Dave Browning, in his book Deliberate Simplicity, said “The success of CTK is a credit to the genius of the Holy Spirit. We have been given a different conceptual framework with which to work, and we are thankful.”
It’s all about participation with the Holy Spirit. Dave Browning described the CTK story as a divine-human partnership. He said, “We couldn’t do it without God, but God has also chosen not to do it without us. And we have worked hard to cooperate with God.”
Did you catch that? We have worked HARD to cooperate with God. I was reflecting on this yesterday during both of our morning worship services. Our staff and team had worked hard to cooperate and partner with the Holy Spirit and God showed up!
Once I preached on this concept of partnership and my text was from Philippians 1:3-6 (NIV) –
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel…
I talked about:
- Us partnering with God (God has done His part on the cross and He still draws men and women to Himself through the work of the Holy Spirit)
- The pastors and staff partnering with the congregation (we do things with excellence and will never embarrass them when they bring a guest)
- And the church partnering with us to reach this community (by inviting friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to church)
It’s a 3 part partnership and the theme I kept bringing up over and over was “We’re in this together!” This is our simple (not easy) plan to reach people for Christ in our community and it centers around this idea of partnership.
I was blown away yesterday in our worship by the God moments and times that the Holy Spirit orchestrated. We had some great moments that we worked hard to partner with the Holy Spirit. And then we had some moments that we didn’t plan for and God orchestrated.
So, how was your Sunday? How did God move in your service?