10 reasons I love my church

1. I can be honest with you. There's no reason I have to hide what's going on in my life. When I struggle, when I'm afraid, when I'm off course, I can tell you. And I know that your aim is not to put me down but to lift me up. When I'm with our community I don't feel the burden to look perfect.2. You're crazy encouraging. I think we have an unusually high percentage of encouragers in our community. Spending time with our church is one of the most encouraging things in my life!3. You're flexible. I believe one mark of a Christ focused church is flexibility--and you are flexible. That's a breath of fresh air from a leadership standpoint. You are willing to listen to new ideas and think through them biblically, and I believe that's a blessing.4. You're multi-generational. I love that we're not all the same. That on any given Sunday I'm around people who share my preferences and those who don't. I love that there are some of you who are in the same life stage as I am, but I also love that some of you have already been where I am. Diversity sanctifies and grows us.5. You love the Bible. If you didn't, I can't imagine you would come week after week to hear men preach through books of the Bible. You come on Sunday expecting to hear someone walk through the Word and share the power of God's life changing gospel with you.6. You're teachable. There's a general attitude of learning around here. You don't merely love the Bible, you expect it to teach you new things. I have witnessed opinions, minds, and hearts changed through Scripture, and that's no small thing. It's all to easy to be our own source of authority.7. You do ministry. Each year we are doing more and more ministry in Franklinton. It's easy to talk a big game, but actually doing something is quite different. We're certainly not perfect on this one (or any other), but I do see a growing sense of the need to serve. I have no doubt that God is honored and pleased with our attempts to love and share the gospel with our community.8. You're dogmatic about the right things. There are some topics our community doesn't see eye to eye on. Things like the finer details of what Jesus' second coming looks like, or the precise role of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility in salvation. What's great is that you don't break fellowship over those beliefs. You're dogmatic about Jesus, salvation, heaven & hell, righteousness, the Trinity, and other things that belong to orthodox Christianity. And your gracious enough to love and worship with people who see secondary issues a little different than you.9. You help me know and delight in Christ. This church helps me keep my focus on Christ. You continually remind me that my joy is not found in anything this world has to offer. And that drives me back to Jesus, pushing me to know him better and find deeper rivers of joy.10. All of this is about God's name. All of the things I've written are not about your name, my name, or our church's name. You know they're all about God's name. One of our members recently told me how someone walked up to them and said, "You go to Jonathan's church, right?" They replied, "Jonathan's church, what are you talking about?" Their friend continued, "You know, the church off 56, Jonathan's Church." Our member replied, "Oh, you mean Union View,  God's church. Jonathan doesn't have a church." I love that! You get that everything we do is about God!

Sunday we started a new sermon series that is going to challenge us to live missional lives. I challenged every member of Union View to commit to two things for the next 5 weeks. First, extravagantly show the love of Christ to someone (outside your family) at least once a week for the next five weeks. Second, share the gospel with at least one person a week for the next five weeks. The point we're trying to make is that God has called us into an incredible story, an epic, and we'll never find full joy or satisfaction in our life until we do what God 'rebirthed' us for. (If you missed the sermon I encourage you to listen to it HERE.)I want to encourage every member of our church to take those challenges seriously. I believe God can use this opportunity to change your life, change our church, and change our community! I also want to encourage you to share your story with us. The first thing you see on our church website is a picture for the epic series. If you click on it you'll be taken to a page where you can briefly tell us how you've shared the gospel with someone. We're not doing this to boast in ourselves. We're sharing how God is using us in order to encourage each other. So take some time during the next 5 weeks and share how God is using you to share the gospel.In case you missed it, here's how the rest of the series is going to go.

• September 5 - finding fuel to live the epic
• September 12 - overcoming obstacles to living the epic
• September 19 - being the church outside the 'church'
• September 26 - WORSHIP IN THE PARK

That last Sunday is going to be amazing. We're going to pack up what we need and have worship outside at Franklinton park. Start praying about who you can invite, and ask God to do something mind-blowing in this community.