NLCF Podcast New Life Christian Fellowship

We're wrapping up season 4 with a conversation about Advent! We dig into the purpose and importance of Advent before offering up some age-old Advent practices: groaning and singing. Groaning is a practice of lament. We consider the places in our lives and in our world where God has promised to be at work but we are having a hard time seeing Him. In the midst of difficulty and uncertainty, we continue calling to God in faith that He is near. Singing is a practice of celebration. We reflect on the ways God has advented among us over the past season and share our stories. 



We hope you've been blessed by this season of Shaped! 



Resources:

Advent by Fleming Rutledge

Watch for the Light-Advent devotional

This week we wrap up our series on the APEST gifts found in Ephesians 4 and discuss the Evangelist, Shepherd, and Teacher gifts. If you haven't listened to part 1 yet, check it out first. If you don't know what your gifting is, a good place to start is fivefoldministry.com.
Evangelist
The primary concern of evangelist is helping the community to incarnate the good news in their neighborhood.  They help to cultivate a welcoming environment that helps the community practice hospitality as a way of life.  They invite the congregation to proclaim the good news by being witnesses and being redemptive agents in their vocation and neighborhood.  They help the community to live and share the good news.
Shepherd
The primary concern of soul healers is helping people to pursue wholeness and holiness.  They do this by cultivating a healing environment where people feel safe to be real and move from their false selves toward authentic community. They create a sense of family and belonging, helping the congregation to love one another, encourage one another, exhort one another, get along with each other, comfort one another as well as play with one another.  They help the community cultivate a life-giving spirituality and embody reconciliation.
Teacher
The primary concern of teachers is that the community inhabits the sacred text.  They create a learning environment where people immerse themselves in the scriptures in order to be formed by them.  They seek to help people understand God’s narrative so that they may live faithfully in God’s story and become signposts of the New Creation.  They also have a keen eye for structures and how things could get done best.

*AUDIO FIXED*
For the next two weeks, we're tackling the APEST gifts that Paul describes in Ephesians 4:11-13. We believe everyone who praises Jesus as Lord has been given one or two these gifts to be used for the sake of the church and the mission of God in the world. We begin the episode by describing what APEST are and why they're important. Our hope is that this discussion is a blessing for those who are just starting to understand their gifting as well as for those who are looking to go deeper. To help us understand the gifts, we're joined by folks who have been given those gifts, including Robbie Poff this week. Below we've listed the descriptions for the apostle and prophet gifts.

To take the test, go to fivefoldministry.com

Apostle gift
Apostles catalyze and commission. They are catalysts who start new works, and they commission others to join God in the renewal of all things. They are pioneers, always moving into new territory. They help people discover and live out their calling. APOSTLES extend the gospel. They are always thinking about the future, bridging barriers, and establishing the church in new contexts. Apostles help people and communities live out the answer to Jesus’s prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Strengths

They have big ideas–a lot of them.
They see opportunity everywhere.
They have a history of starting things
They tend to attract a lot of people to their vision.
They can easily envision how to build organizations and people.

Weaknesses/immaturities

They can’t discern between good ideas and “God ideas,” between the constant flood of innovative thoughts and the ones that God is giving them to do.
They jump around from one idea to the next, unable to stay focused on one thing.
They can’t “turn it off” (i.e., take a day off).
They tend to have very little patience with needy people or those who won’t “get on board.”


Prophet
Prophets - expose and embody. They also embody a counterculture community, calling people to live under God’s reign. They have a passion for social justice and seek to cultivate a liberating environment, liberating people from personal sins, speaking truth to power and social sins. They reveal the heart of God and the heart of the people. Prophets call the church to God’s new social order and help the congregation to stand with the poor and oppressed.  They bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions we inherit from the culture.
Strengths

They often enjoy spending time alone with God and sense his heart clearly.
They are able to stand back from circumstances and get a clear picture of what’s really going on underneath the surface.
This clarity oftentimes enables them to come up with creative and innovative solutions that others don’t see.
They are outside-the-box thinkers, and tend to disrupt the status quo.

Weaknesses

They talk about their perspective as though it was simply “the truth.”
Because they think they are the ones who really “get it,” they can form elite cliques in churches that destroy unity.
They have to point out every inconsistency or problem they see. They can’t hold their tongues.
They have a hard time accepting people right where they’re at.
They tend to live in their heads, because their idealism is cleaner than the real-world messiness of ministry.

This week, we dive into a practice that can feel pretty intimidating for us: confession! We talk about how God meets us as we confess our brokenness, how He uses the practice to heal and transform us, and why it's so important for confession to be a communal practice. Afterward, we move through a reflective time of confession together (starts at the 16:53 mark in the episode) which incorporates the prayer of confession from the Book of Common prayer. Here's the text of the prayer: 

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and apart from your grace, there is no health in us. O Lord, have mercy upon us. Restore all those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to all people in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may now live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of your holy Name.

If we walk with Jesus for any length of time, we're bound to run into moments where doubt creeps in. Sometimes we have huge doubts (does God even exist?). Other times, we find places where we can't be certain that God is good or that He'll what we ask. We're joined today by one of our pastors, Steve Englund, to talk about doubt and faith. Steve offers us the liberating truth that Jesus is ok with our doubt and uncertainty as long as we stay close to Him. He goes on to share about some practical ways we can walk through doubt well.



Resources: 

-The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns 

We're kicking off season 4 of Shaped with a discussion about joy! What is joy? How can we walk in it even when things are hard? 



To help us, unpack joy and how we might make space for the Spirit to cultivate joy in us, we're joined by Curtis Goodnight and Morgan Solorzano! Curtis and Morgan help lead Storehouse, the church that NLCF helped plant last year at Penn State. They share their experience with joy over the past year as they've gotten Storehouse going in the middle of a pandemic. 



Resources: 

Does God Really Like Me? by Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw