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A reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
This is Acts chapter 18, verse 1.
After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla,
because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.
Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.
Every Sabbath, he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.
But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them,
Your blood be on your own heads.
I am innocent of it.
From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.
Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justice, a worshiper of God.
Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord,
and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision,
Do not be afraid.
Keep on speaking.
Do not be silent.
For I am with you.
And no one is going to attack you and harm you.
Because I have many people in this city.
So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.
While Galio was proconsul of Achaia,
the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment.
This man, they charged, is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.
Just as Paul was about to speak, Galio said to them,
If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime,
it would be reasonable for me to listen to you.
But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law,
settle the matter yourselves.
I will not judge of such things.
So he drove them off.
Then the crowd there turned on Sosthenes, the synagogue leader,
and beat him in front of the proconsul.
And Galio showed no concern whatever.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Will you join me in prayer?
Christchurch, you can take your seats.
Lord, we want to hear from you.
We want to see your vision for the church that you would have us be.
Christchurch East Bay.
A church that is adoring you in worship.
A church that is fellowshipping together in deep and intimate community.
And a church that is outward facing, seeking to serve this city,
seeking to bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ,
the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world,
and has risen for resurrection life,
to bring about new creation in this world,
this new creation that we so, so long for.
Make us that kind of a church that lives up, in, and out before you,
we pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Well, Christchurch, we are continuing our series in the book of Acts, all right?
And as we've been going through this series in the book of Acts,
we've been doing so very sensitive to, you know,
all the disruption that our church has faced in the past two years.
So going through Acts, we've been really trying to cast a vision for,
you know, an aspiring and encouraging, exciting vision
for what the Spirit wants to do amongst faithful witnesses of Christ.
But even as this book of Acts is meant to inspire us and encourage us,
it's important to remember that it's also a realistic account.
It's realistic about the pain and the hardship and the grind of being the church,
of being Christ's witnesses to the ends of the earth.
And I think this is especially evident here in Acts chapter 18
and Paul's experience in Corinth.
It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies.
The movement was often slow and painful and discouraging
and met with opposition and filled with disruption.
And yet, God was no less in control.
The Spirit was no less at work.
And this means that we, the church, are no less called,
no less challenged, no less responsible
to go about the work of bearing witness to Christ,
even if it is slow and even if it is painful.
So from Acts chapter 18 this morning,
I want us to see how the Spirit unites a disparate community
of weary witnesses, even in and through their disruptions,
and how the Spirit gathers them into a growing family of sacrificial service.
And my prayer is that God, the Spirit, does the same here at Christ Church, all right?
So let's start with verse 1.
Look with me at verse 1.
In verse 1, we're reminded that the very occasion
for Paul's presence in Corinth
is because Paul was chased out of three other cities.
And then in Athens, a city that really would have been an incredible place
to win for Jesus, very little response there.
But look what God does out of Paul's disruptions,
out of Paul's disappointments.
He starts to gather a family of witnesses in Corinth
as a result of the disruptions in Paul's life.
And not only as a result of the disruption in Paul's life,
but also as a result of the disruptions in Priscilla and Aquila's lives.
Look at verse 2.
See, Priscilla and Aquila, they had to leave their home.
They had to leave their business in Rome because the Roman Emperor Claudius,
you can look this up in history books,
he banished all the Jewish people.
And this would include many Christians who are considered as a sect within the Jewish faith.
All the Jewish people were banished out of Rome.
And so you have Italian Priscilla and her Jewish husband Aquila,
this ethnically mixed couple with probably tons of disruption in their own backstory
because of, you know, the different family and religious backgrounds.
You have them forced to find a new home and restart a new business in Corinth.
And yet it is here in Corinth where this ethnically mixed couple with an unconventional backstory
and the Apostle Paul, this discouraged missionary,
it's where they all, the three of them, happen to connect
and where God begins to gather a gospel-centered family.
But again, it's not immediate.
It's slow going.
They have to pay the bills.
They have to work with their hands six days a week.
This great theologian and missionary Apostle Paul,
he works with leather and cow hides and he puts together tents
and maybe he even goes to the Corinthian marketplace and gives sales pitches.
But none of it's in vain.
None of it's in vain.
He does it all with a purpose and he does it all in community with Priscilla and Aquila
who share his purpose and who share his passion about not just making tents and selling them,
but bearing witness to Christ.
And verse 3 says that they lived together and they worked together
and they became a tight-knit family in Christ with an intentional rhythm.
Verse 4 says that every Sabbath, Paul would go out and try to grow this family.
Finally, reasoning in the synagogue, trying to persuade people of the true Messiah
for who knows how long, maybe weeks, maybe months.
But like in Athens, not much seems to happen in Corinth.
Until verse 5.
Until verse 5, this family of three in Corinth, they suddenly become a family,
sorry, this family of three in Corinth, they suddenly become a family of five
as Paul's missionary teammates join them.
You have Silas, he's a Jewish brother from Jerusalem,
and then you have Timothy who's half Jewish and half Greek.
He's a convert from Lystra and they become a family of five.
And most commentators believe that Silas and Timothy coming to Paul,
they were bringing financial gifts from other churches that Paul had helped,
other parts of the family abroad.
They brought gifts to help Paul, as it says in verse 5,
to devote himself exclusively to preaching Jesus the Messiah.
And this, this is where things take off.
Paul returns to full-time ministry and more people come to know Jesus
and the family grows even despite resistance.
So though Paul's rejected in verse 6 by, you know, Jewish opposition in the synagogue,
a Gentile there, Titius Justice, he joins the family.
And he opens up his house right next door to be the new synagogue, right?
The new house church in Corinth.
And so the family grows to a family of six and now two households.
And then verse 8 says that Crispus, the synagogue leader himself,
though the rest of the Jewish Corinthians opposed Paul,
he and his family acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah they were waiting for
and they joined the family too at great cost to themselves, right?
This honored leader of the synagogue now shamefully kicked out
as an alleged heretic of his own synagogue.
And he's now in a new place of worship next door with his family,
estranged from their formerly beloved community.
And yet it says in verse 8 that in addition to Crispus,
many believed and were baptized.
And the family grew to more than nine, more than three households,
women, men, children from backgrounds that were quite diverse
from all different kinds of occupations,
Jewish people, half-blooded and whole-blooded,
Romans and others from, you know, Lystra and Pontus in modern-day Turkey,
all because this is what the Spirit does.
This is what the Spirit does.
He gathers a disparate community of disrupted people
into a sacrificial family of witnesses in Christ.
So the question for us today, Christ Church, is why not also here?
Why not also here?
I know many of us, all of us, in so many ways that I don't even know about,
have felt so disrupted over the past two years by all that's happened in the world
and in our church, right?
So many of us have lost friends and family to COVID
or to people just moving away out of the bay
or maybe just out of our church for various reasons.
You know, I especially feel for our Oakland community,
our people who once worshipped in the Oakland location,
never got to say goodbye to their sacred place of worship,
never got to say goodbye to the people they most loved.
And now you're here, and it's like, I don't know anyone here.
Church used to be family, and now it's strangers again.
And I don't want to take that lightly at all,
like just get over it, move on, no.
I want to encourage us to gather and to grieve together
and to find some closure and to look for hope together.
But also with sensitivity to all the disruption
that so many of us have faced in the past years,
can I remind us of the God that we worship?
A God who made much out of Paul's disruption,
out of Priscilla and Aquila and Crispus' disruptions,
out of massive disruptions,
a church in Corinth was born and grew.
And some of Paul's longest letters and instructions,
letters to the Corinthians,
which we now call the Scriptures,
they were written to this diverse and wealthy church
in this important city of international commerce,
where many came to know Christ
as a result of disruption.
Christ Church, could it be that as painful
as these disruptions have been for our church family,
could it be that God is building
another wonderful family of witnesses amongst us
here in the East Bay?
Maybe one that we didn't expect,
maybe one that we wouldn't have chosen,
but nonetheless a wonderful one.
And would it not be worth our time and our presence?
You know, in my experience,
God has a beautiful way of orchestrating
unexpected relationships and surprising synergies
and coincidence that he loves to use for his purposes.
You know, it was no accident that Paul was alone in Corinth,
and then came Priscilla and Aquila,
banished out of Rome.
That wasn't an accident.
And so I really want to challenge us to lean into community
in this season of our church
and to consider the power of the ministry of time
and presence because Christ Church,
we need each other.
We so need each other.
Earlier this year, I finished a book
by the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
titled, Together,
The Healing Power of Human Connection
in a Sometimes Lonely World.
And in it, he writes about how
when he was first appointed as the U.S. Surgeon General,
he, you know, he did a tour of the nation
because he wanted to discern
all the biggest public health issues.
And he said that going in,
he expected to find, you know, diabetes, obesity,
anxiety and depression, the opioid crisis.
And he did find all these things.
But the one thing that he didn't expect to find,
the one strand that wove actually
all these public health issues together, he argued,
was the problem of loneliness.
The problem of loneliness.
And you know, I found this too as a pastor.
As a pastor, the number one question
that I like to ask people
to make them feel known and seen is,
are you lonely?
Are you lonely?
And people just open up
and they feel so known and seen
just by being asked that question.
Because see, we were made for relationship.
We were made for connection and belonging and community.
But again, what does this take?
It takes time.
And it takes presence.
And it takes investment.
You know, there's something that ordinary,
unstructured time and presence do
that knits people together.
Sure, Paul and Priscilla and Aquila,
they probably studied the Bible together
and prayed and, you know, did stuff like that.
They went to the synagogue together.
But I think what really glued them together
was that they just were together.
They just were together.
They did life together.
They were eating and laughing and working
and doing household chores together.
See, God made us to have up, in, and out shaped lives.
And when our upward adoration of God
and our outward service unto God
are shared in a family of people
that we truly believe that we are in with,
that we truly believe we belong to,
the sense of belonging and support there
are incredibly powerful.
And that's why you're all still invited
to the Ong household, all right?
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays work best for us.
Some of you have taken us up on this.
The offer is legit, I promise.
Or sign up for Dinners for Eight.
Today's the last day to sign up for that.
I'm gonna start socially engineering that tomorrow.
But sign up today.
Dinners for Eight.
Get to know people in our church.
Or come to the retreat.
Come to the retreat.
Just hang out with us.
Climb a wall with someone.
Go on a walk with someone.
Go for a hike.
Go to Santa Cruz Beach.
Shh, you know, we're even willing to help with scholarships
if you need help to come to the retreat
because that's how much we value this sense of family
that we need as a church.
It's not just wasteful time hanging out.
It's the ministry of time and presence
that builds a family.
So let's be in each other's lives.
Let's be in each other's spaces.
Let's hold each other's babies.
Let's help each other with each other's yards
and home projects.
And let's consider sticking around.
What if we saw the Bay Area
not as just a place to go and get,
but as a place to go and give?
Not as a place to simply pursue our careers,
but to settle in and work out our vocations.
In Corinth, this place where Paul met strong resistance
to the gospel and initially slow momentum,
Jesus told him, stay.
Still, just stay there.
And it says in verse 11,
he stayed a year and a half,
way longer than he had ever spent
at any of his other previous missionary destinations.
And we cannot underestimate the simple
but powerful ministry of time and presence.
And it's not just time and presence, though.
It's not just our time that's needed
to build this family of witnesses in Christ.
It's also our talent and our treasures.
Priscilla and Aquila were small business owners,
tent makers, it says.
But even as they excelled at their work,
they saw it not just as work,
but as vocation, right?
As a calling.
And they never lost sight of this calling
from God and for God.
Priscilla and Aquila were tent makers
unto the glory of God
for the sake of bearing witness to Christ.
You know, if you read through the New Testament
very carefully, you'll find Paul mentioning
Priscilla and Aquila in very many places
throughout, always faithful in the background.
Apparently, the bond between this gospel-gathered
family of three was so close
that Priscilla and Aquila, they traveled with Paul.
They picked up their business again out of Corinth,
and they moved it to Ephesus,
and they helped them plant another church there,
probably having to start another business there.
And in addition to their day jobs,
they mentored young preachers and evangelists
like Apollos, who would go and serve the church abroad.
And then eventually in the book of Romans,
we see that they also ended up back in Rome,
helping the church there.
This is what we are called to,
no matter if we are pastors or not.
We are called to a life of ministry,
a life to bearing witness to Christ.
Christ and Priscilla and Aquila are stellar examples
of this, stellar examples of serving Christ
and his church with our treasures
and our talents and our vocations.
And that's the key word right there, vocations.
Vocations, not jobs or simply careers, but vocations.
Something with a sense of calling from God
upon our whole lives to something bigger than ourselves,
something many of us as Americans have gotten away from.
I just finished another book called Habits of the Heart,
Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
Its lead author is the late Robert Bella.
He was a sociologist right here at Cal.
And one of the observations made in this book
was that the hyper-individualism of our American culture
has led to most of us not seeing our work anymore
as vocation.
Vocations where we commit to something we feel called to
and use our gifts in service of a community
or an organization we truly believe in.
Rather than seeing our jobs as vocations now,
most of us see work as what?
A career.
An individualistic pursuit
where we pursue our own advancement
and personal ambitions
unfettered by commitment to our organizations
or the society that we inhabit.
But the result of such individualism
and selfishness, they argue,
has led to loose commitments.
Very, very loose, frail commitments
and communities that aren't bound by solidarity
and commitment to grand and virtuous purposes,
but rather to a variety of what they call
lifestyle enclaves.
Lifestyle enclaves.
Communities that are loosely connected
by shared self-interests
and homogenous consumer preferences.
So for example,
when we consider switching jobs or moving homes,
we don't think so much anymore
about how this might affect our company
or our relationships in our community
or how it might affect our local church
and what God is doing there.
We just move on
to pursue more money,
more status,
more space,
inching closer and closer
to that idealized lifestyle
that we're going for.
Not for Christ,
not for His church,
but selfishly for our own simple comforts.
Christ Church,
what are we living for?
What are we giving ourselves to?
Who are we giving ourselves to?
And why not Christ?
And why not His church?
And I say this
kind of feeling a little bit awkward
because I'm a pastor, right?
So who benefits the most
from your investment of time,
talent, and treasure in the church?
After all,
if so many of you
weren't already so faithfully invested
in this church,
I wouldn't be here.
It'd be hard for me to feed my family.
And honestly,
I often feel weird about this relationship.
Like, oh man,
people are investing in the church.
It's almost like everyone here
is my boss,
so I better perform,
so I can keep my job
and feed my family.
But you know,
it's examples like this
in Acts chapter 18
with Paul and Timothy and Silas
that snapped me out of that.
Where I see Silas and Timothy
bringing financial support to Paul
from church families
that loved Paul,
that weren't seeking
to get anything back,
but they really believed
in what he was doing
and they wanted him to be free
to devote himself exclusively
to preaching Christ.
What I see in Acts 18
is not a business.
The church is not a business.
Again, it's a family.
And families pitch in
and they support each other
and they, you know,
it's not transactional.
It's not transactional at all,
but it's in a way
that communicates their love
and their support
and their shared values
and goals and commitments.
Did you know that behind me
and my ministry here
at Christ Church
is an incredibly supportive,
Jesus-loving family in Christ?
For example,
in addition to the amazing nacho bar
that my mom and my sister
and my aunts help set up
for my ordination refreshments,
they do a lot here
to help me serve well.
When Chelsea used to work
on Saturdays,
I have a whole army of aunts
and in-laws and parents
and family friends
who have watched our girls
like more times
than I can count on Saturdays
so that I could finish my sermon
or hang out with some of you
who are more available
on the weekends.
And in my second year here
when I was fundraising
as a part of my internship
at Christ Church,
many of my family and friends
from across the Bay Area,
all different churches in the Bay,
they helped me raise
over $40,000
because they believed
in this ministry here
that I was taking part in.
They believed that we
want to be leading people
into deeper relationship
with Christ
and they wanted to see me
do that.
And you know,
as humbled as I felt
by the support
and as thankful as I am,
you know what I've never felt?
I've never felt in debt.
I've never felt obligated
to pay these people back.
Why?
Because they're family.
This is what family does,
especially families
united in Christ.
And that's what I believe
God wants to do here
at Christ Church.
Build a sacrificially invested
family in Christ.
And you might be looking around
saying,
I don't know,
I don't really like this community
as much as others,
as much as my basketball league
or my climbing gym
or the people I work with.
I get along so much better
with people who are like me.
Same profession,
same hobbies,
same ethnicities,
same class,
same lifestyles.
It's so much easier
with people who are like us,
right?
Oh yeah,
of course.
And we should leverage
our shared commonalities
to bear witness to Christ.
But our God is not
in the easy business
of simply forming
social clubs
and homogenous
shared interest groups.
Our God is in the business
of building His church,
a family that's rich
in all manner of diversity,
even building from the humblest
and the lowest amongst us.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians
in his first letter,
brothers and sisters,
think of what you were
when you were called.
Not many of you were wise
by human standards.
Not many were influential.
Not many were of noble birth.
But God chose
the foolish things
of the world
to shame the wise.
God chose the weak things
of the world
to shame the strong.
God chose the lowly things
of this world
and the despised things
and the things
that are not.
The family God built
in Corinth
wasn't your ideal
preferred cream
of the crop,
but it's who God
brought together
in His perfect wisdom
as a church family.
May God do that here,
Christ Church.
May God do that here
amongst us.
But let me say this,
it's not just family
for the sake of family,
it's not just community
for the sake of community.
We can get that anywhere.
But followers of Jesus
are called to live up,
in, and out.
We are in community
in order to serve our world,
to serve this city.
See, a loving community
is the way
that our Savior Jesus
intended for His people
to bear witness
about Him.
Jesus said in John 13,
a new commandment
I give to you,
that you love one another
just as I have loved you.
You also are to love
one another.
By this,
all people will know
that you are my disciples
if you have love
for one another.
See,
this family we build
is not an end
in itself,
but it's a witness
to the good news
about Jesus.
It's community
for the sake of,
in the service of,
the gospel.
I'm not just advocating
warm and fuzzy
friendships here.
I'm talking about
the gospel.
It's all about
the gospel.
It's all about
the good news
of what God
has done in Christ
to reconcile
people to Himself.
Do we truly grasp
that this is a life
and death matter
of eternal significance?
The gospel,
that which is
of first importance,
the power of God
unto salvation
for all who believe.
In verse 6,
you may have been
thrown off,
maybe made uncomfortable
by the words
that Paul speaks
here in verse 6.
When Paul says
to these Jewish people
who oppose him
in the synagogue,
he says,
your blood be
on your own heads.
And while I probably
wouldn't recommend
that you say that
to people who
you share Jesus with
and don't accept
your message,
Paul's words
actually reveal a lot
about how we are
to understand
his message
and our identity
and responsibility
as witnesses of Christ.
See,
Paul's harsh statement
actually says
far more
about how he views
and understands
his message
and responsibility
than whatever judgments
it seems like he's
rendering upon his opposition.
When Paul says,
your blood be
on your own heads
to people who reject
the gospel,
what's implied here
is that first,
this is a matter
of life and death.
Whether or not
we accept
the good news of Jesus,
there is only one way
to be restored to God,
only one way
to resurrection life
and it's through union
with Jesus Christ alone.
And secondly,
what's implied
by Paul's harsh words
is that before he shared
the news of Jesus
with these people,
their blood
was on his head.
It was on Paul's head.
He was responsible
and he knew that.
So Christchurch,
do we have
this sense of urgency?
Do we have
this sense of responsibility
about Jesus
and all the people
around us
who do not know him?
Do we understand
the stakes
of living in Christ
versus living
outside of Christ?
The gospel is everything.
It isn't one idea
among many
to just mix and match
with whatever else
we deem interesting
and useful.
It's the power of God
unto salvation,
a salvation that is
sorely needed
because of the brokenness
of our world
and the curse of sin
and our complicit
estrangement
from this God.
Is it really not worth sharing?
Is it really not worth
sharing?
Is it really not worth
bearing witness to
even the atheist
Penn Jillette
of the magician duo
Penn and Teller,
even he thinks
as an atheist
that this gospel
is worth sharing.
In a story he told
years ago
about a Christian
who went to see him
and who went
to see his show
and then gave him
a Bible after the show,
Penn said this,
I don't respect people
who don't proselytize.
I don't respect that at all.
If you believe
that there's a heaven
and a hell
and that people
could be going to hell
or not getting eternal life
and you think
that it's not really
worth telling them this
because it would make it
socially awkward,
how much do you have
to hate somebody
to not proselytize?
How much do you have
to hate somebody
to believe
that everlasting life
is possible
and not tell them that?
Christchurch,
do we not have news
worth sharing?
In spite of our fears
of embarrassment
and rejection
and socially awkward moments,
of all people,
Paul,
Apostle Paul,
he had every reason
to be fearful
and to stop speaking
and to be silent.
He was stripped
and beaten with rods
and then flogged
and imprisoned
in Philippi
and then in the next city,
Thessalonica,
a mob
and a city riot
formed against him
and then in Athens,
he was sent
to the Areopagus
where he wondered
if he was going
to get executed
like Socrates.
No wonder Paul says
in his letter
to the Corinthians
that when he was among them,
he was there
with much fear
and trembling.
Yes, it is a scary thing
to bear witness to Christ
and we don't know
exact outcomes
for what will happen
when we do
but is the glory of Christ
and the eternal good
of our neighbors
not worth bearing witness
about amidst our fears?
FDR said,
courage is not
the absence of fear
but rather
the assessment
that something else
is more important
than fear.
Christ Church,
what is more important
than the gospel?
And couldn't it be
that just as Jesus said
to Paul in verses 9 and 10,
do not be afraid,
keep on speaking,
do not be silent
for I am with you
and no one is going
to attack and harm you
because I have many people
in this city.
Couldn't it be
that he's saying
the same to us today?
And look,
Jesus keeps his word
as we see in verses 12 to 17
that even when yet
another mob
attacked Paul,
brought him to be judged
by the proconsul in Corinth,
this pagan Gentile proconsul,
he sets an important
legal precedent
that Paul and the message
of Christianity
are actually not
a criminal offense
to be punished
and Paul was cleared to go.
Jesus kept his word to him
and more importantly,
Jesus kept his word to Paul
that he would be with Paul
and that he did have
many people in that city
and that's how the church
in Corinth was born
and built
and this is how I pray
that Christ's church
will be rebuilt
out of a peace
that Jesus is with us,
out of an excitement
that he has many people
in this city
yet to be revealed
who will join our family
in Christ
and know the joy
of our salvation.
I've already seen it happen
so many times.
I've only been here
at Christ Church
for three years
but I've seen so much
of what God is doing.
People from China
coming to know Jesus.
People from Iran
coming to know Jesus.
People with paths
of prostitution.
People with paths
in the occult.
People struggling
with diagnoses
of autism and bipolar.
Falling in love
with Jesus
and joining our eclectic family
and making a difference
already here
in this world
bearing witness
to the good news
of Jesus.
Christ Church,
God's not done with us here.
He's not done with us here.
He has people
that he wants
to be brought to him.
He has people
in this city
that he wants
to be brought to him.
Do we understand that?
That we cannot fail.
Jesus said,
my sheep
will hear
my voice.
We cannot fail.
Don't you want
to be a part of that?
Part of the joy
of bringing people
into the fold
of God,
into this loving community
that worships Jesus Christ.
Don't you want that?
Are we willing
to believe
that God can
and will
bear incredible fruit
and gather
a wonderful family
of witnesses
amongst us,
not in spite of,
but through
the disruptions
in our lives
and in our church?
Will we believe
this enough
to lean in
and give ourselves
to this family project
called Christ's Church?
Will you pray with me?
Lord,
this is what we want.
We believe
that you have people
in this city
yet to be revealed
and we want
to find them.
We love
that the sheep
will hear your voice.
So give us boldness
to speak
your word
so that they can hear
the voice
of their good shepherd,
the shepherd
who lays his life
down for his sheep.
What kind of shepherd
does that?
People out there,
Lord,
people who do not know you
are seeking shepherds
who will not lay
their lives down
for them.
But we have
the good shepherd.
Convince us
that he is good
and make us
a community
that's centered
around this good shepherd
because of family,
God,
a family
that is so invested
in the kingdom
of God
that so believes
the gospel
to be good news,
the best news,
that you do amazing
things in this place
in the East Bay
and we rejoice
every Sunday
seeing these things
unfold.
May it be so here,
Lord.
We love you.
We trust you.
And we want to give you
all praise
and glory
because of who you are
and what you've done
for us
in Christ.
In his name we pray.
Amen.