Community

For those of ya'll who don't know who I am, I am Seth Fendley, Head of Freshman Leadership at the BCM, Ministry Intern at London FBC, Resident Assistant in Paine, a PR and Speech Comm double major here at Tech. I am excited to be bringing the message tonight that has been laid on my heart. In case you haven't noticed I am talking about What Church is, and how we as college students can be active members. I will be honest with you guys, I really don't enjoy the term "Church" I tend to lean more towards the term "Community of Believers" or "Community of Disciples." I relate most of this back to my history in church, I have been in church since before I was born. I actually was in my second church before I could walk, not because of any major issue, mainly because the church we were at in Arkadelphia was mainly a senior citizen church, doing great things reaching that generation, but there was no peers there for my parents to relate to. We were members at Park Hill Baptist in Arkadelphia for a while, then dad was asked to be the pastor of Southfork Baptist. While we were at Southfork some issues arose. Surprise Surprise right? what's a church without it's issues....We had been bringing college students from OBU and HSU to church with us, including some exchange students, and the deacon of the church decided to inform my father that if we brought any more of "them" mainly pointed towards the exchange students, that we would have to be asked to leave, cause it made the church members uncomfortable. This was after we had had our first church "split" which is crazy when your church averages 30-40 people...So we moved on, and planted a college student church that met on Saturday nights in a Nazarene church in Arkadelphia, this eventually transformed into Christpoint, which was housed in the HSU BCM (BSU at the time) and then later moved to Trios (a coffee shop downtown) and is now a house church. After we felt our time at Christpoint was nearing an end, we ended up at Second Baptist HS, which we had visited before launching Christpoint. It was "worth the drive to the church that's alive" was our slogan back then, it wasn't until we began to move to our new facilities known as "The Church at Crossgate Center" that things began to go awry, questionable staff hirings and budget concerns, then my dad was asked to go on staff there, and another layer of the church was revealed. Now I work for London FBC, it's a great church to be at, possibly the happiest I have ever been at a church, but that may just be cause I'm actually serving and not just sitting (something that we will touch on here in a bit). I feel like all of my experience with churches, as well as some key things that Christ has revealed to me, that I could write a book on church and what it should look like, The whole book would be centered around the Scripture Passage Acts 2:42-47. How does this work for the BCM? We obviously are the church, not in an established sense par-say, but in a group meeting sense we are. So we meet as a group, this is where we plug in, as the video pointed out. Then as a group, we are to devote ourselves to the things laid out in verse 42, the teachings, fellowship, breaking bread and prayer. We come here on Tuesdays, we meet in 1140 and Freshlife, all a part to learn the teachings from the Bible as well as devote ourselves to them. Fellowship and breaking bread, this is what we do through Inreach and Noonday. Then prayer, something that we do here during worship with FUEL. FUEL, 1140 and Freshlife is also the place where we come to Charge Up, as stated in the video. These things we are to be devoted to, as well as all being on the same page, something that we are striving to do as a BCM, as well as something that hopefully we will be sparked to do more in depth through the prodding of the Spirit in this message. After these four keys in verse 42 we come to the part in the video where it talks about Live It Out. We are all have a purpose as Christians, as shown in the video, this purpose is to Love God as well as others. Our mission that we have as disciples and followers of Christ is to Connect the unconnected to Christ and together grow to a full devotion to Him. This shown first through the rest of Acts 2 verses 45-47. Then later on in 1 Corinthians 12. In verse 45 it talks about selling our possessions, and giving to anyone with need. This is something that as a materialistic generation we have a hard time grasping, giving everything to those in need. Recently I watched a documentary about three kids from three different schools who helped their schools raise money for a group called Invisible Children. The two girls that the film focused on were typical, you had the valley girl and the bible belt girl, the guy from the film though was the interesting story. He was from an inner city school where 80% of his classmate including him, lived under the national poverty level. His school was in the top ten that raised money for Invisible Children, they raised over $20,000! This is crazy high school students from below the poverty level raising as much money as a valley girl! Why can't we as a Community of Believers do more? Verse 46 Eating together and meeting together. Now are we going to have FUEL every night? No, but we meet together already everyday casually. We all have our groups of people that we eat lunch with, that we do life together with. The question is, are we living Christ out? Are we taking it to the point that people recognize that we are Christians that we pass it on to them? We are called just like the mission in the clip stated, to connect the unconnected to Christ. The best way to do this is through a small group community such as lunch, dinner, classes, everyday life together. We are supposed to be living mission minded, always looking for ways to minister to the nonbeliever. If we do this then verse 47 falls into place people will notice us, living life intentionally, following the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. This is where we have the option to pass it on to others as they notice, and as we are living intentionally our lives will show people how to be disciples of Christ. And they added to their number daily. Many of you may ask how does this work for me, this is shown through 1 Corinthians 12 (The Message) Some of you have heard this before, everyone has individual spiritual gifts and we are called to use them in unique ways, we have several places within the BCM to serve. These as Evangalism, InReach, OutReach, Missions (both International and Local), Noonday, FUEL, Discipleship, DNOW, Intermurals, Church Relations, Publicity...The leaders and members for these groups will be hanging out here along the walls in order to help you if you feel directed to help out in a group. As Followers of Christ we are called to be a part of a community of believers, so I would hope that if you are not already involved in a local church, that you get involved, we can help you do that. We would really like everyone who attends FUEL to be involved in BCM, even if it's a part as small as attending an 1140 group. So please don't hesitate as we leave this place to get connected to people in a ministry that uses your spiritual gifts, so that you can be a part of this community of believers.

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The video above came from Central Christian Churches Youtube Page it has a wealth of videos for different topics