Series introduction Purpose and Values: sharing our faith

Got a battery change there so it should be a little bit easier to hear me now! So, today we are beginning a new teaching series and this will see us through to about the October. And it's about one year ago that we had our Elders agree what our Purpose and our Values should be as a church congregation and so, probably once a year or so, I’ll teach a little series on that just to bring us back to our core DNA, to remind us what we're about as a congregation, Now, our Purpose and Values are rooted in Jesus which is clearly important and foundational, yet, what Jesus came to fulfill, is rooted in the heart of God from the Old Testament too so, we don't just ignore the Old Testament. And so, today and in the series I’ll be starting in the Old Testament but looking to the New as well and I hope it will help us see that what we belong to has been in the heart and vision of God for a very long time, and that might give us a different glimpse of things, and maybe give us greater confidence and courage. But, over this past year a number of the teams within our Kirk Session have been utilizing our Purpose and Values to look at the activities that they do as a team to say ‘Well, looking at this value, does that mean we should do things anything differently?’ It's almost like wearing a pair of lenses with the Purpose and Values, and looking at things a bit differently and that's been helpful because sometimes they have seen things differently. They say ‘Oh, we could contribute to this if we do something a wee bit different.’ And so, with this series, I’d like us to wear a pair of lenses, a pair of glasses and the particular pair of lenses I’d like us to bring to our passages is that of ‘sharing our faith’, sharing our faith. As we look at these passages what might it say to us about sharing our faith? What encouragement might there be? What vision might they help us see? What understanding of the heart of God as it relates to sharing our faith might they reveal, so we are encouraged and equipped. Maybe it's too much to expect, but there's a lot in this series, hopefully a lot of good, and so we're going to hear our bible passage read for us now by Jennifer.