Becoming Church – Eastertide
Acts 4: 32 – 35 “All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had. The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all. There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need. NLT
The season of Lent is gone and now the season of Easter is here. The time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday is often referred to as Eastertide. This is a great time to take a look at the church. Bishop Palmer of the West Ohio Conference has laid out a plan based around the lectionary calendar, so that we can walk through the book of Acts for the next several weeks and see what the “church” was meant to be.
What happened between Christ rising from the dead and the Holy Spirit landing upon the disciples at Pentecost? How did the church look after the day of Pentecost? We will focus on the qualities that emerged from the Holy Spirit guiding the newest of believers and allowing them the space to become the greatest movement in the history of the world.
As we dive into this journey through April and May, I hope that we can see the qualities of a church that we either are, or would like to become. Maybe there are areas of our ministry where we are weak, and we need to focus on and make them stronger. Maybe there are things that we are doing as a church body that are not at all what Jesus had intended for us. We will also begin to look within each of ourselves as members of this body, the body of Christ. Hopefully, we will see ourselves as productive and useful members of this body!
I pray that the coming weeks will see you energized and empowered by the Easter celebration, and that you will be willing to show the world how much you love the Savior. The world could really use a church that looks like the church from the book of Acts. Hopefully, we are willing to become a church that looks like that.
– Pastor Mike
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