This Sunday, we are starting a new sermon series as part of our Thread journey. This series, God’s Nation Formed, is about how God is shaping us through both good and bad in our lives as we walk in faith with him leading the way day and night. For Israel, God took a group that identified as slaves with no real culture, laws, or customs and turned them into a functioning nation in just 40 years. Of course, those 40 years of formation weren’t easy. They were spent wandering in the wilderness and wondering if God would truly lead them to the Promised Land. God did indeed lead them to the land he promised, but not just as a group of former slaves. He gave them the hope and structure needed to be a real people who could be fruitful and multiply and bear his image.
God is forming each soul in our churches, from the youngest to the oldest, through the mundane and miraculous, through the wilderness and wandering. Sunday morning worship is a touchpoint for the community that God is forming in your town.
The seven worship gatherings of this series should serve to illuminate the forming work that God is doing among you. Although these messages are centered on the Torah, we’ll see that formation is a major thread throughout scripture. You’ll even get a chance to practice some community formation with new (ancient) worship practices.
The 7 sermons in the series will focus on the following themes:
- The Sign: Introduction of spiritual formation, Corporate prayer for transformation
- The Exodus: Celebration in worship – have the kids join you with homemade instruments for the last song or have a song that encourages dancing
- The Wilderness: Journaling – find a verse and write it down to take with you through the week
- The Presence: 30 seconds to a minute of silence or scripture meditation during worship
- The Law & The Prophets: Scripture memorization showcase – see daily thread for this week
- The Tabernacle: Guided Lectio Divina Psalm 90:1-2
- The Culture: Have a potluck or make donuts or some kind of food available. Celebrate completing the God’s Nation Formed series by having people share how they’ve been impacted.
The resources for this series will focus on formation. A significant portion of our Bible is dedicated to the wilderness-wandering, nation-forming, Spirit-led journey of Israel from slaves in Egypt to God’s nation inhabiting the Promised Land. The Exodus through the sea gets most of the press but Israel needed so much more than an escape plan. They needed to become a people. In the same way, our baptisms get well-deserved attention. But life on the other side of the water is where the Holy Spirit forms us into God’s people.
There are many approaches to formation as we live for Christ. If you’ve ever had a quiet time then you’ve engaged in a formative practice. Going to church is another action that we take to be formed by the community of Christ. Discipling and discipleship are intentional practices that can help us grow closer to God and one another as we sharpen each other with word, Spirit, and fellowship.
For this series, we’ll focus on some practices that you and the people you lead may or may not be familiar with that fall under the umbrella of spiritual formation or spiritual disciplines. These approaches have been used by Christ’s followers throughout the ages to grow more Christlike. Like the approaches listed above, they are intentional efforts to partner with the Spirit and grow. Each practice is different. Individuals may find practices that really connect with them and some that they do not find helpful or enjoyable. That’s okay!
It probably isn’t surprising that the approach that spiritual formation takes to spur growth in Christ is engagement with the Holy Spirit. If we take to heart Jesus’ teaching about the Spirit in John 16:4-15 then we recognize that all growth and formation is an act of the Spirit, no matter our approach. First attempts at engaging the Spirit through spiritual formation can be uncomfortable or clumsy. That’s okay and that’s true of anything new that we try. As you’ll discover over the next seven weeks, the efforts you and your church make to engage the Spirit will be worth the stretching that might be felt. We hope is that one or two of the practices you discover will become a regular part of your walk in this wonderful wilderness life.
Hope you can join us on this journey!