Unity Service - THE COURAGEOUS CHURCH - Week 9: SERVING COURAGEOUSLY

This is the last week of our series on the Courageous Church. We began by looking at several stories in the Book of Daniel to gain inspiration from four Hebrew young men who stood their ground in courage and as a result made a difference in their world.

Then we began to break down the Mission Statement of PBCC to its four components: Connect, Grow, Serve, and Go, and learned how to do these things with courage. We began with the first concept: Courageous Connecting. We learned that nothing we do here at PBCC will mean anything if we haven’t first established a right relationship with God through a connection with Jesus; and then we saw how important it was to BE the church - to come and connect with others in meaningful ways.

Then we focused on the second concept: Courageous Growing. There we learned how important it is to get God’s word into us, how growing in our spiritual lives is a healthy thing and how discipleship can make a difference in our growth.

Last week, we had a guest speaker, Paul Becker, who showed us a practical way of living out the third concept: Courageously Going. Yeah, that’s out of order but we had Paul for one particular week, and so that’s how things lined up for us. BUT...as Paul spoke, I hope you saw that, though it would be awesome for people to step out in faith to serve on short-term mission teams overseas, GOING doesn’t just mean overseas. It means being involved with the expansion of God’s kingdom wherever God leads you: in your own neighborhood, in the larger community, in planting churches, or in serving on a foreign mission field. It’s all part of the process of courageously going.

Today, we come to the concept that comes THIRD in our mission statement - Courageously Serving. And we’re going to talk about how that looks like as we continue to minister to the body here at PBCC.

Here’s a question that I want you to consider as we look at God’s Word today: What practical actions can I take right now to take this next step in my responsibilities in God’s Upside Down Kingdom? This morning, I want to turn to the writings of the Apostle Paul for some answers to that question, especially in his letter to the disciples living in the city of Ephesus.