Speaker 1Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the word of the Lord.
Speaker 2Thanks be to God. When I was a kid, I used to regularly lock my bedroom door, put the Jock Jams 95 CD in my boom box, crank it to full volume. And do high light reel level slam dunks on my door frame basketball goal. Pretended I was a literal NBA superstar, an actual Jock jamming. In middle school, my older brother started guitar lessons and got a Dan Electro electric guitar for Christmas that year. He walked in on me a few months later with his guitar hanging around my neck in front of our families. He was only full length mirror, with a pair of yellow lens sunglasses on and a beanie, pretending I was the lead singer of the rock band Finger 11, whose album I had just burned off of Napster. In high school, my family moved from Nashville to Southern Florida, where we got a house with a swimming pool, complete with a pool basketball goal. And as a 16 year old, I made countless game winners from the corner, crowd going wild every single time. We all grew up doing this, some version of it, escaping our actual lives into fantasy, into aspirations of who we might become, lives we imagine better than the one we're living in the present, into improvements upon ourselves and our lives. And escaping our actual lives into fantasy, into aspirations of who we might become, lives we imagine better than the one we're living in the present, into improvements upon ourselves and our lives. And escaping our actual lives into fantasy is something that's really cute in kids, but it ages poorly in adults. My closest friend growing up, the neighbor I biked around streets with, whose window I would pelt with pebbles in the summertime to see if he was home and could come out and play. I knew his dad as well as I knew any man except my own. Shared barbecues and backyard football games and plenty of sleepovers at his house, but one day his dad just up and walked out on his mom. And then it turned out that his dad had been walking out on his mom the whole time, only it finally surfaced. He'd been escaping his life in secret, escaping the promises he made to one woman and the commitments he made to a couple kids into fantasy, into aspiration, into a life he imagined better than the one he was actually living. And it was not cute at all. But escape doesn't have to be that dramatic, it can be subtle and be just as debilitating. Another friend, much later in my life, grew up in a home with a father so particular, so angry, he felt safe by holding on to a very tight and specific order within their home. Thousands of little unwritten rules, I learned a new one every time I was over, about noise and food and everything. And after a while, I knew that I didn't know, that I wasn't safe and neither was anyone else because everyone, even his own wife and children, was tiptoeing around this man, trying not to poke the bear. He was escaping his life, his promises to love and serve into a personal kingdom of control and order. Now that's far more subtle and less scandalous, but it's no less debilitating. In Portland, as it is in heaven, we are in the midst of our annual vision series when we return to the very heartbeat, the essentials, of who we are as Bridgetown Church. And so far we've covered practicing the way of Jesus, the ancient and modern invitation beyond belief alone to a whole life of apprenticeship, together in Portland, the essential role that community and only community can play. And on the docket for today is living by a common rule, the practices of Jesus that comprise the way of Jesus, how they've been lived most formatively throughout history, and how we are picking up that ancient invitation and living those practices today. And that takes us back to these words from Jesus in Matthew chapter 11: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble and hard, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Easy, light, rest, these are very attractive words. They're universally desired invitations, words that we associate with effortlessness, escape from responsibility, pleasure; easy, light, rest. These are descriptors we typically associate with worklessness, but they're the very words that Jesus attributed to work. You see, a yoke was an ancient instrument for hard work. It was a wooden bar laid across the necks of oxen to aid them in carrying a heavy plow. Hard work. In the words of Biblical Scripture: "A yoke is a work instrument. Thus when Jesus offers a yoke, he offers what we might think tired workers need least. They need a mattress or a vacation, not a new yoke. But Jesus realizes that the most restful gift he can give the tired is a new way to carry life. Realism sees that life is a succession of burdens. We cannot get away from them. Thus, instead of offering escape, Jesus offers equipment." A yoke is a work instrument, and a yoke is also the term that an ancient Hebrew rabbi would use to refer to their teachings. A rabbi's syllabus, a pithy definition of how you must live to become a disciple or an apprentice of this particular rabbi. Ancient disciples warned that a yoke is a work instrument. A yoke is a work instrument. of life. That's a rule. It's a straight path between who I am today and life and life to the full. Bridgetown Church is a community of apprentices with a common rule living right at our core. And in the church today, that makes us peculiar. But in the church historic, it makes us ordinary. Rule of life is a modern exception, but it's the ancient expectation. Its origins go all the way back to the 4th and 5th century early Celtic movement, but some trace it even further than that to the Christian desert fathers and mothers. Every monastic movement in history, every last one of them decided at some point we need a rule of life to bind us and hold us together. It made its way into the traditions of mystics, Catholics, Protestants, evangelicals, and the world of spiritual formation. You will find rule of life in the modern writing. The writings of Dallas Willard, Pete Scazzaro, Ruth Haley Barton, Rich Valotis, Marjorie Thompson, Richard Foster, and Robert Mulholland, just to name a few. Pretty much every robust Christian discipleship group, community, or cohort culminates in the creation of a rule of life. All to say we're not talking about a particular practice for believers of a certain personality type or life stage or who find themselves with a certain margin of time and commitment. A rule of life is the historic container for apprenticeship to Jesus from the very earliest communities all the way up to today. But we here at Bridgetown, we don't keep a rule of life because a bunch of historic churches did or because a bunch of modern churches don't. We keep a rule because we have come to believe that joy is found not in escaping our lives into fantastic dreams of who we could become, but in escaping our lives into fantastic dreams of who we could become, but joy is found in inhabiting our lives, only to discover that God is waiting to meet us as who we actually are. Jesus lived by a rule, and he called all of his apprentices to share a rule in common for the sake of rest. And the way that Jesus explained that, how a rule could lead to rest, how intentionally embracing something that seems to be a very difficult thing to do, and how intentionally embracing something that seems to be a very a common rule is the hidden in plain sight invitation to rest, freedom, and joy. And for all of that, we're going to need a picture. Actually, I think that invitation is so upside down in our modern culture that we're going to need three pictures, three tools or work instruments that, like the easy yoke of Jesus, offer rest to those who know how to use them. Take my anchor, my cell, my vows upon you, and learn from me. You see, first, a rule of life is like an anchor. You know, a boat drops anchor in order to stay put. A sailor dropping anchor is acknowledging a fundamental fact about the waters of the ocean, that there's always a current. Even when I can't feel it, I'm being pulled in a particular direction. And if you're standing aboard a boat, you shouldn't feel the anchor in use, except in what circumstance? When suddenly there's that little tug, and you realize that you've been slowly drifting or migrating all along without even feeling it. We're pulled in many directions by the cultural current, and changing wind of our circumstances. And a rule of life is just an apprentice dropping anchor, who's trying to keep put where they intend to stay. And you don't need an anchor when the waters are entirely calm, and you're not moving in any particular direction. To drop an anchor is to acknowledge, I've sailed the ocean long enough to know that a storm is bound to kick up sooner or later. And even if it doesn't, there's always a current in these waters, pulling me somewhere, subtly and slowly. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make sure that there's always a current in these waters, pulling me somewhere, subtly and slowly. An apprentice adopting a rule of life is acknowledging the principle that in a fallen world, there's always a current. Storms are bound to kick up in my life sooner or later. And even when I can't feel it, I'm always being pulled by this world we live in, in a particular direction. Now that means a rule of life isn't a set of oars. You shouldn't need it in order to move. If your rule requires constant felt effort, it's too intense. A rule of life is an anchor. It's meant to hold you where you intend to stay. And that means if you're keeping put in the current of your circumstances, interruptions, distractions, and anxieties, if all of that isn't pulling you away from your center, you shouldn't even know your rule of life is there. You're simply at rest within your rule. Now that means, practically speaking, that a rule of life is not a set of oars. It's a set of oars. It's a set of oars. Life is always realistic and never aspirational. We're not talking about a spiritual wellness plan like weight watchers for the soul. This isn't a way of moving myself in an aspirational direction. It's just a way of anchoring my soul within the life that I've got a bad habit of escaping and welcoming the love of God and the imperfect self that I tend to always critique. I tend to always critique the love of God and the imperfect self that I tend to critique or self-improve. It's a way of welcoming the formative love of God into my real life. And it means a rule of life then should probably be about doing less rather than doing more. A rule of life isn't another thing to do. It is a new way to do all that I was already doing. Meaning a well-crafted rule of life should probably be more about subtraction than it is addition. Because most of us are over committed and over busy. A rule of life is a way of defining the essentials so that I can declutter my life from all that is inessential. And finally a rule of life is always about remaining. It's never about escaping. Because after all if Jesus is your rabbi you become like Jesus by remaining in the love of God in the life that you have. As Jesus says in John 15 as the father has loved me so I have loved you now remain in my love. Look friends life is hard. There was no warm-up. You were just thrust onto the playing field right here in the middle of the match. And now here you are raising kids and and building a job or a career and and trying to protect and to provide and trying to help others along. And what you were never really totally prepared for in the first place and are still in the thick of trying to figure out yourself. Life is hard. But here is your relief. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. A yoke. An anchor. Not an escape from this life. Just the proper equipment for it. And I'll give you rest. A yoke. An anchor. That's what a rule of life is. It is a way of living in the complex cluster of plans, interruptions, agitations, and disruptions that is your and my daily life and remaining in the love of God in the midst of all of it. The very love that fills me with peace that surpasses understanding in the face of it all. So a rule of life is an anchor. And a rule of life is what the ancient monastics called a cell. which has nothing to do with the prison. It's just more like a bedroom. It's the humble little dwelling that a particular monk would live within in the midst of their monastic community. There's this old rabbinic tale traced all the way back to the fourth century of a young apprentice in an ancient monastery. And he really wants to change, really wants to grow, to be formed like Jesus. He's ambitious for the spiritual life, so he eagerly approaches this wise old monk named Abba Moses, asking his advice. And the monk offers simply this. Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything. For my yoke is easy, Jesus said. That word easy, it's the Greek term krestos, and it can also be translated well-fitting. Stay in your cell, your dwelling. Stay in your community, your home, your relationships. All of their opportunities, limitations, agitations, and so forth, all of it suits you. It fits you just right. If it's life that you're looking for, you will find it not by escaping the life you have into the life you think you want, but by choosing the life you actually have. That's what distinguishes Jesus' yoke as easy. It's not about becoming someone else, some better other self. Or about being somewhere else and some aspirational best life now. It's about discovering everything I thought I wanted hidden right within the life that I have. Not because all of it is good, or even because all that I have or am dealing with today has been willed by God, but because all of my life as it is today is filled up with all of the love of God. The life you actually have, is the only place God can meet you. Who you actually are, is the only person God can love. So go sit in your cell. It will teach you everything. A rule of life is a cell of sorts. It's a willing embrace of limits, my internal and my external limits. It's a willing embrace of my personality type, my stage of life, the stage of spiritual maturity, what I'm in, what I'm wrestling with today, and what God seems to be really talking to me about thematically. And it's an embrace of all of my external limits, of the job that I'm in, the body I'm in, the family that I'm in, the home I live in, the community I find myself in. All of this, it's an embrace of all of it as the perfect conditions through which Christ can and does meet me, form me, love me. A rule of life, is a willing embrace of external and internal limits so that I can awaken to God meeting me within the cell that I live in. And when I do, the wildest thing happens. My cell begins to expand and expand into something like a spacious place, in the words of the psalmist. A rule of life is uniquely tailored to each individual, but the aim and end goal of every individual rule of life is common. To discern, discover the life I long for in the life I have. The aim and destination of every rule of life is joy. It is attuning to joy in the life that I'm actually living. Dallas Willard writes, The aim and substance of the spiritual life is not fasting, praying, hymn singing, frugal living, and so forth. Rather, it is the effective and full enjoyment of active love of God, God, and humankind in all the daily rounds of normal existence where we are placed. You know, to encourage literally means to put courage into someone. To enjoy, then, literally means to put joy where it lacks. A rule of life has as its aim to enjoy, to put joy, into the life that I'm actually living. I'm happy to say that I grew out of jock jams and rock star imitations and pool basketball fantasies. But I regret to admit that I never grew out of escaping. That I still find myself coping with my life in my worst moments by escaping into planning future pleasure to endure pain, present difficulty, scheming up what I'll do this weekend or how I'll rest next summer because right now it feels hard to live in. I still escape into grasping for control over small things when the big things in my life feel totally out of my control. And I'm guessing I'm not the only one. It seems to me there's two common ways that we escape our lives, and that is to fantasize, or minimize. Some of us fantasize. That's what I was doing with the Dan Electro in a full-length mirror. But others of us minimize, and that means taking myself less seriously than God does, and counting my life too ordinary, too inconsequential for the full attention of the maker of all I know and experience. When the truth is he's numbered my hairs, ordered my days, and loves me more personally and with greater awe than ever before. Some of us fantasize, that's what I was doing with the Dan Electro in a full-length mirror. But others of us minimize, and that means taking myself less seriously than God does, and counting my life too ordinary, and with greater fullness than I can possibly comprehend. So how can I stay in the love of God that gives me rest from all my planning and my grasping, all my big and small escaping, all my minimizing of myself? Those of us who grew up in America did so being taught to dream of who we could become. But the way we all grew up in Christ is by finding God increasingly in who we are. A rule of life is a holy invitation to reenter your actual life, to put two feet firmly down in it and live it to the full. Stay in yourself. Embrace your limits. Hold your anchor. Remain in God's love right in the midst of those limits. And then a rule of life is also a set of vows, like the ones we make today. We make at weddings. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when officiating a wedding, offered an infamous piece of advice to the bride and groom. Today you are young and very much in love and you think your love can sustain your marriage. It can't. Let your marriage sustain your love. So Bonhoeffer is looking at these two people just with a full heart of passionate love alive in them today, and nothing matters more than this person. I'm throwing every other plan out the window and he's saying something like, "Love the vision, and I can see that you really believe it. You really want it." And so you're going to need a set of vows. Vows are a container in which love can be planted so that it grows and flourishes. The New York Times columnist author David Brooks defines a commitment as falling in love with something or someone and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters. Vows are a container in which love can flourish. That's what Jesus was getting at in John 15. He's already made his vows to us, remember? Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. And now he's inviting us to reciprocate the vows to by active daily practice remain in his irrevocable love. Every vow we make to God then is of course secondary. To the vows he's already made to us. We love because he first loved us. But human vows to God are equally biblical. Cue Psalm 50. "I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens," says the Lord back to the psalmist. "For every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains and the insects of the fields are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Sacrifice thank-offerings to God. Fulfill your vows to the Most High and call on me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you and you will honor me." God doesn't need or even necessarily want your sacrifices. But he says he'll take your gratitude vows and prayers, gratitude to recognize where God is meeting you and how he's currently forming you. And vows to stay in your cell, to drop your anchor, and prayers to ask him for his help. That's all the rule of life is. A common rule is just a vow or a set of vows made in community. Gratitude is forming those rules into what's traditionally called a customary, meaning tailoring a common rule that all of us live to the way that I'm uniquely expressing that. In my particular stage and season. And prayer is reliance on the spirit, not the practices themselves for the sake of my formation. A rule of life is a series of vows I make to God. But the aim of those vows is not to take more control over my life, it's to surrender more control over to God. A rule of life might seem to a modern, westerner hyper individualist to be a way to codify, my spirituality to my preferences, but a rule of life is the humble acknowledgement of how little control I actually have. It's the courageous choice to surrender my illusion of control, surrender myself not to something like some set of practices I've codified for spiritual perfection, but to surrender myself to someone, to the God whose name is love. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines a vow as an act of generosity toward God. A vow made to God is just the giving of God, the only thing he really wants and the only thing we really have to give him, and that is more space within my inner life to take up residence in. It's love, never legalism or fear that drives us to make vows to a spouse, and it is love, never legalism or fear that drives us to make vows to God. So I'll close with this. You know, ironically, it's typically the most biblically educated with the greatest resistance to rule of life, insisting that a rule of life must be nothing more than a pathway to becoming Pharisees, not mature disciples, when the whole of Christian history insists that a rule of life is the container in which God's grace can grow up in me and you. Our era of church history is without doubt the most biblically educated era in the world. In church history, and we are also quite arguably the era with the least appetite for spiritual depth. And I do not think that's because we don't love Jesus. I think it's because we don't love ourselves. Not as who we are today. We don't love ourselves amid our imperfections and our flaws. We don't love our lives enough to stay in them. We don't understand that who I am and the life I live, and the life I have today is one and at the same time the life I'm trying to escape and the life Jesus is trying to inhabit. And so herein lies the great tragedy of the modern disciple. We are running from love in pursuit of love. What should we do then? Drop your anchor. Stay in your cell. Keep your vows. Let God plant you where you are and you will grow beyond your wildest dreams. Grow into the most joyful variety of constraint. The discovery of the life of God hidden right within the life that I already have. That's a rule of life. And that just leaves our rule of life. Meaning the common rule we invite all of you to live by is Bridgetown Church. And for that I'm going to pass it over to Gavin, our pastor of spiritual, formation, and the leader of our covenant community.
Speaker 3Our shared rule of life at Bridgetown Church has nine practices aimed at keeping us awake to the transforming love of God. I remember back in third grade when I learned to play the recorder. Does anybody remember playing the recorder in third grade? Despite it being both the beginning and the end of my musical career, I learned something really important. How you hold the instrument matters. There's a right side up and an upside down. There's a forward and there's a backward. And if it wasn't done correctly, you would hear sour discordant notes come out of it. Which is admittedly where the metaphor falls apart because I don't know that I've ever heard a not sour note come out of a recorder, but it's my only musical experience. So hold on to that. A rule of life in our hands is like a recorder in a third grader's hands. It's the same thing with music. It can be a source of frustration if held incorrectly, an accidental weapon against your neighbor in times of boredom, or a source of, if not music, then at least what the Bible calls a joyful noise. What I'm trying to say is that a rule of life is about posture. Postures help us in many ways. We use postures all the time around here. When we bless the kids, we as adults posture ourselves with our hands towards them to bless them, as they posture themselves with their hands open to receive, we lift our hands in a posture of worship when we sing, or kneel down on the ground if we're able in a posture of worship. After each teaching, which we're about to do, I'll have everyone stand. We will posture ourselves openly and say, "Come, Holy Spirit." A rule of life is like that last kind of posture, except instead of holding out our hands and saying, "Come, Holy Spirit," and waiting 45 to 60 seconds, we posture ourselves with our lives, wait for a year or more at a time, and say, "Come." "Come, Holy Spirit." So how do we at Bridgetown Church hold a rule of life? There are three postures I wanna offer to you. There's so many more, but we're gonna talk about three tonight. First, we hold our rule of life with open hands and open hearts, understanding that the goal of a rule of life is not mastery of the practices. The goal of a rule of life is the mystery of God's transformation. A well-lived rule of life is not about intensity. It's about intention. It's not about achieving or perfecting all of the practices. It's about allowing the Spirit to use each of the practices to open us up to the careful hand of God. And that leads us to the second posture. A rule of life is not about gaining more control. It is about offering more surrender. It's not a workout plan. It's not a diet plan for our spiritual life. It's not about getting our life in order or gaining more control. It's about repeatedly yielding again and again any control we thought that we had back to God, trusting that there is indeed life in surrender. And that leads us to the third posture. A rule of life is not about living into an ideal life. It is about living our actual life. Oftentimes, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time sometimes finding God when I'm praying. God, where are you? Where are you? And I think oftentimes it's because we're looking for God in a place he can't exist. We're looking for God in unreality, in some illusion land, usually known by the words, "if only." If only I could just fill in the blank, then God would finally fill in the blank. God only exists in our actual life. So there are more postures than that, but we're going to start with those three. Mystery, not mastery. Surrender, not control. And actual, not ideal. And those postures matter because while there are nine practices on Bridgetone's rule of life, the practices are not the most important piece. The practices, again, are merely different ways that we continue to place ourselves with openness before God's careful, loving hand that we might be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did. So our rule of life is organized around the kind of community we want to be. Every statement on our rule of life, which I'll read in just a second, are framed this way. We want to be a community of X and a culture of Y through the practice of Z. So I'm going to read these quickly. They're on our website if you want to look more in depth. But here's Bridgetone's rule of life. We want to be a community of communion with God and a culture of distraction and escapism through prayer. We want to be a community of courageous fidelity to orthodoxy and a culture of ideological compromise through the practice of prayer. A community of peace and quiet and a culture of anxiety and noise through the practice of solitude. A community of holiness and a culture of indulgence and immorality through the practice of fasting. A community of rest and celebration and a culture of hurry and exhaustion through the practice of Sabbath. A community of love and depth in a culture of individualism and superficiality through the practice of community. A community of contentment in a culture of consuming. A community of consumerism through the practice of generosity. A community of hospitality in a culture of hostility through the practice of witness. And a community of justice, mercy, and reconciliation in a culture of injustice and division through the practice of service. And that still leaves us with the question, how do we at Bridgetone Church share this rule of life? Well, for starters, it's infused into so much of what we do at Bridgetone. So just by showing up, you're going to receive some of it by osmosis. If you're in a community, for example, all of our community guides are written and built around one of these nine practices. We have practicing the way courses that we offer on Wednesday nights for you to dive deeper into one of the practices. And even your children, kids, and youth are integrating the practices in age and stage appropriate ways when they're meeting in their classes. And even if you're not able to do all nine of them, my encouragement would be pick one to three of them and try them out for a while. Consistently, again and again, reflect on them with God and with one another and let God transform you through them. But for those of you who are curious about adopting all nine of the practices, maybe you're sitting here and going, I guess I was doing-- I am doing six of them. That's great. What would it look like to add the other three? Or there's a hunger stirring in you for that. There's one specific invitation that I want to focus the rest of our time on, and that's the covenant community. This is what Chris was sharing about earlier when he shared his speech. story. In short, the covenant community is a group of people committed to integrating all nine practices on Bridgetown's rule of life into our own life for a year at a time as we journey together in group spiritual direction. But again, the goal is not the practices. The goal of the covenant community, or kind of our thesis statement, if you will, is this, to be freed by the love of God to joyfully live the life you already have. That's what we're aiming our community at. And there's three concepts in there I want to draw your attention to. First is the love of God. The love of God is the thing that heals me and transforms me. It's not the practices. It's not a rule of life. The love of God is the thing that heals me. Killian Noe has given her life to helping folks struggling with addiction up in Seattle, and she writes this, the spiritual practices have no power in themselves to heal and transform. These practices merely keep us in the process of growing up spiritually. Spiritual practices are what keep the doors of our hearts open to the power of the Spirit of God. And that Spirit, the Holy Spirit, does the healing and transforming. So Paul in the New Testament talks about in Christ everywhere. We are in Christ. That is an immutable thing that God has given to all of us who have given him our life. The practices do not push you deeper into your in Christ-ness, nor does, not doing the practices pull you away from being in Christ. The love of God is the thing that heals and transforms us. Secondly, freedom. Freedom is when we give space to the Spirit to unwind the deepest disordered desires and attachments in us, whatever they may be, too. Maybe the perception of others or to escape through something that I think I can control or to perfection. But what we're doing in the covenant community is not being freed to become perfect or whole or finally finished or all together. We're becoming free to orient ourselves towards God's love. Why? For joy. Joy is what happens as I come alive by the healing of God. Joy is not happiness. Joy is contentment. Joy is humility. No matter what my circumstance might be, joy is letting it be enough that I am present to this moment with God. So freedom, love, and joy, those are the scaffolding on which we build everything we do in the covenant community. And maybe that sounds great to you. You sound really excited about it. You're feeling it. But then you think adopting all nine practices for a whole year, that's a massive commitment. How do you know if you should do that? How do you know if you should adopt all nine practices for a year at a time? Well, to that end, we've created an eight-month discernment process called the covenant community course. It functions a little bit like basics does to getting into a community. We're helping you understand the invitation, helping you discern what is on offer, and then we're letting you join a community. This is what the covenant community course is. It's a discernment opportunity. This course spends eight months asking two questions. How is God wanting to heal or transform me in this season? And how can I most fully show up to participate and partner with him in that work? That's it. Notice that neither of those questions has anything to do directly with the covenant community. The covenant community course is an opportunity to slow down enough so that you can get a better grasp of the kind of transformation that God is wanting to do in you, what we in the covenant community call God's transformational desire. And the covenant community is only one option that we can say yes to what it is that God is doing in us. And so the course by discernment is split into three parts. The first part is discerning the course. The second is the practices. The third are next steps. During part one, we take six weeks to do three classes. Three classes to learn what the covenant community course actually is before you have to commit to the entire eight months of it. We spend time in daily prayer with journaling prompts aimed at understanding the personal themes of how God is wanting to transform us. And then at the end of those first six weeks, we'll have a better grasp of what God's up to in our life and how we can most fully participate in that. Which means that you may not be able to do that. You may not be able to do that. You may end your journey at the end of the course after part one. You might be in the covenant community course for six weeks. And I think that's awesome because the goal is not that you continue. It's not that you do it. The goal is that you have a better grasp on what God is doing in your life so that you can know how to say yes to it. But for those who do sense an invitation to continue, you're still curious. Maybe it is the nine practices. Part two dives directly and specifically into the practices one or two at a time. There's no point in the course where we're ever doing all nine of them together. We're doing them one or two at a time. And during those five months, we only meet five times as a whole course together, once per month, exploring not how to do the practice, but what that practice is meant to do to us. And during that time, we also start formation groups, groups of four to six people who meet once a month to do group spiritual direction, intentionally listening to and on behalf of one another as every one of us practices. And at the end of those five months, we end with part three, which is very similar to part one, where at the end of part one, we discerned continuing in the covenant community course. At the end of part three, we discerned continuing into the covenant community. We spend five more weeks of daily prayer and journaling prompts aimed at reflecting backwards on the course that we just finished, on the practices that we just did, wondering at God's invitation to us next. And then we spend three classes over that five weeks also working to understand the commitment of the covenant community. How do you build a customary? What does that mean? What does that entail? So that's the course. It starts next Sunday, and you can learn more and sign up online right now at bridgetown.church slash covenant. But I want to end with this. Who is this course for? Who is the covenant community course for? It is for anyone who wants more or anyone who wants to want more. It's for the mom of toddlers. It's for the single dad. It's for the young professional. It's for the youngsters. It is for anyone who hungers, anyone who wants to partner with God in the work that he's doing in you. You don't need to be doing all nine of the practices in order to sign up, and I'm not going to convince you in the course whether or not you should or shouldn't do that. I simply want to help you gain clarity around what God is doing in your life so that you can fully consent to that work. So who is this course not for? Really, no one. But there is one commitment, one requirement that we ask before joining the course, and it's that you've been in a Bridgetown community for at least a year, and that you continue staying in that community throughout the course. And the main reason for that is that the covenant community course and a Bridgetown community are aimed at different things. And as we just read on the Rule of Life, community is one of our practices, and Bridgetown communities are how we practice that here at Bridgetown. And so the purpose of the covenant community course is to teach you how to live a life that is narrow and wide. So whether or not the covenant community course is the next right step for you, all of us can reflect on its aim and ask ourselves just a few questions. Here's the aim again, to be freed by the love of God to joyfully live the life you already have. So what's the life that you already have? What are the limitations and the agitations? Not the life you think you should have, not the life that you want one day, not the life you're waiting for, the life that you actually have right now. And what's keeping you from living that actual life with joy? What lies are you believing from the enemy about your life that holds you back from the joy that God has for you? And how is God trying to love you into freedom? What could it look like for you to release yourself into his love? To be freed by the love of God?
Speaker 2Hey friends, Tyler here to share with you that registration for our ninth annual Holy Spirit conference is now open. The theme of this year's conference is the wedding at Cana, and we'll spend time together in the text exploring the rich themes of Jesus's first miracle turning water into wine. Join us in person at the Keller Auditorium in downtown Portland, on February 26th and 27th, 2027. I'm so excited that you'll be joining us in Portland once again and anticipating being with you all. You can register right now at HolySpiritCo.me.
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