09/08 Bringing People to Jesus

BRINGING PEOPLE TO JESUS

ICEBREAKER
Do you have a favorite doctor, dentist, chiropractor, hairstylist, contractor, or some other specialist that you just love and tend to refer others to? Who is it and why do you like them? 

DISCUSSION

1. Pastor Jim shared how some tendencies some churches have as their sense of mission. They are below. What tends to be the mission of each one?
   1. Social Club Church
   2. Hospital Church
   3. Life Skills Center Church
   4. Soul-Saving Church
   5. Are there any others you can think of?
2. Our church's past mission statements are below.
   1. With Pastor Tim: The vision of First Covenant Church is to be actively missional, connecting people of all ages to the transformative power of Jesus Christ and to each other.  Living out this vision will challenge us to better reach those who do not yet know Christ while remaining faithful to those already in the body of Christ.
   2. With Pastor Marc: Our Vision: CONNECT to God, CONNECT to one another, CONNECT to the world.
      At First Covenant Church, we seek to CONNECT TO GOD by worshiping together and engaging in heartfelt prayer, to CONNECT TO ONE ANOTHER by deepening our relationships in small groups, and to CONNECT TO THE WORLD by preaching Christ through intentionally meeting needs in our community and around the world.
   3. The mission statement we're considering as a church now is below. It seeks to express the heart of the past statements in simple, memorable, more general terms.
      "Our mission is 'Bringing People to Jesus and Heaven to Earth.'"
3. Read John 1:35-42a.
   1. What was it about Jesus that enamored the two disciples so much that they followed him immediately and spent the entire day with him?
   2. Notice Andrew immediately told his brother Simon about Jesus and brought him to Jesus. Why would he do that?
4. How does bringing people to Jesus help them find their real purpose in life? (Notice that Simon is the original name of Peter, the disciple whom Jesus made the leader of the church after his resurrection.)
5. How does bringing people to Jesus help them make sense of the world around them?
6. How does bringing people to Jesus help them find hope and healing?

APPLICATION

1. What can you do to bring people to Jesus? (conversation, offer to pray, offer to help, be there for them, invite to church, ask about their faith, etc.)
2. What can you do to support First Covenant Church's mission of "bringing people to Jesus"? (giving financially to support the general budget so we can increase ministries and staffing, volunteer in ministries and church events, etc.)​
3. What do you think of using the statement "Bringing people to Jesus" as the first half of mission statement?

PRAYER
Take time to ask for personal prayer requests. Then pray for our church's efforts to fulfill this mission of bringing people to Jesus followed by the other prayer requests.

START THINKING ABOUT "BRINGING HEAVEN TO EARTH"
To get ready for next week's discussing about "bringing heaven to earth" go to Pastor Jim's teaching page. You can find it on the website under "Teachings" and the title of this series. There are some short videos and a podcast series from the Bible Project, some past sermons, and some book recommendations.