INTERMISSION NEWSLETTER: FINDING MY PEOPLE
Since I moved to Ontario six years ago, the question I have been asking myself is – who are my people?
Maybe you have asked yourself that same question as you have sat in the chair on a Sunday morning, or awkwardly stood around grabbing coffee after church waiting for someone to talk to you. You’re not the only one.
Yet the beauty of church is that Sundays mark the gathering of believers that make up the body of Christ. Each Sunday, we are no longer individuals who worship, but a fellowship partaking together in the body of Christ. The body of Christ is a gathering of a group of believers in a community, a people. Our purpose in gathering is to worship God through song and the discipleship of God’s word being preached. It’s on Sundays that I am reminded of a sermon Moses preached three years ago this month. It was the first Sunday my wife and I began attending New City Church. He quoted from Mark 10:29-30:
29 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.
This church and her members are my people, because Christ has given us each other as people. Sitting in that chair on that first Sunday, I knew that to be true and I have known it to still be true, three years later. For those that profess faith in Christ, we are a redeemed people sharing in a common faith and a common life. It’s through Sundays at New City that I have found my people. In other words you are my people, my brothers and sisters.
Intermission groups are a great opportunity to live out the mission of fellowship and discipleship of the body of Christ in between Sundays. Being among your people during intermission group, you will pray for one another, share with each other, and study God’s word. You will be challenged to live out our faith in the everyday.
This fellowship is by nature communal. God has designed that his Bride, the church, would not be made of silent members in individual locations. Instead, He has designed it be built upon the regular rhythm of each member communing together in a generous and self sacrificing way, a way that is reflective of the heart of Christ. We speak encouragement to one another and we build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). We pray for one another (James 5:13). We worship together. (James 5:13).
This communing, is itself an act of grace. Bonheoffer in his book Life Together writes:
“And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation. As such, God permits them to meet together and gives them community” (23).
It is because of the grace of God that we meet and it is by the grace of God that we extend grace toward others. It is a kind of grace that is uncommon, because it is only through the gospel that we are able to experience it. This kind of living together through grace is what Bonhoeffer describes as being “not an ideal but a Divine reality” (26).
Your intermission group will be hard at times. It will have its challenges. You will not like everything. You may even be hurt by others. Yet it is because we recognize that the Christian community will not be an ideal reality, that we are pointed to our need for the gospel. We each need to know that we are saved from our own sin and transformed by God’s grace, and yet we each need each other to embolden one another to live out God’s grace in our everyday lives.
To help us do that this year, for our intermission group curriculum we will be going through “Gospel in life” by author and pastor Tim Keller. This is an eight part series divided into sixteen weeks that describes how grace changes every aspect of our lives, whether our heart, our community or our city. Because the gospel changes everything, Keller teaches that it is important that we learn how to live as disciples of Christ together in this present world while we wait in eager expectation for the world that is to come.
For some of us, this will not be a new curriculum, but we as a staff team believe it will be an important one considering the current stage of our church. It is a bit of going back to the foundations of what matters, the gospel, and seeing how it permeates into every aspect of who we, as a church are called to be. I am excited about this curriculum, because I found it to be both thought provoking and encouraging, in way that is both accessible to every person and yet challenging to every stage of life.
If you haven’t already, please consider joining us in gathering together in between Sundays by signing up for an intermission group. We have a range of locations, times, and days to choose from, depending on what best suits your need. By signing up for an intermission group you will find a people who may not be perfect, but who will offer care, fellowship and a challenge to live as disciples of Christ in the places God has put us.
