• Special Prayer Worship Service:  We hope you will join us for this special service.  After a month of banners, posters and clues we hope your curiosity is peaked.
• Communion Service:  Communion will be served during worship service this week.
• Community Lunch:  Join us immediately following worship service for our monthly Community Lunch.  If your last name begins with A-L please bring a side dish or vegetable, M-S please bring a dessert and T-Z please bring a main dish.  Please bring enough to feed two families or more.  If you don’t want to bring anything (or forget) please feel free to eat anyway and consider helping in the clean up as your contribution.

What I want to do with this article is share with you ways that you too can make it a priority, depending on your particular role within Cornerstone.

Church members:

1. Be diligent in prayer:
• For God to “fan into flame” our zeal for the gospel and His church.
• For the peace and unity of our congregation. That God would protect us from the arrows of the enemy who would plant doubt and discouragement among our people.
• For the FTF team to prosper in their work.
• For the elders to be strengthened in their leading.
2. Take the initiative to talk with a FTF team member about FTF. (FTF team members are: Carter Sanger, Nathan Carico, Jonathan Tucker, Kent Saugier, Gene Cover, Kathy Jorgensen, Lynn Weatherly, Becky Yuvancic, Johnny Tassin, Don Russell, Janette Cogliandro, Trey Harper, Justin O’Shay)
3. Encourage each other by looking for ways God is at work and sharing those testimonies of grace with others.

Fanning the Flame team:

1. In addition to the prayers above, be diligent in praying for each other.
2. Invest yourself into the work that we are doing by:
• Carefully reading the materials assigned and noting “take aways” that can benefit our congregation.
• Intentionally talking with people in the congregation about the things you are reading and the direction we are going.
• Looking for ways God is (or has been) at work among our church AND sharing those things with others. (This is part of our Remembering strategy)
• Be sensitive to the Holy Spirit as He convicts you of attitudes, faithlessness, pride, as well as sins of omission and repent.
• Be an encourager and not a discourager. Remember, God is in charge!

Elders:

1. Commit to the prayers listed above.
2. Continue to be in close communication with the FTF team.
3. Continue to evaluate ministry opportunities in light of our vision as well as our time and resource commitment to Fanning the Flame. Be ready to say “no” and lead people toward FTF priorities.

For His Kingdom,

Carter

The Psalms are the prayer book of the ancients, and have been used throughout church history to teach the language of prayer through the art of listening and meditating upon the nature and character of God, his law, and his mighty works. This kind of prayer is counter to the fastpaced, entertainment-driven lifestyles that our culture inculcates. We must therefore be committed to learning new habits and willing to approach the Psalms with the faith of a child, ready to receive whatever it is the Lord chooses to give.

In order to learn how to read and pray the Psalms, we’ll draw upon the works of the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards and their experience with revivals; Luther and Calvin from the reformed tradition; St. Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, and Theres of Avila from the counter-reformation movement; and also Augustine, who is perhaps the greatest theologian of all the post-apostolic church fathers.

“It is not difficult…to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church; for others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives.” (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Intervarsity Press, 2000, p. 16, emphasis added)

Every month I feel the pressure to come up with some new “game plan” for ministry so that people will continue to feel a level of excitement about Cornerstone. I hate to confess that. I don’t want it to be true. But the “tourist mindset” that Peterson observes fits our culture so well; that, and the view that churches are part of the marketplace in that they are expected to offer “religious experiences.” So what is the answer?

Paul writes to the church in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Rom 12:2). The answer is here – the renewal of the mind. Even as believers we have been so saturated with the ways and patterns of our culture that the ways and patterns of God are foreign to us. This is not a quick fix. The renewal of the mind does not come in an instant. The pattern for God’s people in this renewal is the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness. They wandered for 40 years so that they might learn what it means to trust God. The Christian’s life is like that. Each day the world will sing its siren song to come back to its “quick fix” approach and allure with its promise of instant gratification. But we mustn’t buy into it. In the end it leaves us callous and empty because they don’t sustain us but enslave us. The Israelites remembered the food they ate in Egypt but forgot the slavery that went with it. So our first step is setting our resolve to be transformed.

Secondly, we must note what it means to be a disciple. A disciple is someone who spends his life apprenticed to his master, Jesus Christ. It is a growing-learning relationship, always. “A disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a schoolroom, rather at the work site of a craftsman. We do not acquire information about God but skills in faith.” (Peterson, p. 17) Discipleship means “taking [Jesus’] yoke upon you” which is to learn how Jesus spent time with God the Father, how he served the people, and how he viewed the world. His burden is light, much lighter than the burden of the law for the law weighs us down with our guilt for failing to live up to it. Jesus removes that burden from our shoulders and carries it for us. In this way he offers himself as our substitute. In terms of discipleship, however, he invites us to walk with him and see the pattern of his life.

Thirdly, and this may be the hardest of all, we are to commit ourselves to the ordinary means of grace: the Word, sacraments, and prayer. Jesus spent time with God in prayer, submitting his will to the Father’s, seeking the counsel of the Holy Spirit, and interceding on behalf of his disciples. He was steeped in the Scriptures from his time in the temple and weekly worship in the synagogue, and in personal meditation and memorization. And he gave us the Lord’s Supper as a perpetual remembrance and participation in his suffering and death so that we too might participate in his resurrection.

Fourthly, we must see the church as family rather than a marketplace. Learning and growing happens in community too, and perhaps especially. God designed us for community. The only thing not good in God’s creation prior to the fall was the fact that Adam was alone.

So, as we start the new year, let us resolve to be part of a long apprenticeship.

For the glory of God,

Carter

1. Resolve to be part of a “long-term apprenticeship.”
2. Resolve to read through the Bible in one year. It can be done in as little as 10 minutes a day, depending on the reading plan you use. There are several to choose from. See this article from Ligonier for several choices. If you like to read on your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone, the Holy Bible app (YouVersion) has a great list of plans and keeps track of where you are as you go through it each day.
3. Commit to devotional prayer. Your Fanning the Flame team will be reviewing several tools for helping us learn to develop this practice, so be looking for future resources. In the meantime, I use Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer as a guide. You can sign up for a daily email with a portion of his book to pray through. His book takes Scripture and forms it into devotional prayer. You can buy the book, or read it online at matthewhenry.org.
4. Pass the gospel to the next generation. Many of you have children still at home and CSCK is our way of helping you train your children using the children’s catechism (reflecting the Westminster Shorter Catechism) as a teaching tool. Those of you who don’t have children at home can connect with the children within our church family as well as look to spiritual “adopt” a child by coming alongside him or her and being another voice that counsels using the gospel.

God is always at work building His church (adding to our number), beautifying His bride (sanctifying us), and equipping His body (spiritually gifting and calling us to serve together). One of the ways God strengthens us as a church and as believers is by opening our eyes to see this work. So how have you seen God at work?

Please share your story, no matter how small or insignificant you might think it is, of how you have seen God at work. It could be something that he provided, a way that he protected you, an insight he gave you, an opportunity to help someone, a fresh sense of His forgiveness. How have you seen God at work? Please use the “reply” below to share.

Thanks!
Pastor Carter