I was concerned with Sunday morning’s icy weather and whether or not people would show up for church but I was pleasantly surprised that we were still pretty full. We had another great morning of worship and Word!
Here is the worship set list from Sunday:
- Forevermore
- With Everything
- Rooftops (I love when Caitlyn leads this song!)
- Came to My Rescue
I Am RockChurch (Part 2) | A City Within A City
- I kicked off the message with Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”
- Jesus is saying that we (the Church) are a city within a city and we must shine our light to expose darkness.
- RockChurch is a small city (500) within a bigger city – East Peoria (24,000). There are 72,000 unchurched people in Tazewell county alone so we had better be shining our light, huh?!
- Our main text was the entire chapter of Nehemiah 1.
- What I find so interesting about Nehemiah is the fact that he is not a pastor, priest, prophet, or teacher. He’s just an ordinary guy who’s willing to be used by God to do an extraordinary thing!
- The main theme we drove home was how passionate Nehemiah was over the broken down walls of Jerusalem. He was completely devastated because his homeland was in ruins. His people could no longer worship together. We compared this to when Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41-44. Jesus wept because the people missed an opportunity for salvation and instead of accepting Him…they killed Him.
- The news of the devastation in Jerusalem wasn’t new news. In fact, these horrific events had unfolded 141 years prior. So why did Nehemiah, all of a sudden, get so worked up? I don’t know. Apparently his eyes were opened. For some reason he came to the realization of what had taken place and decided he was going to do something about it.
- What would happen if we showed up for church and it had been burned to the ground? Many would be devastated. We would rebuild. That hasn’t happened but we still have the responsibility to build the church and the kingdom.
- We work with, live next to, go to school with, and all know people who are on a road to hell because they don’t know Jesus. This isn’t new news to us. We’ve known this. The point I tried to drive home was we need to allow the blinders to come off our eyes (like Nehemiah) and get passionate about rebuilding broken lives and building the kingdom!
- 3,500 churches will close their doors and completely shut down this year.
- 80% of churches have plateaued and/or declining.
- Do we love our church? Do we love our city? Do we love your neighbors? Do we love our coworkers?
- Nehemiah’s broken heart drove him to pray, repent, and come up with a plan.
- We need to do the same!
- We exist to share the Good News and make the name of Jesus great! (See verses 8-9.)
- You can watch the entire message by clicking HERE.
I made an appeal at the end of the service to surrender to Jesus…and to commit to building His kingdom. Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem in only 52 days. Think about what we can do before Easter! Think about what we can accomplish together in 2013! Think we can add a Saturday night service? Think we can build a new sanctuary? Think we can reach more people than we have in the history of RockChurch?
It’s up to you. After all, the church is not a building…it’s YOU.
On the Rock,
~Chuck
