Spiritual Practices

Liv­ing As Jesus Lived

JOURNEY is our life of fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Jesus. The more we fol­low Jesus, the more we will mature as his fol­low­ers, and be trans­formed into his like­ness.  We believe that dis­ci­ple­ship takes place by both learn­ing and liv­ing the way of Jesus.  We desire not only to be a peo­ple who study the Bible, but live the Bible. Our jour­ney is every moment of every day ~ 24 – 7-365. By fol­low­ing the way of Jesus, every­day, we are allow­ing God to use us as he did Jesus to change the world.

LEARN - We will learn in a Scrip­tural Rhythm as a com­mu­nity, fol­low­ing the teach­ing from our weekly gatherings.

The Bible was meant to be stud­ied and read within com­mu­nity. At Emmanuel, we work through books of the Bible dur­ing our weekly gath­er­ings. Each per­son is encour­aged to read and study along with teach­ings from the week­end. Because we are Jesus-centered, we spend a lot of our time study­ing the Gospels.

Lov­ing As Jesus Loved

COMPASSION is best expressed as a heart-felt desire to meet the needs of oth­ers. Around us there are hurt­ing peo­ple — the hun­gry, the lonely, the sick, and the oppressed. Just as Jesus reached out to those who were hurt­ing, we do the same. We believe that “lit­tle things done with great love will change the world”. We desire to be a peo­ple that loves the way that Jesus loves — unconditionally.

BLESS  - We will bless at least one per­son every day — bless­ing those that are part of Emmanuel and those who are not.

Bless­ing oth­ers with no strings attached is vital to our life as Christ-followers. This will take dif­fer­ent forms. We might sim­ply send an e-mail encour­age­ment express­ing our affir­ma­tion. We might write a let­ter, deliver a gift, or say a word of encour­age­ment. It may sound dif­fi­cult, but you’d be sur­prised how easy it is once you’ve get into the hang of it. And it’s mar­velous to be in a com­mu­nity of such sup­port and consideration.

Giv­ing As Jesus Gave

WORSHIP is so much more than singing a song. At Emmanuel we believe the best way to wor­ship God is to give self­lessly of our time, tal­ents, trea­sures, and rela­tion­ships to God’s King­dom. As effec­tive Stew­ards, we honor God with our life not allow­ing our wor­ship to be just words with no action. Our wor­ship gath­er­ings end with a response time allow­ing us to respond to God in var­i­ous ways — empha­siz­ing the action of Giv­ing. Jesus is our exam­ple in giv­ing. He was will­ing to give up his life for us show­ing us uncon­di­tional love —  we will fol­low by giv­ing as Jesus gave.

LISTEN - We com­mit our­selves weekly to lis­ten­ing to the prompt­ings of God in our lives.

Prayer is a vital part of the life of a Christ-follower. At Emmanuel, we make a weekly com­mit­ment to search out God’s voice in order to find direc­tion for our lives. By spend­ing time lis­ten­ing to God, he can guide our stops as mis­sion­ar­ies in our cul­ture. We will ensure a weekly time of soli­tude to lis­ten to God.

Belong­ing As Jesus Belonged

COMMUNITY is lived out as we under­stand that just as Jesus belonged in com­mu­nity with the Father & the Spirit, we belong to one another. We want to redis­cover that essence of com­mu­nity and live together in a uni­fied way. We believe that we are the body of Christ, the priest­hood of believ­ers, where every­one brings their gifts, tal­ents, and pas­sions together in order to be light to the world. By spend­ing time together and shar­ing in each oth­ers lives, our rela­tion­ships deepen and we part­ner together in build­ing God’s Kingdom.

EAT - We will eat with oth­ers at least once a week.

Most of us eat 3 meals a day = 21 meals in a week. Each week, let’s make room at the table for some­one else — either a fam­ily from Emmanuel or some­one out­side our com­mu­nity of faith. By inten­tion­ally shar­ing a meal with some­one, we are get­ting to know them in a deeper way. For some peo­ple, this is dif­fi­cult, so they part­ner with more out­go­ing peo­ple to make this an eas­ier task. Jesus shared around the table with his fol­low­ers, and it is a core prac­tice for our com­mu­nity at Emmanuel.

Going As Jesus Was Sent

MISSION sim­ply means “sent”. We are a sent peo­ple, called by God to go into the world and love oth­ers. This requires us to step out­side the “Chris­t­ian Bub­ble” and engage the cul­ture that God has put in front of us. By spend­ing time with our neigh­bors, co-workers, and friends, we share with them the love of Jesus. God sent Jesus as a mis­sion­ary and now God is send­ing us into the world as mis­sion­ar­ies to love others.

SHARE — We will share the sto­ries of how God is send­ing us into the world.

As we live out the way of Jesus, we see glimpses of Heaven break­ing out on earth. These sto­ries are shared dur­ing our weekly gath­er­ings. God is glo­ri­fied through our sto­ries. In addi­tion, our sto­ries encour­age one another to live out our “Sent-ness”. Each of us are mis­sion­ar­ies, and these sto­ries help us see how God is chang­ing our world.