Radiant Church Juneau will conduct our first (real) worship gathering this Sunday. We're pretty excited about this. We don't want to mess this up!We've purchased gear, met our suppliers, established logistics, printed and handed out invitations, talked through service order and the sermon series, assigned roles and even had a practice gathering last week. We've tried our best to think of everything short term, even long term. We have been praying. A lot. We want to conduct worship services with excellence, because our God is really excellent and worthy of our highest praise. We do not want to mess this up.
It could be easy for us and others to regard this Sunday as the real "beginning" of our church. It could be easy for us to evaluate our church (thus ourselves) by how well or how poorly the service went, how many people joined with us, and any resultant buzz around town the week following. We could quickly see Sunday worship gatherings as what makes us "legit."
We do not want to mess this up. We do not want to lose sight of our identity as a church: We are a Family of Servant Missionaries learning to be and make Disciples. As Radiant Church we are not called to put on events; we are called to be and make disciples of Jesus (Matthew 28:19.) Sadly, it's hard to make church attendees into disciples in a singular hour (or so) long meeting each week. Disciples of Jesus are made in the context of family relationships, doing life together throughout the week as servants and missionaries. Disciples cannot be made when limited to Sunday mornings where people don't even have enough time to talk because they're too busy sitting still and listening.
We will go one of two ways in the next weeks, months, years; we will either create and become Sunday consumers of Christian goods and services, or we will view Sunday mornings as an extended family reunion. We will either see ourselves going to church, or being the church. We will either be captivated by the worship event, or captivated by Who the worship event is for.
I'm not the first or last person to write on this subject, but for us, Radiant Church Juneau right here
and right now this is all very real. Pray for us. We do not want to mess this up!
