Life-Based Ministry

People often ask, "What ministries does your church offer?" Or, "What ministry can I serve in?" In truth, we each have one all important ministry -- to worship the Lord and love Him with our whole being -- spirit, soul and body. From that place of intimacy the Holy Spirit can reveal to us our giftings and thus our place(s) of ministry in the church. Our leadership and our people are committed to helping one another discover their giftings and to help each serve the body in the place where God intends them to be.

Now we come to every man's gifting. Do we see these gifts for our benefit alone? While the gifts of Ephesians 4:11 are referred to as "gifts", they are part of the "gift of Christ" whom we all receive, Ephesians 4:7. The blessing of the gift is to the body, and not to the ministry. As Jesus said, "It is the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works," John 14:10. So we say, "It is the Christ who dwells in us who does what He does through us. We don't just have gifts. We have the gift!" He is releasing a measure of Himself in and through us to others, and the same is true from other Christians to us. Thus, we are "Life Based" in our concept of church and ministry.
 

Your "work" of the ministry to build up the body of Christ depends on you identifying your gifts. These gifts or graces of the Holy Spirit are already in you. They can't be earned or suddenly developed through teaching. They are resident in the Spirit and waiting to be released.
 

The gifts are going to be different from person to person. Holy Spirit releases gifts in different measure to each of us. You may have a great love for young children and enjoy nurturing them. You may also have a teaching gift or a "helps" gifting. The mix of these will determine whether you are anointed to teach young children or to assist those who teach young children. Both are important and need each other.

The effective use of these gifts also helps insure that not only ministry needs are met, but that no one person bears more of the burden of ministry than God intends. An understanding and application of this eliminates competition, jealousy and feelings of inadequacy. God's rewards to us are just based on what we do with what He gives us. This is emphasized in Matthew 25:14-29, the parable of the talents. Big, bigger and biggest is not God's way of measuring. Every part is valuable to Him in His Kingdom economy.

Children's Ministry and Sunday Classes

Here at Fellowship of Life Church our children are very important. We value our family and cherish the children that God has given us. We delight in their innocence, their gifts and talents, their interests, their joys, and their growth into young adults. We take our parenting responsibilities very seriously, yet joyously. Because we love our children and desire to nurture them in righteousness and holiness.  And, we enjoy worshipping with our children as families.

Our children enjoy worship because they are included in worship. We don't separate them because we understand the importance of a true corporate worship which includes entire families.    Including them makes them (and us) feel that they are an integral part of the corporate body rather than a subgroup. We also know that God will, and does, minister to and through our children. This is the primary reason we do not have a "children's worship service" which might otherwise separate children from the congregation during worship and prevent their participation. God is using this to restore families and family worship, and to destroy the barriers of separation between gender and age.

Our children will learn more from our example than they will from classes and watching videos, and yet those things have their purpose and place here. Our children observe the intimacy of our own worship and our own walk with the Lord, and then eagerly join with us. Worship, then, is a great time to explain to your children what you are doing, what you are feeling, and what Holy Spirit is doing in and through you.
 

We also encourage our parents to actively accept their place of authority and responsibility for teaching and training up their children. Deuteronomy 6:7-9 says that parents are to teach their children diligently moment by moment, opportunity by opportunity, and place by place. God has given us these precious "gifts" and as parents we have a great responsibility to see them become all that God wants them to be. Their lives will impact the Kingdom of God as much as ours does. This nurturing should begin at birth. Children need consistent love and devotion from their parents as much as they need training and teaching which is rooted in the Word of God.

The investment of our time and resources in our children is the most important "investment" we can ever make.

We are sensitive as to what Holy Spirit seeks to do in our meetings, so occasionally we will ask that the children remain with their parents in the sanctuary for the Sunday teaching message. Sometimes we do this because the message is a corporate message which pertains to all ages, while at other times we might not want to break what Holy Spirit is doing at the time. If our children are born again and filled with His Spirit we know that they will hear and understand God's voice. Remember that as a young child Jesus said to his parents when they found him in the temple with the priests, "I must be about my Father's business." Age should never be a barrier preventing children from hearing God at the corporate level or from even being used by God to minister to others. These are also opportunities for the family to discuss and reinforce what God is doing during the meeting.

We also recognize the need for our children to gather by peer group (children their own age) with gifted and anointed teachers so that Bible truths can be taught and experienced within their age group. It is also a time for the group teachers to reinforce through illustrations, teachings and discussions what Holy Spirit is saying to the church. These group teachers communicate with one another during the week to insure that they are all working together and communicating one central theme. These gatherings also give the children opportunity to fellowship and build relationships with other Christian children. They can encourage one another, pray for one another -- and have fun together.

Providing our children opportunities to interact during worship, in their group classroom, after church and in our homes helps develop their character and set the pattern for maintaining relationships with other Christians as they grow. This is one reason why we encourage our families to include their children in local home church group meetings. The joy and strength that they receive day to day from their parents, Christian friends and congregants will also flow out of them into the lives of other children in their neighborhoods and schools.

The great commission of the Church is to go out and make disciples of all the nations. What greater place to evangelize then our own neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. Holy Spirit will surely use our children. Our part is to help prepare them, nurture them, and encourage them.

We encourage parents to assist and participate in the group classrooms when possible. In addition, many of our group teachers are younger parents who both feel a call to minister to the children and to use the time with the children to nurture their own in-home teaching experience. We allow our young (17 and older) to assist in the classroom where appropriate in order to gain valuable experience in teaching and training children (for later parenting years) and to experience the joy of imparting to the children what God has deposited into their lives.

We provide classes for younger children (Nursery, Toddler, and Kindergarten thru grade 4) after worship on  Sundays.  Occasionally we request that the children remain with their parents during the teaching/ministry time.

Youth Ministry
 

We have joyfully watched our children become teens, and our teens become young adults. Our teens and young adults are an important part of the Body. They are "part of" and not separate from the general congregation. We regularly receive from the gifts and anointings that God has given them. And they regularly receive from the gifts and anointings of the rest of the Body. Why is it then so important for teens to be integrated into the congregation?

Over the years Christian youth have experienced a "crisis of integration". That crisis occurs when teens who belong to a youth group cannot integrate into the congregation after outgrowing that group. Many older teens then feel detached and cannot flow with the older members of the congregation, yet they do not feel they belong with the younger members any longer. At this point some of them are lost to the world for a season.
 

There is a Biblical way of raising our youth by which we can avoid this problem. Constantly separating our youth into groups gives them little experience at interacting with people of all ages, but integrating them into the congregation right from the start will allow them this valuable experience, producing in them the joy of being an active member, serving the Body and each other. Our own youth understand firsthand that they have a destiny and a call of God that they must pursue diligently and passionately. They are experiencing a new boldness and confidence flowing through their lives, and are learning to live in rhythm with Holy Spirit. They have embarked on a journey with Holy Spirit which will last throughout their lives here on earth and on into eternity.
 

The goal of our Youth Ministry is to help youth see the reality of the Holy Spirit and to learn to apply church teachings and Christian truths to their daily lives. Our youth are included in all aspects of church and family life, but are also provided opportunities to meet together for spiritual and social growth at the peer level. One such opportunity is a time that they call "Going Deeper" which meets two Saturday nights a month at the church. During this time they enjoy times of prayer, worship, discussion of life events and the answers God's Word provides, and social fellowship. The youth also organize various "get-a-ways" and special events geared to their age level and interest. We believe they enjoy a healthy balance of integration into the general congregation and separate times together as a group.

Through it all, we seek to ensure that they see themselves as part of the Body of Christ--not as a separate group with its own goals and objectives. In essence, our heart desire and motive is to help direct the actions of the youth toward becoming a person of Christ and a partner with (and within) the church body.
 

Our youth also have a great love and care for one another. Their friendships are genuine, their love is genuine, and their care for one another is genuine. But it goes beyond the youth group itself. They have a love and care for the entire church body. Our youth serve through their spiritual giftings within the usher ministry, worship team and even in the Sunday School classroom -- giving back into the church the fruit of what has been deposited into them. We feel our youth are special. Special to us and very special to the Lord.