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One way for us to further achieve that vision is by focusing on discipleship: growing disciples. This will enable us to grow in God’s grace and more fully become Spirit-filled believers by rooting our lives in God’s word, and it will result in a deeper commitment to reach others for Jesus by encouraging and inspiring them to become and grow as disciples, too.
In response to last week's message, several people have asked for recommendations of what resources to purchase for helping with your personal Bible study. There are literally thousands to choose from, and many good
ones to use, so where to begin may be a challenge for you.
 | Probably the most helpful, inexpensive resource you can buy to help you understand the Bible better is How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. For less than $20 ($10 at Amazon.com!!), you can gain a better understanding of how the Bible was put together, how translation works, and how to interpret Scripture in only 288 pages. There is also a section of recommended resources at the end of the book, some of which are included below. |
Concordance
The Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance - $39.99
Th Crossway Comprehensive Concordance - $39.99 (this is based on the ESV instead of the NIV)
Dictionary
Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words - $30 ($18.89 at Amazon.com)
New International Bible Dictionary - $29.99
Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary - $39.99
Bible Introductions (similar to commentaries, these provide basic background information, but not verse-by-verse comments)
Introduction to the New Testament - $39.99 ($26.39 at Amazon.com)
Introduction to the Old Testament - $27.99 ($18.47 at Amazon.com)
Commentary
New International Commentary - $30 (based on the NIV, very layperson friendly)
New Bible Commentary - $45 (1995 Book of the Year, "best one-volume commentary of the Bible")
NIV Bible Companion - $20 (only 400 pages and "helpful only for the most basic beginners")
Systematic Theology
Bible Doctrine - $30 ($18.99 at Amazon.com) - this is Grudem's "medium-version" of his Systematic Theology
Systematic Theology $40 ($22.39 at Amazon.com) - 1300 pages, but a great summary of anything you want to see what the whole Bible says about it
So for about $100, you could buy a concordance, dictionary, commentary, and a systematic theology
A Vision for Spiritual Formation at Unity Church
Pastor Jeff Fisher
February / March 2006
Most of you by now know that I have accepted the call to serve as the second full-time pastor at Unity Church. As I wrote in my acceptance letter to the Council, it is with both excitement and humility that I accept the call extended to me to continue serving as Pastor of Spiritual Formation here at Unity. I am extremely grateful for all the hard work that the Staff Study Team put into identifying the needs and goals of our church. I am also thankful to the congregation for affirming my potential to help us meet these needs and goals. Although, technically the specific role and responsibilities do not begin until the beginning of the next fiscal year in July, I have already been “dreaming and scheming” about all the different possibilities of fulfilling my role in “equipping the saints for works of ministry.” My intent in this article is to give you a brief look into my developing vision for spiritual formation at Unity.
There are really two major areas where I would like to see us grow as a church. The labels are not unique with me, but I refer to them as Passionate Spirituality and Leadership Development.
Passionate Spirituality is when our lives are so centered on Jesus that we as God’s people, individually and collectively, naturally grow in our faith and love for others. There are so many different ways that people connect with God, sense his presence, and are filled with His Spirit. My goal is that we as a church can explore these venues more fully and help each other discover the best way that each of us engages with God. In doing so, I believe that we will each grow in our desire to know God better, and as a result get to know God better, and then have a greater desire to know Him even more! Too often our lack in motivation is not because we don’t want to know God, but because the method we are expected to follow doesn’t match with our personality or our passion.
One of the ways that will significantly help in this area is the continuing development of our small groups ministry. I wish that every person would take the step of investing just a little bit of their time in participating in a small group. They, of course, aren’t the answer for everyone. But they do provide numerous opportunities for fellowship, growth, prayer, study, and simply experiencing God together. Those who have taken that step and joined a small group can testify to its benefits and joys. There is definitely an increase in one’s spiritual vitality when we willingly live life together in Christ.
Another way that we can seek to develop a deeper passion and desire for spiritual growth is through a mid-week teaching time. Through the Old Testament Challenge, we have sought to integrate our morning worship with our small group study and our daily devotional reading. For those who have taken advantage of this, it has been a tremendous blessing. As the OTC comes to a close and we look ahead to what is next, I hope that we can have increased enthusiasm in studying God’s word together.
Leadership Development is when we as a church recognize, equip, and utilize the gifts and potential of people for service in the kingdom of God. Again this is something that will look different for different people. We are the “body of Christ” because we are each a different part and we serve different functions. In essence, it is asking and answering the questions, “If you could do anything you wanted to serve the Lord, what would give you the most excitement?” and then, “How do we as pastors and leaders best serve to equip and empower you to do what really excites you for the Lord?”
As we seek to continue our growth as a vibrant ministry, we must regularly be looking ahead to the future. In order to develop leaders we will have to make sure that we are all heading in the same direction. So at some point we will again need to begin work on a Five-Year Plan for our church. This is especially true as we expand our ministry into a new facility and continue to minister beyond our building. We will all need to work together, using the gifts and passions God has given us, to grow and reach others for Jesus. Our ministry teams will each need to take the time to really capture their role in carrying out our mission and vision as a church. So we will need training sessions, consistent feedback, and ongoing encouragement for each of our ministries. Some of this we have already begun to develop, and we can quickly see the benefits of moving in this direction.
As we seek to become more structured and organized, though, we in no way want to eliminate or diminish the freedom of the Spirit to guide us into new and exciting adventures. In fact, as we consider these various endeavors, I don’t want any of this to be my agenda or my plans. I don’t even want them to be something that I (or we) come up with and then ask God to bless. My desire for Unity Church is that we will seek out God’s agenda and do what God wants us to do, so that we know without a doubt that it is already blessed. That’s why I believe the first step in all of this is to pray, seeking God’s agenda for Unity Church which is guaranteed to be immeasurably more than all I could ever ask or even imagine.
Jeff & Wendy Fisher with the Worship Grant Planning Team
January 2006
Over the last couple months we have been working with a team of people to put together a proposal to apply for a Worship Renewal Grant through the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. The purpose of these worship grants is to stimulate thoughtful and energetic work for worship that shows renewed creativity, theological integrity, and relevance. They are made possible through the Lilly Endowment, Inc.
We began this process in October by brainstorming various ways we could use such a grant, and eventually decided on studying the topic of worship space and visual arts with the goal of applying our learning in the new sanctuary when it is completed.
The grant application process has a lot of steps, including a very detailed set of questions that must be answered. As we worked through the questions, we stated that the purpose of this project was:
To deepen our understanding of how
worship space communicates our theology and apply that understanding to our new worship space so that we can engage in creative expressions of worship.
We made several key statements in the course of answering the seventeen questions for the grant application that are very important to this project in particular, to building a new facility, and to worship space in general. One of the major points that we made in our proposal is that everything we do must be directly connected to our mission and vision as a church. The key question we must ask in each area is, “How does this area of our ministry support our mission?”
That question needs to be asked about the sanctuary as well. It is our goal to answer that through this project so that from the moment someone comes through our doors they have a clear sense of our mission and are literally invited into its key components: “the presence of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.”
We acknowledged in our proposal that too often during any building project it is tempting to make worship space decisions primarily based on either finances or preferences. Our goal is that through the process we are proposing, these decisions wouldn’t just be based on those factors, but rather would be based on our theological priorities and the mission of Unity church. Unfortunately, if it is simply left up to our own choices our sanctuary could easily become a hodge-podge of preferences and accommodation.
We believe that our church will be strengthened when voices are not ignored, while at the same time each decision is handled thoughtfully and in light of the biblical teaching. We want to make decisions about how our space is organized and designed that facilitates a deeper, awe-inspiring, and intimate connection with God and with people. When we do this we believe that our worship and fellowship will be strengthened. In essence, our goal is to create a thoughtful worship space based on our mission and theological convictions.
Because the goal of these grants is to generate worship renewal, one of the questions was to describe authentic worship. Our response included the ideas that authentic worship is:
• being empowered by the Holy Spirit to engage with God in a way that enables full, conscious, active participation
• being spiritually lifted up by the Holy Spirit to join the Son in the praise, adoration, devotion, and intimacy of communing with the Father
• the outpouring of one’s whole self, both heart and mind, to express and proclaim the all-surpassing value and worth of God who has poured himself out for us
• the back-and-forth, listen-and-respond dialogue of the worshippers’ experience as God speaks to his people through various means
• experiencing a sense of mystery and awe, closeness and intimacy, and a greater awareness of the drama and dialogue between God and his people.
So as we seek to engage in authentic worship, we strive to utilize and adapt our space and environment to communicate who God is and how we worship him, to forge strong connections between mission and worship, to be welcoming and hospitable to all who enter our church, and to draw each worshipper closer to God to discover the fullness of joy that is found only in him.
There are five parts to this worship renewal project to which you are invited to participate:
1. RESEARCH: The first part of the project is to research how to decide on the theological and aesthetic priorities for worship space. This will involve a group of people who will read books and articles on the subject, study what the Bible has to say about it, and visit other churches to see how they have laid out their worship space.
2. WORKSHOPS: The second event will be two workshops on the visual arts of worship that will be open to the entire church and surrounding community. We will bring in presenters who are knowledgeable in this field to lead some sessions and provide for hands-on activities to help us make informed decisions about the space.
3. CLASSES: Following the workshop, the third part of the project will be classes at Unity that focus on both the layout of visual arts, but also the creation of visual arts. The grant will help provide us with materials to make banners, signs, artistic expressions, and other forms of visual art during these classes.
4. FOCUS GROUPS: In conjunction with these classes, the fourth part of the project is to have a study group that will meet with pastors and leaders from other churches and denominations and then go on a retreat to make some final decisions about how to arrange and organize the new worship space.
5. OPEN HOUSE: The final element of our project would be a presentation of all that we learned and did at the Open House of our new facility. Again the entire church and community would be invited to not only see our new worship space, but be informed about how we came to many of the decisions regarding its design.
We believe that this project will be an effective means of learning, growing, connecting, sharing, and playing our part in spreading worship renewal throughout our church and community. One of the major priorities of worship renewal is widespread participation. We are encouraging you to actively participate in as many of these opportunities as you can. We believe that they will be well worth your energy and time, and help all of us engage more deeply in worship.
