Fortunately, God’s grace was evident on many fronts. We had a laid back, go with the flow guest speaker, Sam Van Eman from the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO). Sam was in Pittsburgh for the Jubilee Conference and the past couple of years we have been privileged to have one of the Jubilee speakers teach at our worship gathering. Sam lead us through a creative reading and reflection on the Good Samaritan narrative and his message included everyone engaging with crayons, colored pencils and paper. Win!

Here is our complete worship flow:

• Our God Is Mercy (Brenton Brown)
• Fall on Your Knees (David Crowder Band)
• Reading and Reflection on Psalm 103
• 10,000 Reasons (Matt Redman)
• Interview with Member of Spiritual Formation Team (focus on Scripture)
• Interview with High School Student (focus on her serving opportunity in Israel next month)
• Announcements and Offering
• Message from Sam Van Eman
• Benediction

You can learn what other communities of faith experienced this weekend in worship at The Worship Community.

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Here is some of the background on our understanding and practice of Covenant Partnership.

Scripture contains a number of references to a Christ follower’s once for all union with Jesus and His Body that occurs at the time of one’s profession of faith (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Ephesians 2:12-22, 4:3-6, Colossians 1:13-22). At that moment, a person becomes a member in the universal (one, holy, catholic church) of Jesus Christ. Positional membership, based solely on the work, merit, and grace of Jesus Christ is eternal and unchanging.

A person may be a participant in a number of different churches over the course of his or her lifetime (or even during the same season of life) while maintaining permanent positional membership in Christ’s universal Church. While we cannot see the invisible bonds of membership in the Body of Christ, we can identify those who are covenant partners here at Christ Community Church.

Followers of Jesus Christ in the New Testament (and throughout 2000 years of church history) clearly identified themselves with a specific local group of believers and were challenged to become committed participants. Our desire at Christ Community Church is to follow that biblical and historical precedent, and covenant partnership is our approach of doing that.

Secondly, it is important to identify the core of people that can be counted on to help accomplish our mission and vision. Covenant partnership is one benchmark the leadership can use to determine whether we’re accomplishing the church’s mission of connecting people to God, one another, and our world.

Finally, (and this is no small point) becoming a covenant partner benefits you. It’s an important spiritual milestone that moves each of us out of the vagaries of good intentions and into the clear light of committed belonging. The covenant partnership process can be a significant defining moment in your spiritual journey.

Five Actions of Covenant Partners:

1. Realize that the love of God and neighbor is at the heart of the Christian faith and are desirous of moving toward a deeper love for God and one another.

2. Recognize their need for the grace of God in Jesus Christ and the support of the community of faith in their movement forward on their spiritual journey.

3. Believe that growth is normative for the follower of Jesus Christ and will live out this commitment by growing in their beliefs, practices, and experiences of the Christian faith.

4. Are available to others in the community to encourage and support them in their spiritual journeys and earthly struggles.

5. Are convinced that the church is the hope of the world and are committed to investing in God’s mission by generously sharing their time, energy, passions, gifts, prayers and personal resources in the dreams and ministries of Christ Community Church.

Three Commitments of Covenant Partners:

Personal Integrity – Covenant Partners will bring to the community of faith a life yielded to God that reflects the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; Galatians 5:22-23).

Relational Integrity – Covenant Partners will pursue loving and meaningful relationships both inside and outside the Body of Christ. Covenant partners take seriously both Jesus’ and Paul’s words: “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35) and “So far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all people” (Romans 12:18).

Organizational Integrity  – Covenant Partners will contribute generously of their time, energy, passion, gifts, prayers and personal resources in the dreams and ministries of Christ Community Church as well as being responsive to the leadership God has established.

Question: How does your faith community approach the issue of church membership?

Here is our complete worship flow:

• Turn Around (Matt Maher)
• Crash This Place (Matt Reed)
• Call to Worship
• O This God (Matt Redman)
• Rock of Ages (Paul Baloche)
• Spiritual Formation Update
• Announcements and Offering
• Message
• Covenant Partnership Celebration
• Hold Us Together (Matt Maher and a big thanks to Rob Still for his reminder that this is a great closing song)

You can learn what other communities of faith experienced this weekend in worship at The Worship Community.

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•  What is the Gospel?
• What does it mean to enter people’s lives and to walk alongside of them for the sake of Christ and the Gospel?
• When it comes to the Gospel, what is it that you cannot, not do?

We not only wanted to talk about the Gospel, but experience it in worship as well. After our first three songs, we created some space for silent confession and then we prayed the following prayer together:

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord; Amen.

We followed this prayer of confession with words of assurance and than  a powerful song from the Rend Collective Experiment called “You Bled.” The chorus declares:

“How marvelous, how boundless
Is Your love, is Your love, how wonderful, sacrificial
Is Your love for me.”

Question: How did you engage the Gospel this weekend in worship? How were you reminded of the grace and goodness of God’s love for you in Jesus Christ?

Here is our compete worship flow:

• Fall on Your Knees (David Crowder Band)
• O This God (Matt Redman)
• Reading from Isaiah 40
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
• Prayer of Confession
• You Bled (Rend Collective Experiment)
• Gulf Coast Team Update
• Announcements/Offering
• Message: (The Gospel)
• Came to My Rescue (Hillsong)

You can learn what other communities of faith experienced this weekend in worship at The Worship Community.

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Question: How do you encourage the songwriters in your community to develop their craft and share their art with the people of God?

Here is our complete worship flow:

• Death That I’ve Become (Sue Puhala)
• Reading of Psalm 111
• As It Is in Heaven (Matt Maher)
• Your Love Never Fails (Jesus Culture)
• Forever Reign (Jason Ingram and Reuben Morgan)
• C3 Celebration
• Announcements and Offering
• Movable Feast (Sue Puhala)
• Message (The Prophetic Ministry)

You can learn what other communities of faith experienced this weekend in worship at The Worship Community.

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Manning begins the book with a brief personal intro:

I’m Brennan. I’m an alcoholic.
How I got there, why I left there, why I went back, is the story of my life.
But it is not the whole story.

I’m Brennan. I’m a Catholic.
How I got there, why I left there, why I went back, is also the story of my life.
But it is not the whole story.

I’m Brennan. I was a priest, but am no longer a priest. I was a married man but am no longer a married man.
How I got to those places, why I left those places, is the story of my life too.
But it is not the whole story.

I’m Brennan. I’m a sinner, saved by grace.
That is the larger and more important story.
Only God, in His fury, knows the whole of it.

Manning’s intro got me thinking, “what’s my story?” I’m a man, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a musician, a pastor, a writer, a friend. I’ve had my share of success and failures in every dimension of life, but those success and failures are not the whole story.They do not define me. And so today, with Brennan Manning I declare:

I’m Terry. I’m a sinner, saved by grace.
That is the larger and more important story.
Only God, in His fury, knows the whole of it.

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