Celebrating in Hope

Nuts and bolts of the Hope Avenue

By Linda Rex, Elder

Our journey in GCI towards Healthy Church includes a deeper understanding of our hope in Christ. Our Hope Avenue team ensures that our Sunday services provide a warm welcome, fellowship, worship, and inspired preaching, which refresh us with the hope of Jesus.

Markers of a healthy Hope Avenue

The Hope Avenue team prepares all aspects of the Sunday service, from parking lot to sanctuary to fellowship hall. The Hope Avenue team works together to welcome, include, and integrate into the life of the church, all those who attend. The fellowship and Sunday service enable each person to meet with, in a personal and united way, our triune God. Renewed with the hope of Jesus, those who attend are sent out with this good news. In this way, the Hope Avenue team shares with Jesus in his divine ministry by the Spirit.

Signs of unhealth

Members of a church with an unhealthy Hope Avenue might not notice new guests, or swarm new people at the door and scare them away. Worse, the pastor may bring attention to guests when they prefer not to be noticed. There is limited or no signage in an unhealthy Hope Avenue, and no one offers to help guests find the restroom, children’s room, snacks, or the sanctuary. Guests are often not told they are welcome to join in the pre-service fellowship or study group. Youth and teens are often ignored. Seniors are not always given the support they need as they move from the parking lot to the sanctuary and back.

An unhealthy Hope Avenue worship service is more focused on the content of the service, the speaker, or singers than on relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The service is disjointed and messy because little planning has been done. The music is often more focused on our human experience of God than on worshipping God. An unhealthy Hope Avenue sermon is often teaching a Bible Study rather than preaching about Jesus, who he is and who we are in him. In an unhealthy Hope Avenue service, communion often focuses more on the items on the table than on the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Re-center our ministry in Christ

The writer of Hebrews reminds us who Jesus Christ is. He is the exact image of our heavenly Father (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus, after his life, death, and resurrection, ascended to sit at his Father’s right hand in glory (Hebrews 8:1; 10:12; 12:2). In Jesus, we are seated in face-to-face union and communion with our Father in the Spirit (Hebrews 17:22, 24; Colossians 3:3). Jesus stands as the true minister in the temple. He is our high priest who offers the things of God to us and our things up to God, perfected in himself (Hebrews 8:1-2; 5:7-10). As the mediator of the new covenant, ratified in his own blood, Jesus stands in our place, on our behalf (Hebrews 9:15). It is in Christ that we are perfected and sanctified “for all time” (Hebrews 10:11-15). This gives us great hope, for all that we offer up to God is welcomed and received with joy in and through Jesus by the Spirit.

Our worship and fellowship as participation

The Hope Avenue is focused on reminding us of who Jesus Christ is. Our place is in his own intimate relationship with his Father in the Spirit. Here, amid the fellowship of Father and Son in the Spirit, we find our hope. This hope we have in Jesus is the basis of our worship and message and fellowship. Our rescue, our redemption, and presence in God’s life, is the work of all members of the Trinity. We worship and praise the one triune God, and each Person within the one being of the Trinity. As we fellowship with one another, we share in the inner life and love of Father, Son, and Spirit. So, we include each person within and without the walls of our church building in this fellowship. Jesus Christ is our hope, the Trinity is our God of hope, and we want each person to experience this hope as we gather. Therefore, as we prepare for and hold our Sunday service, we help each person to see and share in Christ’s own life with the Father in the Spirit (Heb. 10:19-25).

• How does the way in which we treat guests or new people influence their ability to experience the hope we have in Jesus Christ?
• Look at your parking lot, your building, your activities, and your worship service from the point of view of a visitor. How easy is it for a new person to figure out where to go and how to participate in pre-church activities or the worship service? What might be done differently to make this process more comfortable for them?
• What are some ways in which new attendees may be integrated into the life of your church? What are some obstacles that may be standing in the way of this?
• When your church gathers for pre-church or post-church activities, or activities during the week, who is not an active participant? Is this due to choice, or are they being overlooked or excluded? How might they be included as full participants in the life of the church?
• Consider your Sunday sermons. Are they merely instructional or are they inspirational? What is the difference? Why is it important to inspire people with the hope we have in Jesus?