proverbs is a book full of wisdom from God.

What is wisdom? It’s about three things:

Wisdom is about how you’re living your life.

Wisdom requires listening.

Wisdom begins with trusting God.

When you put these three things together it is the foundation for proper decision making. Can you think of a pivotal time in your life when it became evident that God blessed a decision you made or maybe a specific path you chose? Can you share what aspects of that event led you to recognize it was blessed?

On Sunday we held a service of commitment, where those in attendance both in person and online, had the opportunity to make a commitment to Jesus through baptism and to The Gathering through membership.

Every week we release a video called ‘a short gathering’ and Matt gives us a brief recap of his sermon. You'll hear that in this episode.

In Matt’s sermon he talked all about commitment. And committing to Jesus is how we break the thought of doing life alone, but instead doing life with Jesus and with the Church.

Questions:

How has commitment to following Jesus changed your life?

Why is church membership important?

Pastor Matt preached the final sermon in our Untethered series, which has been about ‘faith deconstruction.’

This week he discussed the things we may be looking for in our lives.

1. Looking for forgiveness

2. Looking for relationships

3. Looking for help

4. Looking for something more

So Matt says that all of these things can be found in Jesus. Matt’s plea is this: even if we’re in deconstruction mode, that we net give up on Jesus.

Question for discussion: How has Jesus given you hope even in times of faith crisis?

Time to leave a church? Have you ever heard a pastor talk about this?

Reasons to leave a church:

Wrong Teaching

Wrong Practices

Wrong Feeling - What happens in us

Have you ever had to make the decision to leave a church? Did any of Pastor Matt’s three points play into that decision?

Guests this week: Adam Baker and Brittany Radford.

Every week we have a A Short Gathering that is posted on Instagram. You should check it out @gathering_now

This week Pastor Tim gave us three two-word phrases to help us reconstruct our faith: Call out, Call in, Call back.

Call out hypocrisy and judgmentalism

Call in, examine our own lives …

Call back to the way of Jesus

Calling out hypocrisy and judgmentalism is easy given our current climate, but why is calling in, or examining our own lives in relationship to hypocrisy and judgmental attitudes and behaviors so difficult?