Disciples

I sometimes dose through sermons that I put on in the very early morning. This morning, I was dosing through 'The Glory of God as the ground of the minds certainty and the goal of the Soul's satisfaction' ( now that title positively trips of the tongue) and one statement shook me into being fully awake.

This was it:

'If you don't want God more than anything else- you're not a Christian'

This is a deep and long talk but is worth 1 hr 7 mins and I have been mulling on that one sentence all day since I heard it. Mulling and praying.

I have also been considering what it means to be 'a disciple' and have spent some time asking how we, as a church, are doing on our desire to be a people who 'make disciples'. I came across this talk by a chap called Ron Edmondson who gave these eight marks of a disciple he got from a book called 'Growing up':

1. Bible engagement
2. Obeying God and denying self
3. Serve God and others
4. Sharing Christ
5. Exercising faith
6. Seeking God
7. Building relationships
8. Unashamed transparency.

It was the last one 'unashamed transparency' that jumped out at me and I rather like it as a marker of discipleship.

We are planning to go from one to two services in the morning from September and have a great logo to communicate as much. I do know we may need more than a logo i.e plenty of prayer needed over the summer and we've also planned a preaching series entitled 'Invited'.

Indeed, you are, and bring friends.....