Acts Discussion
All right. All right. Little bit of chaos for a Sunday morning, right? This is how we roll around here. We're gonna keep the chaos rolling today. If you are new to this church, today's gonna be a little bit of a different sort of a Sunday. I'm gonna give you a little context. We have been in an act series that we started with no end date in mind.
I think we started about nine months ago. And we are through 14 chapters, which is, what is that like a chapter a month give or take? We're moving slow here, but we're taking our time. We're learning a lot. The impulse behind this series, the reason that we stepped into the book of acts is we wanted to learn what it means to be a church, not just the church, that's a big concept, but a local church, a community, a family filled by the spirit of God, released into a city, into a neighborhood on his.
We want to learn what that looks like. And that's what we see in the book of acts over and over again. And it's been a beautiful journey together. And we're now through chapter 14, there are 28 chapters. So we figured we'd take a Sunday just to look back over our shoulder and see what we've seen.
So today, rather than having a sermon where people somebody, myself, or Mike or Kean or somebody else tells you what to think about stuff or tells you stuff to write down where instead gonna have a discuss. Now, if you saw my email in advance I tried to warn all of you, which is probably why it's a little empty in here because the introverts saw that I have to talk to people and they stayed home, but you're either here because you're excited about that or you're gonna power through it, or because you didn't read my email.
So I'm grateful either way that you're here, but we're gonna have a group conversation here in just a second. And I'm just realizing I didn't put the questions up on the screen. I should do that, but I will we'll figure that. But I'll give you the questions here in a second. If you didn't see the email, we'll talk about together.
And if you're new here and you haven't been a part of our act series, haven't been following along a whole lot. That's okay. Not a big deal. Just find yourself in a group of people. Who've been a part of it. And just listen, ask questions, feel free to share your own thoughts as they come up.
And here's how we're gonna do this. We're gonna get in small groups, let's say four or five people. I'll give you the questions here in just a second. I think Mike's back there making a slide happen. Is that what we're doing? Mike and Rachel. Well done. You too. Thank you. Thank you for making up for my lack of preparedness, but we'll get in groups of four to five.
We'll talk about the questions for a while. And then at the end of it, we're just gonna ask some highlights from your groups. So I'm gonna ask people to come up here and share what you heard in the group. Now. Here's how this is gonna work. I wanna be very specific with this. You're not sharing your own thoughts.
I'm sure you all have brilliant thoughts. Share those in your. But when you come up to the end, you're gonna share what you heard. Somebody else say something you learned in your circle from somebody else. And the second thing I'll encourage is we want to get people up here, sharing who don't normally share.
I'll tell you why in just a second, but if you are one of our open mic regulars, in other words, every time we have an open mic, you've got something to share. That's great. I love that about you. But we're gonna ask some people who don't often share. And here's why here's what today's all about. I wanna give you the heart behind it.
I know she's in the middle of something else, but Rachel, can you pull that slide up really fast? That I threw in there. This, some of you might recognize if you've been around canopy for a long time. this goes way back to the early days of canopy. Before we were in this building before many people in this room were part of this.
These were the core values of this church. And I want you to know that these are still fundamental core values for us. And I wanna highlight a couple of them. The first one you'll see five. We are statements. The second one there says we are family. Okay. Now we take this word seriously around here and in a family, it's not just about one person doing the talking and everybody else doing the follow.
A family is about community. It's about a place to be known and to know one another, it's a place to invest and to give and to serve one another. And that's what today's all about. So I know it feels a little bit strange, cuz we're used to coming to a church to, to receive. And today I'm asking you to give cuz that's what you do in a family and families.
We give to one another, we talk to one another, we learn each other. If you go down to the next one, it says we are apprentices. In other words, that's a job description. We believe that Jesus gives each of us a job to do not just stuff to know, but stuff to do. This is really important. The Christian faith is not primarily about knowing, but about doing on the basis of what we know we're apprentices.
We want to do what Jesus did. We want to be like, Jesus. So with that in mind, we have a Sunday, like today where we recap, where we look back and we try to apply to our lives today. The stuff that we've heard, it's not just about hearing. It's not just about learning, it's about doing. And so we go back and the last one here, if you go to the very bottom, it says we are church.
In other words, the church is not a pastor. It's not a worship band. It's not a sermon. It's not a gathering. It's not a building. Church is a people build with the spirit of God, each hearing from. Each capable to hear from God and to share what they've received. And so that's what some this morning is all about.
This will not be the last time we do this. Hopefully we'll grow in this muscle as we continue to grow in community together. But with that in mind, can I ask you to get in groups of four to five people? Maybe people you're not, you didn't come with or that you don't know all that well, so you can get to know other people and we'll put the questions up on the screen and we close back to the typing.
Furiously. Rachel is typing furiously. I can prompt you with the first one. Here's how it goes. The first one is this throughout the course I'll give you all four. See if I can remember throughout the course of the act series, what have you learned about the character of God? Really important whenever you read the Bible, that should always be question number.
Not, what do I learn about myself? Not what do I learn about the characters in the story, but who is God? And what's he up to? So what have we learned about God through this study, in the book of acts, second one then is what have I learned about myself as a person individually throughout this series in the book of acts?
Third is what did I see in the early church that I either have seen or want to see in canopy? Okay. And forth. What are next steps? In other words, that's the doing part? How do we put this into action? What are next steps for me? What are next steps for us? Okay. I'm not gonna tell you how much time to spend on each of those.
If you just deal with number one and that's, as far as you get, that's great, but just get together in a group and talk. We want to enter into a time of worship for that. I think we're gonna do some sharing. Guys. hate to interrupt you guys. This is amazing. I think is everybody having a good time?
Gonna know Cody didn't like it, but everybody else liked it. All right. Perfect. All right. Here's what I wanna do really quick. I wanna hear from some people that we don't normally hear from what you heard from someone else, feel free to keep the chairs as they are. You don't have to put 'em back in rows, whatever, just stay where you're at.
That's fine. Real quick. Does somebody have something short, 30 seconds, ish that you heard in your group that stood out to you? Any of the questions you wanna share with everybody?
Here we go. Come on up.
You looked reluctant. Your group had to volunteer you. They totally did. All right. Cause I didn't, I'm new. I didn't come to the series and. But we had a good time in our group. And what I heard something when we talk about the character of God, you don't usually hear this word, how intentional he is.
And so that was interesting to hear that word. I've been a Christian A. Long time, but the intentionality of what he does and. That's all. You just wanted one thing, right? That's fantastic. Well done. and that my friends is how you do it. Perfect. You set the tone. For us, anybody else? What did you hear?
I know that somebody else heard something interesting out there. Something important. Something. Yeah. Daniel, come on. You're a regular, but okay. We'll let you do it anyway. When I say people who don't normally do open mic. I don't know if you qualify, but that's all right. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.
Yeah, Christian, I just really appreciate what you had to say. Connor, you had said really great things. No actually Brandon he was talking during worship today. He realized that worship is not just a momentary thing where we're, where God's seeing worship. Right now. He's seeing worship from eternity beyond before an eternity to come.
Yeah. And we are just joining in the worship. That's already happen. And heaven on earth and bringing that together. And so that was just a really cool word that he shared. Yeah. I like that. Well done. Thanks Brandon. Yeah. Who else? Few other people. I don't know if Naomi wants to be put on the spot.
What we had spoken about was a lot. And we spoke about the squirrels that distract us in a lot of areas of our lives. One of the things that stood out was the community. When I first arrived, I fell in love with what I saw. There's a lot of place to are missing elements, and I feel that this place has arrived.
You guys have a, are blessed with your pastor. You're your worship leader. I'm an awe of your youth pastor, you guys got it made and what you have here, your community leads. So I ask that you step up in whatever capacity you can and offer that to your community because they need Jesus. They need what you have, they're suffering and they need you.
And that's what we spoke on. Awesome. All right. All right. I'm glad there was a finger over your head. That's fantastic. Anybody else? Yeah, Chris fantastic. Mr. Dunbar. I like this. What I know. I know. Here we go. Here. It is. Here it is. Yeah, one of the things I think it was actually a lot of the different people said was just how consistent God is in his plan.
And. It doesn't it doesn't always use people that would expect it and
that you have to be bold in stepping out of your comfort zone and looking, you're not always gonna see something clear that God is intending you to go towards, but you go anyway and that's where. Come on. Come on. All right, one more, one more. I wanna hear one more group. Oh, here we go. Come on, Nico.
So said a lot of good things over here seemed like the common theme was that we learned from acts is God's consistently seeking his people and he is constantly extending his mercy. And he's using us despite our inequity our brokenness. So just how he's consistently using people that do have brokenness and carrying baggage.
So thank you. Thanks Nico. Well done. Hey, I appreciate you guys. Can I get everyone stand up where you're at? We're gonna, we're gonna close our time with some worship together. Two things real quick. First is if something came up in your group that you feel like you wanna pray with somebody. then just use that, use this time to do that.
We can sing songs together and that's beautiful. Or we can spend this time praying for each other. So if there's somebody in your group who shared something that you feel like you wanna ask, if it's okay to pray over, then maybe you or your group could just surround them and pray over. 'em second thing is if you started a conversation that needs to continue by all means, do that exchange phone numbers go out to lunch right now.
Whatever you have to do, keep the conversation going. This will not be the last time that we talked to one. This will not be the last time that we revisit what God is teaching us. That's what it means to be family. So keep the conversations going. Let's close our time with some worship together.