As part of our visioning process, our church has worked on naming our core values. There are lots of values any church can name about what they believe to be important, but the point of the process is to find the values that best define the reality and the aspirations of our particular church. And so through months of tough work we came up with five values that define us here at Duneland Community Church.

The value I preached on this past week is: Welcoming All With Grace

DCC has always been a welcoming church. You can sit down and hear the stories of our people and you will hear about people who had never stepped foot in a church before and yet found a home here. You will hear about people rescued from addiction and from heartbreak and from divorce. You will see that we are a congregation that has a diverse socio-economic range. You will see that we are a congregation that is ready to welcome all who walk through our doors. You will also find that we really enjoy our hospitality. People come to our church and they will always be well fed, especially on potluck Sunday!

But welcoming all isn’t the end of the story. We believe that our embracing of all who we encounter, inside our church or outside in everyday living, involves transforming grace. We don’t simply embrace people and call it a day, we embrace all people with God’s grace and the hope that they too with experience the transformation that comes from being embraced by grace and mercy. It is the embrace of someone who accepts you just as you are and dreams and hopes for you to be all that you can be. That is our value as a church and we aspire to make it a reality not just inside the four walls of our building, but in the everyday reality in which we live.

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I have written a couple of times about being in the part of our Visioning Process where we are talking about our values as a church. This week I challenged the board to do some homework around our values and I want to invite you to add your input as well.

As we listed our values out there were four major values that we found are especially important to us. Roughly stated they are as follows:

Investing in Our Community

Come As You Are

Intentional Transformation

Communicating Hope with Relevance

All of those statements are big statements with a lot of meaning behind them, and none of them are complete, but we feel like the capture well what is important to us as a church. We want to invest in our community by engaging the marginalized, and ministering to youth, children and families. We invite people to “Come as you are” because we want all people to be welcomed and embraced by our church. We are about intentional transformation because we don’t think that God simply wants us to get together and love each other, he has a purpose of changing us and reshaping us into his image through these relationships. Finally we want to make sure that everyone we encounter clearly understands that the Gospel message of Jesus Christ is relevant to all people in all places at all times. Nothing could be more relevant.

So now as a church we are working to reshape these values into language that is clear, concise, compact, concrete, and challenging. Can you help us? Tell us what these values mean to you and how you think we should live them out. How have you experienced these values and how much further do we have to go to make these true of us as a church? What scripture comes to mind to support or inform these values?

We value your input in this Visioning Process and would love to hear from you. We need your input.

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Sunday marked the beginning of the season of Advent. Often we can get distracted from Advent but just talking about the Christmas season, but Advent is something a little different. Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas. It is a time of solitude, waiting, remembering, and looking forward. It is supposed to be a time of reflection and celebration as we prepare for the celebration of Christmas.

It is hard to have Advent when Christmas decorations show up in stores in October and it seems like Christmas lights replace Halloween pumpkins. That is why Advent is more important than ever for us as a church. We must intentionally live out this season before Christmas differently than the world. It is a time when we can show that our faith helps us see the world differently. It is a time when we can show our neighbors, coworkers, and families that our priority is in celebrating Christ, not buying Christmas gifts.

So I encourage you to take time this Advent season to slow down, to sit and pray, to read scripture, and to wait for the joy of a true Christmas celebration.

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As a kid I was terrified of the rapture. There was an awful movie I saw as a kid called A Thief in the Night and it scared me that at any moment God was going to come back and take all the true Christians away and somehow I was going to be left behind.

Do you believe in the rapture? Have you read any of the unbelievably popular Left Behind books? Have you been watching Kirk Cameron movies lately?

So what do you think about the return of Christ? Do you think it is close? Do you think we will have any idea it is coming before it happens? What do you think about prophesies about the coming of Christ?

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It has been fun and really interesting to walk through the afterlife these past two weeks. I don’t know if you have enjoyed our different format as much as I have, but I have really enjoyed teaching the last couple of weeks. This week will prove to be the most challenging week yet in our series. This week we are looking at the realities of the New Heaven, New Earth and Hell.

The purpose for this Sunday is two fold. First, I want us to have a clear picture of the eternity that God promises us in our resurrected life. I think the picture scripture gives to us might surprise us. Secondly, I want to present as accurate a picture as possible of the eternity that awaits those who are not followers of Christ. This is easier said than done, but we will do the best that we can.

So what kind of questions do you have about heaven and hell? We talked a lot last week about what life may be like for us in the intermediate state after we die and before we are resurrected. Now we are going to look at Revelation 21 and when heaven meets earth. What do you picture heaven to be? What about hell? How many of your thoughts about heaven and hell are formed by movies, paintings, and mythology? How much is rooted in scripture? My challenge this week is for you to look for all the relevant passages about heaven and hell that you can find and add your thoughts to this post.

Thanks-
Greg

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Sorry about no blog last week, our internet connection wasn’t working at all last week, but now I am back.

If you missed it, yesterday we began a new series called From Here to Eternity. Over the month of November we are looking at what life after death is really about and what we need to understand about it.

If you missed yesterday you should be able to download the sermon on our podcast in a day or two. The focus yesterday was on the resurrection of Jesus and how revolutionary the idea of resurrection is in the history of the world. Before Jesus actually did it, no one believed that people really came back from the dead. Most cultures believed that there was life after death, but not life after life after death when the person would be physically resurrected in bodily form.

Jesus changed all that, and with his resurrection we now can experience a part of the resurrected life ourselves, through our salvation and faith in Christ.

This Sunday we are continuing in 1 Corinthians 15 and even into part of chapter 16. If you want to get a great summary of the importance of resurrection, and what resurrection means for us, this is the passage to go to.

So this week we are shifting from Christ’s resurrection to our own. We are looking at what happens in the in-between state between death and resurrection and what our resurrected life will be like. Next week we will look at the meeting of Heaven and Earth in Revelation 21.

So what are your thoughts about the in-between state of life after death but before resurrection?

Where do you think we will be? What will we be doing?

Will it be different for believers and non-believers?

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This Sunday is our 10th Anniversary as a church! We are so excited. One way we want to reflect on all that God has done for our church in the past ten years is by creating a top ten list of our favorite memories. So what are yours? Submit your ideas here and the top ten will find their way into a list for Sunday.

Blessings-
Greg

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This week we shift over to Luke’s Gospel and the 15th chapter. This chapter is so beautiful because of the three thematic parables that fill it. The parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost Son (Prodigal Son) all follow the same theme. Something is lost, the owner searches for it, it is found, there is great rejoicing. It is a simple formula, but the message is deep and profound. We will focus primarily on the first parable, the parable of the lost sheep.

Here are some questions for you as you read through this parable.

Luke 15:1-7

Questions to consider

Does this story actually make sense to you?

Why would you risk so much for one sheep or just cut your losses?

How does this story translate to our lives?

How does it affect our understanding of our calling as the church?

Are we supposed to be the sheep or the shepherd?

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Is there anything typically less inspiring than a mission statement? Businesses, non-profits, and churches alike have been crafting mission statements in earnest for the past three or four decades and for the most part they have been a waste of time. Either the statement is so long and complex that no one has any idea what it is or they are so abstract as to be rendered useless. This is the challenge as we at DCC are working on crafting our mission statement.

So here is how we are approaching it.

1) We already know that the job of every church is to glorify God and make disciples

2) We are focusing on how we are best able and most passionate about doing those things

3) We want a statement that everyone will know and understand

4) We are crafting something concrete, something people can sink their teeth into

5) Our statement will be active, living and breathing, a constant part of our life as a church. We aren’t creating a statement to hang on a wall and point to. We want something incarnational, something that we can live into daily

So that is the challenge and those are our goals.

more…

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Thanks for all of those who have been stopping by and offering their input each week. It has been a helpful process for me and I hope it has added something to your week as well. Our current series is called Who are We? And this series is a look inside of our own identity as a church, looking back over what we have experienced, looking in to see what we are made of, looking around to see the needs of our community, and looking forward into the future God is calling us to. This week we are looking in.

Series:         Who are we?

Title:           Looking In

Passage:      Colossians 1:3-14

Questions to consider

Do you think churches get a reputation?

What kind of reputation does DCC have?

How do you find God’s will?

What is essential for accomplishing God’s will?

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