We are winding down the last three Sundays in our series “What Kind of Church Are We?” We have walked our way through being Christ-focused, well-connected, ageless, generous, growing, and joyful. That’s a pretty good list to date. The thing that has struck me in the preparation of these sermons is the way there is so much overlap with the designations. Focusing on Christ seems to enhance and undergird all the areas. Generous and joyful seem to work well with each other. Well-connected and ageless logically feed on each other. Growing works pretty much the same way. You have heard me say that bigger isn’t necessarily better, but better usually gets bigger.

We will turn for the homestretch on Sunday by paying attention to what it means to be a “Learning Church.” In our Acts 2 passage, the brothers and sisters submitted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. Without a finalized canon of scripture and decades of theological development, that was the source of the truth proclaimed and explained. Today, we are blessed to have the written word that points us clearly to the living Word. We also have the benefit of ages of authentic, trustworthy teaching and writing to fall back on. Many folks have the gift of teaching and use it well. And yes, there is an apostolic responsibility for folks to rightly divide the word of truth in the preaching moment. There is no excuse for being uninformed, ill-informed or shallow when it comes to reading, hearing, and living out the truth.

In an effort to undergird that, and to demonstrate our commitment to being a church for the ages, we are blessed to give away Bibles to all our children Sunday morning. I am so pleased with Aimee Hobbs and her commitment to children and their learning of the word. As part of the service, she will talk about her philosophy of ministry and commitment to lead us to be stewards of these young lives. We are stewards of older lives too. A church that does not exude a culture of spiritual learning and development may be hard-pressed to be a real church, in the biblical, historical sense. As we have discovered in this series, we are called to be and do a lot of things together. Living and learning the truths of God is among the non-optional options. See you Sunday as we further unpack this description of the church in Acts, and ours.

Blessings,
Glen