The Dead Church

March 22, 2019

DAILY READING

Revelation 3:1-6
This weekend’s reading: Mark 14:66-72

FIELD NOTES

It’s a harsh word that God delivers to John about the church in Sardis- a church that appears alive but is indeed dead.  The book of Revelation is apocalyptic literature.  This means that while it shows us the “end times,” it creates for us an eschatology, a theology of end times, and knowing these end times shows us how to live in the present.  When we know what the future is, what we want the future to be, it in theory at least, changes the way that we live in the present so that we can make that future a living reality.   For example, if you know you want to be 20 pounds lighter in 3 months, you start eating differently and exercising now.  I think John writes the letters to these churches in hope that these churches will realize their present reality (dead church in the case of Sardis), will envision God’s kingdom, and then will work to build God’s Kingdom here on earth.

QUESTIONS FOR THE FIELD 

• How are you or we dead or dying? 
• How is God calling us to be more alive or awake as Jesus called the disciples to wake up in the Garden of Gethsemane?  
• What does God’s Kingdom, God’s ideal, look like to you?  How can the church be about that work?

PRAYER GUIDE

Lord, help us to become more and more alive to how you are calling us to build Your Kingdom on this earth.  Give us a vision of what that Kingdom looks like and give us the tools for building that Kingdom here, right now.  Amen.