SERMON OUTLINE Sunday August 23rd, 2020
Lessons God’s Teaching Me About The Church
Pastor David Cooke
• My Story of “Church”
– Not Fitting The Formula
– Church Alive
• Lessons God’s Teaching Me
A. God Is Not Surprised
Ephesians 1:19–23
From Last Week: (God Is Not Surprised)
– We were more ready than we thought!
a) You can’t ask crisis or opportunity to come back at a more
convenient time. The decisions and habits you are making now
will prepare you for the future or undermine your future.
b) What you are doing TODAY will shape your TOMORROW
• It doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. But the new thing God is going is
more opportunity than difficulty.
Luke 5:37–39
Invest in people, not in buildings
a) Facilities are tools to carry out the mission
b) People Are The Point
• When You Walk With God, He Prepares You For The Future
1. Where God has led us in the past has prepared us for our
present and our future.
a) Leadership
b) Stewardship
2. Our Guiding Principles Are Unchanged
a) Our Mission
Raising up compassionate followers of Jesus Christ to be
risk-takers for God.
b) Our Vision
Raising up 10,000 leaders who live out of the over-flow of a
Jesus-trusting life resulting in restoring and strengthening.
c) Our Values
1. New Faith and Deep Faith
2. Doing Life Face-to-Face,
Shoulder-to-Shoulder, Back-to-Back
3. Compassion with Action
4. Loving the Word
5. Seeking God in Worship and Prayer
d) Our Strategy
1. Gather Together
2. Partner with Families
3. Connect in Community
4. Engage in Meaningful Spiritual Conversations
e) Our Measurements
3. One thing changes according to what’s happening around us.
What’s Important NOW.
Increase the engagement in the life and mission of Jesus through
Cold Springs Church.
Engagement: i) Connect in a group
ii) Partner with Families
iii) Engage in Spiritual Conversations
• The Church Is A Means To God’s Purpose, It Is Not The End
Purpose
Ephesians 3:10–11
Jesus did not die on the cross so we can “go to church.”
We “go to church” so we can better “be the church” in the world
we live in.
• The Church Is Essential
A. The Church Is More Than Our Gatherings
B. Which Gospel?
i) The Gospel of Atonement
• My sins are forgiven and I get to go to heaven
ii) The Gospel of the Kingdom
• The Gospel of the Kingdom is that you can now live in
the Kingdom of God. You do this by following Jesus.
C. We Are At Our Best When We Are Serving Others
i) “Everyone is loved and cared for.”
ii) Conversely, we are at our worst when we are selfish
1 Corinthians 8:1–3
• An Example: wearing a face covering
– Did you know that the concept behind wearing a face covering in public isn’t about protecting you but protecting others?
– When we talk, cough, sneeze, sing, yell we emit droplets of
saliva.They travel.
– Some estimates are that 40% of people who have coronavirus
are asymptomatic. That means you can infect someone else
but you aren’t being affected by it.
– Wearing a face covering reduces the amount and distance of
the virus traveling around you to essentially make it harmless
because you have to have a certain “viral load” to be infected.
– Wearing a face covering is intentionally loving others.
1 Corinthians 8:9
– Love is irritatingly costly. If it isn’t costly, it is convenience and
that is not love.
• Your Faithfulness and Generosity Is Amazing and Encouraging
• Cold Springs Church is not surviving, we are thriving!!
“God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his
wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities
in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried
out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 3:10–11, NLT
• What Are You Learning? Reflection Questions
1. How has God gone before you to prepare you for the life you are
living now?
2. Where are you resisting something new that God is doing? What
will it take for you to choose to trust Jesus, even though it is hard?
3. How has Jesus given you the opportunity to “be the church” to
your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors? Are you being a
risk-taker for God in those opportunities?
4. In what ways is God inviting you to sacrificially love others?
Love costs, otherwise it is just convenience.