Ash Wednesday

We invite you to our Ash Wednesday worship gathering on Wednesday, February 17. Time TBD. We will come together on this day to focus our hearts on the season at hand, Lent, remembering our own mortality. We will do this through prayer, hearing the scriptures read aloud, worship, and being marked with palm ash as a visual sign of our repentance. Jesus retreated into the wilderness and fasted for forty days to prepare for His three year ministry here on earth. It was for Him a time of contemplation, reflection, and preparation. By observing Lent, most Christians join Jesus on His retreat. This is a season of contemplation, reflection, and preparation in our discipleship and following Him. Lamentations 3:40 (NLT): "Instead, let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn again in repentance to the LORD." 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NLT): "Examine yourselves to see if your faith is really genuine. Test yourselves. If you cannot tell that Jesus Christ is among you, it means you have failed the test." Psalm 26:2 (NLT): "Put me on trial, LORD, and cross-examine me. Test my motives and affections." Joel 2:12-13 (NLT): "That is why the Lord says, 'Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Don't tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.' Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish."

Time for Community Worship

Our worship gathering starts at 9:00 am.

Bridge of Hope

New Hope is committed to bridge the gap of hunger in the community among the homeless. If you would like to participate once a month, call the church office or email us for more information.

 

Without A God-Breathed Vision People Lose Hope and Die

Purpose

We are a community of followers of Jesus Christ, committed to live by faith, to be known by love, and to be a voice of hope.

Equip for Mission

Christ gifts the church with apostles (extend the gospel), prophets (know God's will), evangelists (communicator of the gospel), pastors (nurture and protect), and teachers (understand and explain) with the responsibility to equip (disciple) God's people to do His work (Ephesians 4:11-16).

The Mission of God: The Inward Journey

Our large gathering in community is a time of worship, celebration, stories of God's activity, gifts of the Holy Spirit, encouragement, teaching, giving, Holy Communion, water baptism, Children's and Jr. High (Road 678) Community Groups, etc.

Missional Communities are the central discipleship arm and primary vehicle to accomplish our vision. The essential purpose of smaller communities is the practicing of love and trust and the growing into Christlikeness in a space of intentional grace.  Missional Communities help us learn about and experience the incredible love of God, which helps us in turn to love Him and ourselves.

The Mission of God: The Outward Journey

Loving God and ourselves helps us to love our spouse, children, family, neighbors, co-workers, and others around us. God calls us to love others and to go into all the world to make disciples. The mission of God leads us to be good stewards of creation and involved in God's justice (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 58; Matthew 25).

Great Quotes by Henri Nouwen

Prayer:   "To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. … Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts - beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful - can be thought in the presence of God. … Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue."

Attractional:  "Jesus refused to be a stunt man.  He did not come to walk on hot coals, swallow fire, or put his hand in the lion's mouth to demonstrate that he had something worthwhile to say."

Leadership:  "Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time.  Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance."

Power and Control:  "It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life..."  "The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat.  Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead.  Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love."

Name-Calling:  "Words like 'right-wing,' 'reactionary,' 'conservative,' 'liberal,' and 'left-wing' are used to describe people's opinions, and many discussions then seem more like political battles for power than spiritual searches for the truth."

Interesting!

It seems like the church in the last couple of decades is at possible risk of spending more time entertaining than equipping people for God's mission. We are highly vulnerable to a fixation with technological savvy and "cool" communication. This can often become a substitute for the Holy Spirit's power in our lives and in our pursuing a lifestyle that incarnates Jesus' ministry and power. We have a growing passion at New Hope for Jesus Himself, the Kingdom of God, and a pursuit for cultivating disciples as Kingdom agents on mission.

Worship

We should jealously guard God's glory in worship. It is not about us! We ought to be sensitive to the issue of showmanship verses worship. Worship is to be Christ-centered, not human-centered. Whenever the focus becomes the music or being trendy, cool, or gauging the experience by emotional responses rather than the glory of God, it should make us feel uncomfortable. We must value the activity of the Holy Spirit in our midst during worship and the importance of being sensitive to God. We can come to worship with an expectation to meet with God rather than putting on or experiencing a show. Worship is about an audience of One! May there be a strong "encounter" in worship - the people of God, in the presence of God, pouring out the praises of God.

Training Center for Love

Church is not so much an institution, but more of a training center for love - loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others (Matthew 22:37-40).