Antioch Community Church Minneapolis

Yesterday at church, we had a great time of worship led by one of our fantastic worship leaders. The first song we sang was “Blessed” by Darlene Zschech and Reuben Morgan. It starts like this:

Blessed are those who dwell in your house
They are ever praising you
Blessed are those whose strength is in You
Whose hearts are set on our God

We will go from strength to strength
Until we see you face to face

That last line struck me when I realized I wasn’t sure what I was singing. What does “strength to strength” mean? I began searching my handy ESV study bible and found that the lyrics to this song are taken from Psalm 84, which is about the people of Israel going to the temple to worship the Lord. You should really read the whole thing for yourself, but the key verses are four through seven:

Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.

As the Israelites are on this journey to the temple, the Lord gives them more and more strength so they can come and worship him. I wanted to see where else this kind of language showed up in Scripture, so I followed the cross references to 2 Corinthians 3:18:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

I’ll be honest, at first I didn’t really see the connection, but both of these passages are about the process of coming to Christ. We don’t just get transformed once in our lives, but we are “being transformed” while we see the glory of the Lord. Through our lives, as we look to Jesus, we start to look more and more like him in increasing degrees of glory. Being a Christian is not just about saying a prayer once, but about becoming more like Jesus. Yes, we need to come to Christ and be forgiven of our sins once and for all, but the process of living out our new lives takes, well, a lifetime.

The Israelites couldn’t store up enough strength for the trip to Jerusalem before they left; they needed to keep getting renewed along the way. In the same way, we cannot try to live the Christian life on “stored strength”, but on the ever increasing strength that Christ provides along the way. So if you’re feeling weak or like the journey is just too hard, look to Jesus. Someday we will worship Him face to face, but until then let Him transform you and He will give you strength upon strength to keep going.

—Coley Bloomquist

We are currently going through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on Sunday mornings at Antioch.  A couple weeks ago I preached a sermon from Matthew 5:27-30 entitled “Fighting for Purity.”  In the message, I mentioned a list of verses that have been helpful to me personally on various aspects of purity.  Here you go!

Thought (Philippians 4:8; Titus 1:15; 2 Corinthians 10:5)

Heart (Proverbs 4:23; Luke 6:45; Matthew 9:4)

Body (2 Timothy 2:22; 1 Thessalonians 4:3,7; 1 Corinthians 6:13; 6:18-20; Galatians 5:24; Romans 13:14)

Actions (2 Corinthians 10:31; 1 Timothy 4:12; Colossians 3:17)

Speech (Ephesians 4:29; Ephesians 5:4; Matthew 12:36-37)

Sight (Matthew 5:27-28; Matthew 6:22; Job 31:1)

—Andy O'Rourke

In the 1999 cut-classic movie Fight Club, the first rule was “don’t talk about fight club?”  Antioch Community recently hosted a one-day men’s conference entitled “Fight Club 2010″ (www.fightclubmn.com).  This was an event designed to inspire and equip men to fight for gospel transformation in their lives.  The world needs strong men who love Jesus, hate sin, live out the gospel, love their families, love the church, and make an impact for the kingdom of God.  We want men to talk about Fight Club 2010!  Check out the messages here.  Here’s what some attendees had to say about the event on May 1st…

“…it really resonated with where I’m at right now in my life.”

“…a definite yes to coming next year.”

“I would definitely come again next year.  I could see this conference growing and becoming something that God will use in the lives of many men to spur them on to something greater than themselves.”

“This event has changed my life for Christ.  I am on fire to know him more and this event really got it going for me.”

“I thought all of the speakers did an amazing job, and I also really enjoyed the music parts of the program as well!”

“I needed to hear a straight forward message that did not sugar-coat anything.”

“The highlights for me were getting to know some of the guys from my church more… it really resonated with where I’m at right now in my life.”

“I enjoyed getting to know other men from my church that I otherwise wouldn’t have.  The worship was great and the speakers had awesome
messages.”

“Extremely relevant. I do not think the speakers could have done anything better. Each speaker presented their topic well, and each topic was right on target for the men in our culture.”

We’re looking forward to Fight Club 2011!!

—Andy O'Rourke

We’re beginning a new sermon series this Sunday (April 11th) on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7.  The focus will be on what it looks like to live out the gospel of the kingdom as the community of God’s people. When the community of Jesus’ followers live out the gospel in the context of the world the kingdom of God is made tangible.  I’m reading through a great book that talks about these things.  I highly recommend Tangible Kingdom to anyone interested in living incarnationally as a disciple of Jesus in our messed up world.  Also check out the website: www.tangiblekingdom.com.

—Andy O'Rourke

In February Andy preached through the book of Jonah entitled “Jonah: God’s Heart for the Lost”. You can hear his sermons by downloading the podcast.

We had a fun chance to incorporate multiple forms of creative worship in this series. One of our attendees Brett is skilled with computer graphics and created a 30 second video to introduce each sermon. You can see the video below. One part humor, one part summary, the video got a great response from the congregation, and was a great expression of worship for him to create.

Jonah Series Intro Video from Antioch Community on Vimeo.

Another young woman Kristina has a wonderful ability to memorize and recite Scripture. During the four-week series, she recited one more chapter than the week before. The last week she recited all four chapters. It was an inspiring and humbling realization that the rest us need to put a higher priority on memorizing Scripture.  Our Community Groups are memorizing verses together, and we are excited to get other people involved in the memorization and proclamation of Scripture.

—Coley Bloomquist

Registration is now open!!  Go to www.fightclubmn.com to reserve your spot for this upcoming men’s event.  The cost for the day is only $25.

Fight Club 2010: Minneapolis is a one-day Acts 29 Network regional conference in Minneapolis, MN that exists to rally and challenge men of all ages to fight for radical gospel transformation in their lives. This event will feature both local and national speakers. We pray that God will use Fight Club 2010 to help raise up a generation of men who will make a massive impact in the world for Jesus and his kingdom.  Register now and join us from 9am – 5pm on May 1st!

—Andy O'Rourke

Here’s a short video about “wise stewardship” that a couple guys from Antioch put together.  Check it out!

—Andy O'Rourke

There are a couple excellent books by Randy Alcorn that I’m using during preparation for our current preaching series at Antioch entitled “God, Stewardship, & Giving.”  The first book is The Treasure Principle.  This is a great introduction to an eternal perspective on money and possessions.  It’s very practical and best of all, very short!  Our Community Groups are going through this book in conjunction with Sunday’s sermons.  The second resource from Alcorn that I would highly recommend is called Money, Possessions, and Eternity. This is a longer, more thorough treatment of the topic.  It goes into great detail regarding many of the questions one might have.  Also, Alcorn does a great job interacting with key biblical passages.

—Andy O'Rourke

By now everyone has seen the disaster left behind by the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  With hundreds of thousands of survivors in desperate need of help, many are asking “who will help the church?”  This tragedy is an opportunity for the church of Jesus Christ to shine and for the gospel to have a tremendous impact!

Mark Driscoll (Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle) and James MacDonald (Senior Pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, Chicago area) recently launched a non-profit organization named “Churches Helping Churches” to come to the aid of the Church in Haiti.  The global body of Christ has a responsibility to live out the Apostle Paul’s words from Galatians 6:10: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Visit www.churcheshelpingchurches.com for more information on this new organization and how you can give to the cause of Christ in Haiti.

—Andy O'Rourke

Tonight I’m sharing with the launch team of a nearby church plant.  They asked me to talk about pitfalls, things to avoid, and lessons learned in the last two churches that I’ve helped to start.  It’s been interesting to reflect upon this.  Even though I haven’t been in the game that long, 8 years of church planting has given me plenty of mistakes to learn from!  Surely the list could be longer, but here are some lessons I’ve learned from the church planting battle…

1) Work at raising up leaders from the start, especially Elders. Church planting is exhausting, back-breaking work.  You’re initial servants and leaders will grow tired eventually.  If you don’t have some sort of process to identify, develop, and deploy new leaders it will come back to bite you.  Four or five years into the church plant, you’ll realize that you have a leadership vacuum and you’ll be in big trouble.  Elders are the most important leaders to raise up.  These are the godly, qualified men that God has designed to spiritually shepherd his people (cf. 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1).

2) Plan to multiply or you won’t. This is true on the level of small groups or church planting.  Most churches that don’t plant in the first 5 years of their existence never will.  You must have a strategy for reproducing even before you think you’re ready to expand.

3) Deal with sin, conflict, and relational issues as soon as possible in a biblical and Christlike manner. Sweeping hard issues under the rug doesn’t work.  They tend to fester and grow there, and eventually emerge as ravenous beasts in the church.  As hard as it can be to tackle things head-on as a leader, this is far better than ignoring issues are putting them off.  The health of Christ’s church is at stake.  Unresolved issues can kill a young church.

4) “Success” in ministry is less from the right models, strategies, and tactics and more due to prayer, the power of God’s word, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Planning and forms are not bad, but there is just no substitute for the spiritual resources God has given his people.

5) When it comes to programs and ministries, less is more. Especially in the first years of a new church (if ever!), you cannot be all things to all people.  Too many programs will spread you thin, drain the energy of your people, and distract a church from the mission of reaching lost people with the gospel.  A young church should do a few things and do them well.  Leave the programmatic smorgasbord to the big box churches.  Your best commodity is relationships.

6) You must be both internally and externally focused. This balance must be tenaciously fought for.  Outreach to lost people must flow out of authentic community where the gospel is being lived out and proclaimed.  On the one hand, you must avoid becoming an ingrown Christian club.  On the other hand, you must avoid becoming so focused exclusively on outreach that the people already in the church shrivel up and die on the vine.

—Andy O'Rourke