Sunday Summary, 19/1/14
Dave Scholes
Hey everyone! I’m still feeling impacted in a big way after Pastor Derek Smith was with us all day yesterday. It’s never a dull moment with Ps Derek, and yesterday was no different. He was seriously funny, but more than that, he was seriously insightful, powerful and challenging.
In particular, he talked about the “church-gathered” and the “church-scattered”. With Vision Sunday coming up this weekend, he really hammered home the importance of the vision not just being a Sunday or church-gathered thing, but being a Monday-to-Saturday, church-scattered thing as well.
The church-gathered is when the people (who are the church) gather together for Sunday service, church events, connect groups and other things. The church-scattered is the majority of our lives, when we are at home, or at work, or with friends not from church. That’s when the vision really matters, and that’s when it’s vital we remember and live out the mission we’re all on.
Ps Derek said that on average, people may spend around 82,080 hours in a lifetime working. And that same person may spend around 6,480 hours in a lifetime at church. The difference is obviously huge. Ps Derek encouraged us not to think about how we can get the first number down and the second number up, but rather, we should work on getting the vision out-lived in the 80,000+ hours we spend outside the four walls of the church.
Ps Derek mentioned that we don’t enact the vision and live it out at work just by playing Hillsong loudly in the office, and especially not by being some sort of morality police. He said that we do it by being punctual, polite, honouring, encouraging, hard working… all the things a Christian should be when we are at work. It’s through our example and lifestyle in our church-scattered time that we then have a platform to “arrange a date” for people to meet with Jesus, and introduce them to the church-gathered community.
He said so much more, but perhaps in light of Vision Sunday, it would be important for all of us to continue to consider these words from Ps Derek and then seek to live out the vision of the church we belong to in our church-scattered experience.
– Dave