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| The Tangible Kingdom Primer |
Inviting In:
integrating sojourners into
the community as a result of
with intentional hospitality
and compassion
As Emmaus City Church steps into Spring 2025 with a focus on prayer, holiness, courage, and faith (i.e. good risk and trust), we're revisiting a map for a 2-month journey that helped shape us for our first decade as the first congregation of missional communities (MCs) in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The Tangible Kingdom Primer: An Eight-Week Guide to Incarnational Community helped our first City Group (MC) lean into apprenticeship with Jesus together. And the memories, lessons, and formative experiences have continued to shape people among Emmaus City in fruitful ways to this day. You can read more here:
Apprenticeship in Jesus' Way
Apprenticeship in Jesus' Way
While one brief post can never replace what day-by-day meditations, practices, steps of faith, and reflections provide, this adapted excerpt from Week 6 (Tuesday, April 8 — Monday, April 14, 2025) of The TK Primer is provided as a review of content to come back to and to provide food for thought for when City Groups connect for our Sabbath gathering on the 5th day (Saturday, April 5 in this case).
Inviting in w/ Hospitality
and Compassion
Day 1: Exploration
We've found that
hospitality and friendship are often
the quickest paths to
creating environments where
saint and sojourner can
experience God together.
Many people would never have walked
into a church building on their own.
They were drawn to our
through our willingness to let our lives
overlap with theirs.
But over time these relationships
laid the foundations for
a very real community of faith.
Creating opportunities for people
to participate in the Christian community
is a key part of building
the tangible Kingdom of God.
When we see people outside,
go outside to talk.
When a block party invitation is given,
we go, or we host one.
When the snow falls hard,
we shovel everyone's sidewalk.
When a neighbor's child
is in a school play or athletic event,
we show up to support them.
We're the ones that bake holiday cookies
for co-workers or neighbors.
We do this in the regular rhythm of life
as our calling and
without any strings attached.
Key Exploration Question
How are you making yourself available to the people around you?
Day 2: Meditation
Let this thought motivate you:
People are watching you.
Individually and as a community
you are a picture
of what God is like to people
It's a privilege and responsibility
to understand that whether it's
your children, your spouse,
neighbors, co-workers, or friends
you've been hanging with for years,
your life is a book about God.
("Be mindful of how you act
and what you say;
you may be the only
Bible someone ever reads."
Time always reveals who you are
and how important God is in your life.
If people can find a chapter in the story
of your life they can identify with
or find help from,
they will move toward you ...
and toward God.
As people watch your life and actions
you are either discipling them
toward a life of trusting in God or
toward a life of trusting in self.
Read
Key Meditation Questions
What do you hope people see in your life?
What opportunities are there for this to happen?
Day 3: Change
If people have been watching you and have discovered something they like, they'll eventually be watching your community.
One person is a good witness,
but a whole community
is much more powerful.
Most churches think of their mission as creating a place that is attractive to unbelievers. This usually doesn't people with much time for observation and relationship. It is more focused on moving people across the line into belief.
tries first to create a relational environment
to which sojourners can belong
so that they can feel or see aspects of
(1)
Know the Story
Get more familiar with
the Bible as one big story —
God's story.
Get to know the stories
of the people in your community
and help each other see how
your stories intersect
and mirror God's story.
(2)
Listen
Set aside regular times
to just listen to God.
Listen 'backward' through
time in God's Word.
You can actively listen 'forward'
to hear what God is saying to you today
through His Spirit and
through your community.
(3)
Celebrate
Gather throughout the week
with your community to share stories
and celebrate all that God is
doing in and amongst you.
Invite others to these celebrations
as a way of displaying
God's extravagant blessings.
(4)
Bless
Intentionally bless others
through words, gifts, or actions.
God desires that all nations —
all people —
would be blessed through Jesus.
Seek God's direction
for who He would have you
tangibly bless each week.
(5)
Eat
Regularly eat meals with others
as a reminder of our common need
for God and His faithfulness
to provide both physically and spiritually.
Try and eat one meal each week
with at least one sojourner
enjoying the meal with you.
(6)
ReCreate
Take time each week
to rest, play, create and restore
beauty in ways that display the Gospel,
resting in Jesus' completed work
on our behalf.
Cultivate this Gospel rhythm of rest
and create — ReCreate — in your life.
This kind of approach gives a curious sojourner ample "Zacchaeus tree time," or time to learn about and be transformed by this community called the Kingdom of God.
Key Change Consideration
What are some practical ways you can help to create an atmosphere of belonging for sojourners, "a spiritually curious God-seeker or a traveler who has intersected the missional community"?
Day 4: Action
Imagine Zacchaeus as Jesus tells him that He is coming over. Zacchaeus is excited about his guest, but he's probably scared to death to have his life exposed. His house was going to reflect all the money he had made at the expense of other people. Basically, he was fearful to expose his life because it exposed his sin. No wonder he so quickly offered to sell half of his possessions. Zach was cleaning house.
If you are serious about letting the Gospel transform your life, one of the things that will happen is that it will begin to expose some areas of sin. Have you begun to experience this? If so, what is being exposed? What do you need to repent of?
Here are some areas to think about: relationships with family and friends, personal integrity, use of time, money, sex, anger, selfishness, sinful motives, pride, judgemental attitudes, hypocritical thinking.
Action Idea
+ Have a big housecleaning day.
Get rid of the junk.
Give the useful things away,
have a yard sale, or
sell them on Facebook Marketplace.
Save the money and
use it to bless someone.
Day 5: Community
Read
Group Discussion:
Read through the scriptures. Talk about the things that God values and what these values might look like in the context of your own community.
Day 6: Calibration
When Jesus called him down from the tree, Zacchaeus was being introduced to the entire community of Jesus' followers.
Jesus, in a single moment of
was drawing Zacchaeus
and simultaneously call him
Key Calibration Consideration
Just like Zacchaeus, our response to God and His community should be a deliberate move to remove our own barriers to mission. Make a list of the things you could get rid of in order to free yourself from materialism.
Day 7: ReCreate
Rest and consider:
Where in your life are you
still trusting in your possessions,
talent or hard work
to earn God's favor and blessings
now or in the future?
Jesus calls us to lay all that down and
rest in His ability to shape our lives
and eternal destinies.
Read
Inviting In Worship Songs
Next Post
TKP Wk 7: Become an Apprentice
Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back.
Kindle and seize us.
Be our fire and our sweetness.
Let us love. Let us run ...
Let us sing a new song,
Not with our lips but with our lives.
+ North African St. Augustine
May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan
