This week’s guest post is by Kester Smith, Small Groups Pastor
Dear Christ Church,
What is the church’s purpose? What is the church here for? What is the point of being a Christian? These may seem like strange questions for a pastor to raise, but asking them can help to reorient us to what is most important, to the essentials of who we are and what we do.
“The point of following Jesus isn’t simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than this after we die,” writes N.T. Wright. “Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life.” We are called, as Christians, to live in both the now and the not yet, to lean into the future we’re convinced is coming. We have pledged allegiance to Christ’s kingdom, which means living as citizens of that kingdom today.
This Summer, Christ Church will make our way through a sermon series built around N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian. The purpose of Wright’s book, and of this series, is to point us back to the essence of Christianity and to unearth and rediscover the ways in which those essentials impact our day to day, week in and week out, ordinary lives.
This series begins by focusing on the broader themes of Relationship, Spirituality, Justice, and Beauty and the ways in which they point us to the God at the center of each of them. The series then shifts its focus more specifically to God and his people, Jesus and his kingdom, and the Spirit at work in the church.
On top of our Summer sermon series, Christ Church is also offering a Simply Christian midweek class on Wednesday evenings from 7-8:30. Each class will feature speakers from Christ Church who build on the themes and ideas shared in the previous Sunday’s sermon and will then provide time around tables to talk together about how to put these themes and ideas into everyday habits and practices. You are welcome to read along with the selected reading for a given week, but should not feel obligated to do so. If you are in need of childcare for kids five years or younger please register here – we would be pleased to provide it.
Our hope is that you will be blessed by both the Simply Christian sermon series and midweek study and that both will reawaken our imagination for what it means to walk in the way of Jesus.
Grace and Peace to you,
Kester