Doing Church with a Purpose

I have been preaching to the church on a series called 'Learning How to Hear God's Voice' and I felt good about how it turned out.

Yesterday was the last one in the series and I do feel a sense of accomplishment.

There was a distinct leading of the Holy Spirit in all the 5 messages and that increased my confidence in my delivery. I am totally reliant on the Holy Spirit because our ministry must not be just good preaching but preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit with signs and wonders following.

I am also grateful to the Lord for giving us salvations almost every week; whether or not the message was directly evangelistic.

I have been telling the church that our Sunday services are 'public' and 'open' meetings so we must not try to be too religious in our liturgy. I desire New Life to be faithful in carrying out the 'Great Commission' not just conducting services for born-again Christians.

Visitors are often confused by overtly religious actions like speaking in tongues, 'free praise' (where the visitors are often at a lost as to what to do while the christians are merrily singing a new song or praising God) etc. Those who know me will tell you that I love to speak in tongues and being a true worshipper at heart, to spend extended time in praising God in the presence of the Holy Spirit. But there is a time and place for everything.

I have no problems with these activities and I often encourage the church to come out on Wednesday nights where we can speak in tongues, pray and engage in free praise as much as we want to.

We must be purposeful in our meetings.

If every meeting is geared towards christians, where can unbelievers come to Him?.

I am not apologetic for wanting to gear our Sunday services to be non-religious for the sake of those that the Lord is bringing in; our Monday nights for solid Bible teaching; our Wednesday nights for believers to engage in prayer and deeper spiritual activities and our Friday/Saturday(for the Youth) Cell meetings for the church family to fellowship, encourage and pray for one another.

New Life... Doing Church with a Purpose