Sunday Services

Our Sunday Services ... Everyone struggles with the challenges of life. Sometimes this personal journey can seem like a lonely and isolating one. The exciting thing about God's eternal purpose is that none of us have to make this journey alone. God opens the window to an altogether different orientation for life. Through Christ, God offers to baptize us into the spiritual body of His Son, known as the church. Here, in Christ we become members of Christ and of one another, recreated in an altogether new humanity -- redeemed, chosen and regenerated by God in order to become His content and expression. Facing life is about perspective and the inner lenses through which we "see" things. Often our own perspectives are faulty because of our sins, our independence and our wounds. Meeting together in God's presence as His church means finding time to allow God to impart His Life to us and give us His perspective on reality. When we meet together to worship, to fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and to hear the instruction of God's word, we gain God's healing perspective for our life.
Our Sunday services at Church in the Oaks are an informal time of gathering together as Christ's one body where we can be exposed to God's grace and the life of His Spirit so that we can be saturated, permeated and organically joined to Christ to share in His life, position and mission. Our gatherings are about enhancing the most important relationships in our lives: First, our relationship with Christ and secondly our relationship with others in His body. God Himself is a relationship. God is a trinity (three-one) of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and our lives are to reflect this interdependence and oneness in our relationship with other members of Christ's one body. Together we can become in God what we never could become by ourselves following our own isolated and independent path. Traveling through life on a shared journey with fellow believers open our lives to the contributions, input, wisdom and fellowship that our lives will need to stay encouraged and focused on what really matters. Our services follow a simple format seen in the book of Acts. There it says, "They [the believers] devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." (Acts 2:42). In the space of about an hour and a half, we start our gatherings with instruction from God's Word, then share testimonies, examine ourselves at the Lord's table and conclude spending some time in worship and prayer.
Collectively, we seek to make our services an authentic place of encountering the living, resurrected Christ. God intends the church to be a lighthouse, a beacon of direction and guidance to those lost in the stormy and dark waters of a life lived without orientation towards God. Jesus said to His people, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill can not be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house." (Matthew 5:14, 15) We can testify that here in our corporate gatherings, we are a people who have discovered the light of Christ reflecting in His body the church.