back to indexBerean Community Church Wednesday Night Bible Study 12/04/24
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All right, let's, please join with me in a word of prayer. 00:11:36.000 |
Our Heavenly Father, we are grateful to you, God, 00:11:39.000 |
for your mercy and grace to us every single day. 00:11:48.000 |
We pray, God, that we would have such grateful hearts to you 00:11:52.000 |
and Lord, we pray that that would allow our faith to grow 00:12:00.000 |
And God, that as we look upon your greatness, 00:12:06.000 |
and particularly, God, we grow in worship and praise. 00:12:22.000 |
with dedication and commitment to you and your way, 00:12:25.000 |
we pray that you would be honored and glorified. 00:20:30.000 |
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to worship you. 00:20:35.000 |
We thank you that we're able to gather so freely 00:21:20.000 |
that in all things we strive to honor and glorify you. 00:21:39.000 |
I've got some important announcements for you guys. 00:21:47.000 |
I had a great time learning about what a healthy church is, 00:21:54.000 |
Next week, Pastor Peter is going to be coming back to teach 00:21:59.000 |
So there are some pens, index cards at your table. 00:22:06.000 |
related to, again, the commitments of the church, 00:22:18.000 |
you can give them to your small group leaders, 00:22:25.000 |
So with that said, our next Bible study series 00:22:31.000 |
and that'll start taking place on February 5th. 00:22:35.000 |
It will be the first day of our series there. 00:22:37.000 |
So please make sure that you sign up for that. 00:22:40.000 |
We want to make sure that we have early sign-up 00:22:42.000 |
and registration so we can get everybody into a group. 00:22:57.000 |
So this is a great opportunity just to connect with people, 00:23:04.000 |
Again, there is the men's league and the women's league. 00:23:07.000 |
You do have to be a member to participate in that, 00:23:13.000 |
Another announcement is we have ping-pong tournament 00:23:16.000 |
for the end of the year on Tuesday evening, December 31st. 00:23:24.000 |
And this year, the tournament is going to be doubles only, 00:23:28.000 |
and for the rest of you guys who don't play ping-pong, 00:23:30.000 |
you are allowed to come, join in the festivities kind of thing, 00:23:33.000 |
like spectate and watch, et cetera, cheer on. 00:23:41.000 |
And the final announcement is for all of our BAM members 00:23:44.000 |
and non-members, we have the retreat coming up in January 31st 00:23:49.000 |
through February 2nd, and it'll be at Pali Retreat. 00:23:54.000 |
The theme is "Run to Win," and we have Pastor Ian Kwok 00:24:10.000 |
Okay, please go ahead and go into your time of discussion, 01:11:39.000 |
Alright, let me pray for us and we'll get started. 01:11:43.000 |
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gathering of your children. 01:11:49.000 |
We pray, Father God, that as we take some time to review over our Tenfold Covenant, 01:11:55.000 |
you would give us a greater understanding, and not just understanding, 01:11:59.000 |
but how we can apply these things to build a church that honors and glorifies you. 01:12:05.000 |
We pray for your spirit's guidance, Lord God, over this time. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 01:12:17.000 |
As you guys know, some of the people who are somewhat newer to the church, or maybe have been here, 01:12:23.000 |
I've heard people saying, "Hey, how come we're not doing Bible study?" 01:12:27.000 |
Maybe you were asleep when we mentioned it in the beginning, right? 01:12:31.000 |
So, we took a short break because we're trying to bring people on the same page. 01:12:37.000 |
As our church grows, we have people being added to the church, 01:12:41.000 |
and some of you guys who took membership more recently, 01:12:43.000 |
and then there's some people who've taken membership, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. 01:12:47.000 |
And so, we want to make sure that what we're building in our church is very deliberate and purposeful. 01:12:53.000 |
So, especially if you've come from another church, and you come back and, "How come we don't do this?" 01:12:57.000 |
And our church before, you know, that church that I went to used to do this, and how come we don't do that? 01:13:03.000 |
We're doing everything that we're doing. You may or may not understand it, but it's very purposeful, right? 01:13:10.000 |
Not that we're doing everything perfectly, but there's a reason behind what we're doing. 01:13:14.000 |
So, these are the things that we've kind of learned through scripture study, 01:13:18.000 |
and realized that this is what the Bible outlines of what a healthy church should be trying to pursue. 01:13:25.000 |
So, we took a temporary break in our study, or not expository, inductive Bible study, okay? 01:13:37.000 |
So that we can bring everybody on the same page. 01:13:40.000 |
The next session of Bible study, before we, we're hoping to jump into the Old Testament, 01:13:45.000 |
but before we jump into the Old Testament, Pastor Mark is going to lead us in an extensive, 01:13:49.000 |
more extended course on how to study the Bible. 01:13:53.000 |
So, he mentioned it earlier on, but what he's going to do is, 01:13:56.000 |
he's going to take texts from different genres of the Bible, right? 01:14:00.000 |
Like, we've been doing the epistles, but how do you do it from the poetic, from the narrative, from the prophetic? 01:14:06.000 |
And so, how do you do inductive study in that kind of context? 01:14:11.000 |
Because the way you would study the epistle is going to be very different than the way you would study the narrative. 01:14:15.000 |
And, same thing, right now we're in the Gospel of Luke, which is taught to us in narrative. 01:14:21.000 |
And so, we don't approach the narrative the same way we would approach an epistle. 01:14:25.000 |
An epistle is a letter that says, "This is my main point, these are the three sub-points, and this is the conclusion." 01:14:33.000 |
You can study it like a document, but when you're studying stories of events, you can't study it that way. 01:14:39.000 |
Because there's a main point in each of the narrative, right? 01:14:44.000 |
And so, you can't study it like, "Here's the point, and here's the three sub-points, and here's the conclusion." 01:14:51.000 |
And so, same thing, when we go to the Old Testament, it's more given to us in a narrative. 01:14:56.000 |
And the Old Testament narrative is very different than the New Testament narrative, 01:15:00.000 |
because New Testament narratives are usually within half a chapter or a chapter. 01:15:05.000 |
But, if you've read through Genesis, sometimes you have one story, and it goes up to four or five chapters. 01:15:12.000 |
So, how do you do an inductive study when a narrative is that long? 01:15:15.000 |
Do you break it up? How do you approach each verse? 01:15:18.000 |
And so, those are the type of things that Pastor Mark is going to address for our next study. 01:15:23.000 |
And so, we're going to have specific text that he's going to give an example of how to study. 01:15:28.000 |
So, hopefully, by the end of next session's study, that you'll be able to come out and say, 01:15:33.000 |
"Oh, that's how you study," and then before we jump back in. 01:15:35.000 |
Okay? So, that's the reason why we're doing what we're doing. 01:15:38.000 |
And then, another thing that we wanted to make clear, next session's Bible study is 10 weeks, not 13 weeks. 01:15:45.000 |
And the reason why we're doing that, starting in February, beginning of February, 01:15:52.000 |
And we're going to have a longer break in between. 01:15:54.000 |
It doesn't mean that we're not going to be doing anything. 01:15:56.000 |
During those three-month break, we're going to be doing Bible study a different way, 01:16:01.000 |
meaning that there are specific topics that need to be covered in the church, 01:16:05.000 |
whether it is marriage, or whether it is child rearing, or finance, 01:16:10.000 |
whatever it is that we feel specifically that our church needs to be discipled in, 01:16:15.000 |
we're going to be approaching a different way. 01:16:17.000 |
So, we're not going to be having Bible study this way, 01:16:19.000 |
but we're going to be giving various topics, asking people to sign up during that time. 01:16:24.000 |
But because we've been having this inductive Bible study, 01:16:27.000 |
it's kind of hard for us to address specific things because it doesn't happen on Sunday. 01:16:32.000 |
And if we can't address it during the weekday, we don't have a lot of avenues where we can do that. 01:16:36.000 |
So, we're going to take the break time to address those specific issues. 01:16:40.000 |
So, hopefully you understand why we're doing that. 01:16:43.000 |
So, next session's Bible study is going to be a little bit shorter. 01:16:46.000 |
From now on, it's going to be 10 weeks, 10 weeks, and then there's going to be longer breaks in between. 01:16:51.000 |
Alright, so today, I'm going to be just basically reviewing over, 01:16:56.000 |
but I want to just briefly go over our church history. 01:17:02.000 |
And I know some of you guys who've been at our church for a long time, like this is all reviewed to you, 01:17:06.000 |
but even though you took membership recently, 01:17:10.000 |
I just, hopefully that you'll have a better understanding of how we got here, 01:17:17.000 |
First of all, our church was inaugurated, not established, but inaugurated on April 12, 1997. 01:17:24.000 |
It just happens to be the day that my oldest son, Jeremiah, was born. 01:17:28.000 |
So, I wasn't in the church yet. I was invited to participate in the inauguration. 01:17:32.000 |
I couldn't come because Jeremy was born on that day. 01:17:35.000 |
The church was actually established months before that, about two, three months prior to that. 01:17:40.000 |
So, the only person that was there when that happened was Elder Joe. 01:17:44.000 |
So, I was the EM pastor of Korean Irvine Baptist Church. 01:17:50.000 |
I left that church for about a year to serve at another church, 01:17:53.000 |
and then that church ended up splitting and falling apart. 01:17:57.000 |
I wasn't the problem. It just--that happened, and then I was the EM pastor of that church. 01:18:04.000 |
I ended up coming back out, and then I was in between a church, 01:18:07.000 |
and then I got a phone call from--I forget if it was Elder Joe or somebody else called and said, 01:18:12.000 |
"You know, our church--the person who got permission to become an independent church, 01:18:19.000 |
he ended up leaving only after about two, three months." 01:18:21.000 |
So, he got it incorporated, got the name, got permission, became independent, and then he left. 01:18:28.000 |
So, the only reason why I came is because I was in between church, 01:18:31.000 |
and they asked me to come basically to help out because they didn't have a leader there. 01:18:38.000 |
I was burnt out. I was kind of like debating back and forth if I was going to continue in ministry or not. 01:18:44.000 |
Only reason why I came back is because I was attached to--at that time, they're all grown-ups now, 01:18:49.000 |
but at that time, they were a bunch of kids, and I felt like they were going to fall apart, 01:18:54.000 |
and they're going to leave church, and so I came just to help out. 01:19:00.000 |
So, when I came back, I came to church in August of that year, 1997. 01:19:07.000 |
And so, if you look at the original documents of the church, my name's not on it. 01:19:11.000 |
Some strange lady's name is on it that you wouldn't know, okay? 01:19:16.000 |
And so, the only person that is here today that was there at that time is Elder Joe, okay? 01:19:23.000 |
And so, anything prior to that, you're going to have to ask him, 01:19:28.000 |
That's how the church got started, and then once we got to Irvine, 01:19:33.000 |
the senior pastor who came in as an interim didn't have a vision for us in the church. 01:19:38.000 |
He wanted us to be more charismatic. He wanted us to be more Korean. 01:19:41.000 |
He asked me to teach Korean in the English service, and I said, "We can't do that. 01:19:47.000 |
We're here to spread the gospel. We already had non-Koreans in the church." 01:19:53.000 |
We were there for about two years. We left, and then Tustin Baptist heard that we were leaving, 01:20:00.000 |
and so they allowed us to use their facility for a couple of years. 01:20:03.000 |
So, we were there for a couple of years, and then after two years of being there, 01:20:07.000 |
I think it was in 2001, we ended up leaving that, and then that's when we became independent. 01:20:13.000 |
And all this time, I had no intention of planting a church. 01:20:16.000 |
I just did it because we had a small group of young adults, 01:20:21.000 |
and at that time, Elder Joe was probably, what, third year in college or something? 01:20:26.000 |
And he's an old guy at our church now, but at that time, he was just a college student. 01:20:30.000 |
So, imagine how young the other people were, right? 01:20:34.000 |
They were, like, barely--like, high school, graduating high school, or first or second year in college, 01:20:39.000 |
and so that's the group that we had when we-- 01:20:41.000 |
nobody in their right mind would plant the church with that group, right? 01:20:44.000 |
So, 15 people means $15 a month, basically, to support the church, basically, right? 01:20:54.000 |
We just met together because I was concerned that the kids at that time were going to fall out if we didn't continue. 01:21:02.000 |
And so I had Jeremy, we had Zachary, and then eventually, obviously, faith came, 01:21:11.000 |
The original name of the church was Harvest Community Church because, again, I didn't name that church. 01:21:21.000 |
As soon as we got an opportunity to change it, I think we were about three years into the church 01:21:26.000 |
or four years into the church, we changed it to Berean Community Church. 01:21:29.000 |
So, that's the name I chose because it captures what we wanted to do with the church. 01:21:34.000 |
And so, up to this point, I had no intent of planting a church. 01:21:39.000 |
All I knew, and even our doctrinal statements, what were we going to be, how we're going to run the church, 01:21:46.000 |
in my mind was not clear yet because, again, we didn't start out with a church saying, 01:21:52.000 |
"This is the vision that we have and we're going to have this kind of church. 01:21:56.000 |
All of that we kind of figured out as we went. 01:21:59.000 |
But when we changed the church, the only thing that I knew for sure is we're going to stick to the Bible. 01:22:04.000 |
We're going to read the Bible, and we're going to apply what we read in the Bible. 01:22:11.000 |
And then every year since then, we're studying it, and if we find out, "Hey, maybe this is not the right way to do it. 01:22:17.000 |
Maybe this is not the right way to run the church." 01:22:19.000 |
And so, certain things about the church started getting changed and solidified because of that, right? 01:22:25.000 |
So, we didn't have a clear vision, mission statement, membership process of what our vision is going to be five years. 01:22:39.000 |
And because our church was so young, nobody was against it. 01:22:42.000 |
So, we just kind of went and did it, and then after, you know, now we're in almost our 28th years. 01:22:47.000 |
Even to this day, our vision is still the same. 01:22:49.000 |
We're going to keep reading the Bible, and if we notice, even now, there are certain things that maybe, 01:22:56.000 |
"Hey, maybe that's not the right biblical way that the Bible teaches." 01:23:00.000 |
Then, you know, the only authority we have in this church is Scripture. 01:23:04.000 |
Not tradition, not our denomination, not works. 01:23:06.000 |
What works doesn't work, but what does the Bible say, okay? 01:23:14.000 |
We were at Lakeside Middle School for a few years, and then we went to Harvard Community Park for, I think, a year. 01:23:20.000 |
Deerfield Community Park, maybe for about nine months. 01:23:23.000 |
Went to Turtle Rock Community Center for about a year. 01:23:26.000 |
And then from there, we thought we were going to be homeless because we couldn't find a place. 01:23:32.000 |
So, we were actually even planning on having a picnic every Sunday because we didn't have a location. 01:23:38.000 |
And by that time, when we were at Turtle Rock, I think we were maybe about 60 people, 50 people. 01:23:44.000 |
And then, we finally ended up at Northwood Community Park. 01:23:47.000 |
And then, at Northwood Community Park, we grew from about 50, 60 to maybe about 70, 80. 01:23:52.000 |
And then, from there, we went to Up Middle School. 01:23:55.000 |
And then, that one Sunday, we went from 80, 90 to about 110. 01:23:59.000 |
And so, we added maybe about 20, 30 people on one Sunday, and we never dip under 100. 01:24:05.000 |
So, we don't know why 20, 30 people came one Sunday and never left. 01:24:12.000 |
Like, we grew 20, 30% one Sunday, and then with that, oh, they're just visiting, and then they just never left. 01:24:18.000 |
And then, the church grew from there to about 100 to about 250. 01:24:23.000 |
We were there for about three years, and then we moved to Costa Mesa Airway Building. 01:24:32.000 |
And then, we came into this building with about 450, and now we're like somewhere around 1100 to 1200 people. 01:24:41.000 |
But the core values of our church has never changed, right? 01:24:45.000 |
And so, in the process, the Fourfold Vision basically put together early on in the church. 01:24:54.000 |
This is when we were at Irvine Baptist, and then while we were at Tustin, we put the Fourfold Vision together. 01:25:01.000 |
And Fourfold Vision, you know, I'm not going to go through all of it, but basically, the first one is God-centeredness, right? 01:25:08.000 |
Our church got established right when the seeker-friendly movement was just taking off. 01:25:14.000 |
So, every time we turn around, we say, you know, new song was 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000. 01:25:21.000 |
And so, every time I turned around, somebody was saying like, "Hey, stop being stubborn. You need to go get trained. 01:25:27.000 |
You need to do this, and they're doing that, and why aren't you doing this?" 01:25:30.000 |
And obviously, our church being so small, you know, like clearly you're doing something wrong, and they're doing something right. 01:25:37.000 |
But by this time, my commitment to the scriptures were already solidified. 01:25:42.000 |
So, I'm not going to run a church where we're going to be constantly changing 01:25:47.000 |
because people are coming in and saying, "I want this type of a church. I want that type of a church," right? 01:25:52.000 |
Whatever we're going to do, we're going to do because the Bible teaches that. 01:25:56.000 |
And the central thing that I see in the scripture is God is at the center, not man, right? 01:26:01.000 |
Where the church is gathering for the purpose of God's glory, not our needs. 01:26:09.000 |
So, that's the central belief and the backbone of our church. 01:26:14.000 |
So, if God's going to be glorified, the Word of God has to be centered, right? 01:26:19.000 |
Not surveying you, not what works, not what makes you happy, not what causes people to come, 01:26:24.000 |
but if God's going to be glorified, He spelled out how He's going to be glorified in the Word of God. 01:26:29.000 |
So, that's why the second vision, and then third vision is in what avenue does this happen is in the church. 01:26:37.000 |
And so, the building up of a healthy church, not just a church that meets your needs, 01:26:41.000 |
but ultimately the church is where we carry out what the scripture tells us to glorify God. 01:26:47.000 |
And then, obviously, the fourth vision is to take this and multiply this, right? 01:26:51.000 |
We can't have number four if you don't have number one. 01:26:55.000 |
You cannot be a witness if you're not witnessing God at church, right? 01:26:59.000 |
If God is not glorified in the church, He will not be glorified in the world. 01:27:03.000 |
The church needs to be healthy in order for it to be multiplied in the world. 01:27:07.000 |
So, evangelism cannot be effective until the church is healthy, right? 01:27:15.000 |
So, how do we carry that specifically? The tenfold vision came in as a result of that. 01:27:19.000 |
One, membership begins with believers, not just anybody who raises their hands, but genuine Christians. 01:27:26.000 |
So, that's why when you take membership, we want to make sure that your testimony is genuine. 01:27:32.000 |
Like, "I grew up in a church," or, "I wanted to be more moral." 01:27:38.000 |
Obviously, that's not what makes you a Christian, right? 01:27:41.000 |
So, membership is the first step. Confess that the Bible is inerrant. 01:27:45.000 |
Our authority over your life, my life, the church comes from the Bible, right? 01:27:51.000 |
You can say that all you want and not practice it. 01:27:56.000 |
You can say the Bible is authoritative, and then the Bible is open, and then it says, "This is what it says." 01:28:00.000 |
It's like, "Yeah, I know what it says," but then you don't practice it, then the Word of God is not authoritative. 01:28:06.000 |
It's only authoritative if you actually apply it. 01:28:09.000 |
Saying it's authoritative doesn't make it authoritative. 01:28:14.000 |
And so, Christians who believe the Word of God has authority over your life, 01:28:19.000 |
and it dictates what kind of mom you're going to be, what kind of father you're going to be, 01:28:24.000 |
what kind of son you're going to be, what kind of Christian you're going to be, 01:28:27.000 |
the Word of God dictates that, not me, not the world. 01:28:35.000 |
As important as the Word of God is, so is prayer. 01:28:39.000 |
Prayer is, again, Scripture tells us it's right up there, right? 01:28:43.000 |
Because spiritual work is not simply done by the mind. 01:28:46.000 |
It's done spiritually, and so you have to engage spiritually. 01:28:51.000 |
You cannot be a member of the church if you're not here participating in the most important part of the church, 01:28:58.000 |
That's why when we're going through that, Pastor Mark went through that 01:29:00.000 |
and emphasized to the best of your ability not to miss Sunday worship, right? 01:29:06.000 |
And I know we live in a culture where graduations and soccer games 01:29:10.000 |
and everything is happening on Sunday morning, 01:29:12.000 |
but we're asking you to the best of your ability to put that as the highest priority, right? 01:29:18.000 |
Even if you're traveling and you can't physically be here, 01:29:21.000 |
try to find a physical church to go to and attend, right? 01:29:25.000 |
To participate in the gathering of believers. 01:29:28.000 |
Commit to attending and preparing for weekday Bible studies every week to the best of my, 01:29:34.000 |
I know some of you guys came from eight, nine, ten hours of work today, 01:29:38.000 |
and so the fact that you are here is a good first step, right? 01:29:42.000 |
But we're asking you because, remember, we talked about Sunday philosophy is to get the Word into you. 01:29:50.000 |
Weekday Bible study philosophy is to get you into the Bible, right? 01:29:54.000 |
So we don't want to just do the study and then spoon feed you. 01:29:58.000 |
The philosophy of the Bible study is for you to get into the Word of God. 01:30:02.000 |
So if your intake of the Word of God is just simply listening, 01:30:08.000 |
And so that's why we're asking you to participate in getting the Word of God into you, 01:30:14.000 |
Six, I commit to attending PCC functions and the activities to the best of my ability. 01:30:20.000 |
And you're not going to get to know 1,000 people in the church. 01:30:24.000 |
But because it's big and you say, "Well, what's the point," right? 01:30:30.000 |
Well, in order to be a part of a community, you have to know the people who are around you, 01:30:38.000 |
But if you make no effort to do that, then your idea of community is you just kind of put your name on the list and that's it, right? 01:30:45.000 |
There might be people who are sitting right next to you right now who is in need of your prayer, encouragement, 01:30:52.000 |
But participating in community means that we are going to do our best to get to know as many people as possible, right? 01:31:00.000 |
We're asking you to the best of your ability to participate as much as you can. 01:31:04.000 |
I commit to building up and strengthening the body of Christ at PCC by developing and using my spiritual. 01:31:09.000 |
We ask every member to find some capacity to serve, right? 01:31:14.000 |
Sometimes people think serving means leading, right? 01:31:18.000 |
We take leadership very seriously, as you guys were reading the books that you're reading, 01:31:23.000 |
because leadership is not something that you just put in. 01:31:25.000 |
The Bible says not to lay hands hastily on especially new believers because they fall into the temptation of the devil. 01:31:36.000 |
No matter what you're doing, as soon as you have pride come in, you're no longer learning. 01:31:46.000 |
And so we don't put leadership hastily because it not only ruins you, it ruins the church. 01:31:56.000 |
But we're asking everybody to find some way to serve, even if it's not leadership. 01:32:05.000 |
We have all kinds of stuff, you know, whether it's praise team or maybe someday you'll be leading small group, 01:32:11.000 |
whatever it is, to find some way, if you're a member of the church, to function in some way to serve the church. 01:32:19.000 |
And then I commit to tithing and giving financially in accordance with Christ's lordship over my life. 01:32:23.000 |
And I talked about that before, why finance is so emphasized in the Scripture, 01:32:28.000 |
because it says wherever your money is, there your heart is. 01:32:31.000 |
If you're stingy with your money, you end up being stingy with your heart. 01:32:35.000 |
And so if you're generous with your money, you're generous with your heart, right? 01:32:42.000 |
I commit to the best of my ability to advance the kingdom of God through sharing the gospel locally and globally. 01:32:47.000 |
So locally and globally, we want to be a witness here, but we also know that we have more resources than most other countries, right? 01:32:56.000 |
Especially as our church grows, we have more and more opportunities because we have more resources together. 01:33:01.000 |
And so we want to use that not only here, but also abroad, okay? 01:33:05.000 |
And then finally, Pastor Mark covered, I desire to be kept accountable by leadership and other members of BCC 01:33:11.000 |
and to keep others accountable above covenants and teachings of Scripture. 01:33:15.000 |
And this is something that is very important. 01:33:17.000 |
Accountability in the church is very important, but at what point does it become judging, right? 01:33:27.000 |
Because that line is very hard for us to determine, right? 01:33:32.000 |
The line that I use when I feel like, am I criticizing out of love, right? 01:33:42.000 |
And I'm pointing things out in your life out of love. 01:33:48.000 |
Or am I just peeved at people because they're not behaving a certain way, right? 01:33:55.000 |
And so if I find that my heart is not in the right place, then I need to pray more. 01:34:00.000 |
Or maybe I'm not the best person to talk to that person, right? 01:34:03.000 |
If I'm irritated, I got to speak the truth, but you don't have love. 01:34:08.000 |
Or sometimes if you say, you know, I have love, but because you have love, somehow that squashes the truth. 01:34:19.000 |
But sometimes you can do truth, very little love. 01:34:23.000 |
And it does more damage than good when you do that, right? 01:34:26.000 |
And sometimes you do love, but you're not actually love. 01:34:30.000 |
It's more -- it serves you because you don't want that person to think bad of you, right? 01:34:35.000 |
So true love is always expressed in love, right? 01:34:43.000 |
So even if they don't recognize it, at least you need to do your best. 01:34:46.000 |
First and foremost, you prayed for them, right? 01:34:53.000 |
Part of being a community, there is accountability. 01:34:56.000 |
We don't like just -- you go off and do something, and if somebody you really love is starting to do drugs, 01:35:03.000 |
you're not going to look at that and say, I don't want to judge them because I love them. 01:35:10.000 |
If you really love them, you do everything in your power to try to talk to them, right? 01:35:16.000 |
But it's because you love them that you're going to talk to them, not simply because you don't like it. 01:35:22.000 |
All right, so all ten of these covenants are, I would say, the backbone of the church. 01:35:28.000 |
This is not unique to Berean Community Church. 01:35:31.000 |
If you study the scripture, this is what's taught for every Christian. 01:35:34.000 |
The only difference is we've decided to jot it down, and we're trying to practice it 01:35:38.000 |
and keep each other accountable to make sure that this is actually what we're pursuing. 01:35:42.000 |
So every year, at the end of the year, we try to look at where we are at the church, 01:35:46.000 |
and we evaluate what is our weakness, what is something that we need to be strengthened, 01:35:51.000 |
and then we make that a goal, and we try to pursue that, at least go that direction. 01:35:55.000 |
So if you've noticed, the last five years, what was our goal? 01:36:02.000 |
Unless you joined us brand new, you should know, hopefully, 01:36:10.000 |
prayer has been our primary focus because every year we evaluate this is an area that we need to grow in. 01:36:17.000 |
I think we've made some progress. We're not there yet. 01:36:20.000 |
And so next year's theme is going to be the same, be devoted to prayer. 01:36:31.000 |
Before it was just, "Ah, let's pray," but no, we're going to be devoted to prayer this time, okay? 01:36:36.000 |
All right? And so, you know, every year we evaluate this is what we want to do. 01:36:40.000 |
We want to be intentional about where we're headed. 01:36:42.000 |
Even if we're only taking a few steps, those few steps are leading us to the right direction. 01:36:47.000 |
So we're going to keep emphasizing what we feel like is our weakness, 01:36:51.000 |
and I think this is still our weakness, okay? 01:36:54.000 |
All right, so this was an overview of what happened. 01:37:10.000 |
How has the review of the Tenfold Covenant helped you to better understand the beliefs and practices of BCC? 01:37:15.000 |
Self-explanatory, why do you think the commitments to these covenants from every member is important to the health of the church, 01:37:21.000 |
not just the leadership, not just the people who've been here for a while, but every member of the church? 01:37:25.000 |
Which one of the Tenfold Covenants do you have the hardest time applying, and why? 01:37:29.000 |
And then the fourth question is--Pastor Mark already mentioned it, 01:37:33.000 |
but the fourth question is, next week we have one more session, 01:37:37.000 |
and you're going to be reading Chapter 13 of the book, 01:37:41.000 |
and then during our time I'm going to be taking Q&A, right? 01:37:46.000 |
So there might be some things that you may have discussed and still kind of like-- 01:37:50.000 |
maybe the small group leaders are thinking it may be better if I addressed it 01:37:54.000 |
or clarified it, and so what I'm asking is, after today's discussion, 01:38:03.000 |
And so I'm asking that the priority is going to be, 01:38:07.000 |
if you need some sort of clarification on why we are doing certain things, 01:38:13.000 |
or maybe something's required more, maybe something was said and I don't fully understand. 01:38:18.000 |
So if it's related to the church, we ask that--put it on a 2x5, 5x5, whatever. 01:38:33.000 |
There's no way I'm going to go through everybody's card, 01:38:35.000 |
so I'm going to ask that you would jot it down within the table. 01:38:39.000 |
Somebody jot down that these are the questions that we have. 01:38:42.000 |
So if you put two or three that kind of like--it would be helpful if you address this issue 01:38:47.000 |
that I'm going to try to address it, and I would need it today from you guys. 01:38:57.000 |
If there's time and you ask something else that's not maybe directly related to what we studied, 01:39:07.000 |
But if you ask questions of, you know, how do you get, you know, like dating questions 01:39:12.000 |
or something a lot more personal, right, how do you do this? 01:39:22.000 |
I'm not saying that I won't answer these questions, but probably we're not going to get time to do it. 01:39:27.000 |
So try to limit the questions that's pertaining to the church. 01:39:31.000 |
Like, help me to better understand why our church does this or why our church doesn't do this, okay? 01:39:37.000 |
And according to the tenfold vision, but it doesn't have to be limited to the tenfold vision. 01:39:41.000 |
Anything in the church you feel like this will help me to understand what's going on in church, 01:39:45.000 |
then I'll try to address that next Sunday--next Wednesday, okay? 01:39:51.000 |
Let me pray for us, and then shuttle is shut down from 9:30 to 10. 01:40:03.000 |
Father, we thank you for this evening and the time that we've had to study the tenfold covenant 01:40:12.000 |
and we pray that even our last session of discussion would lead us, Lord God, 01:40:17.000 |
into a greater understanding so that the church may be built in a way that honors and glorifies you. 01:40:22.000 |
I pray that you would bless the discussion and that things that we've learned would be applied in such a way, 01:40:29.000 |
Father God, that we would be a greater light according to the purpose and what you've given us in your word. 01:40:34.000 |
We thank you, Father, in Jesus' name we pray. 01:40:37.000 |
Okay, so at the end of it, if somebody can write down whatever discussion questions 01:40:41.000 |
or the questions that you have, and please write it large so I can read it, right? 01:40:49.000 |
If you're a doctor, have somebody else write it for you, okay?