Take a Step With Us!

Faith, following Jesus – discipleship – is a life-long journey of following after Jesus, one foot in front of the other, step by step by step. We go forward and we get closer, but we also never ‘arrive’. It’s life-long, it never ends.

Where Christians so often get it wrong is when we think that, once we’ve done the religious thing (attend church, believe and get baptized, ‘get saved’), we’re done. We’ve arrived. That’s where faith ends.

But the thing is, that’s not where faith ends. That’s where faith begins.

It is, after all, a life-long journey – step by step – of following Jesus.

From wherever you are today – wherever you’re starting from: you have steps to take.

And that’s what we’re going to do together this year at Central: take steps to follow Jesus, together.

Central Steps, you might say.

It’ll take two inter-related forms.  The first is that for each season of the year (fall, winter, spring, and summer), we’ll have a 6-7 week sermon series on Sundays that centers on a different aspect of following Jesus.

The second is the big change:

We’re launching something called Step Groups.

Step Groups are (micro) groups of 3-4 people who, over those 6-7 weeks per season, will (ideally) gather together weekly to go over what we talked about on Sunday, being guided by a work-book called Discipleship Essentials, and pray for one another – all to encourage one another to take steps to follow Jesus. The groups are so small for two reasons: one, to foster better and closer conversation, and two, because it’s easier to find a common time to meet with 2-3 other people than it is with 10! The fall ‘season’ of Step Groups will start the week of October 20 and will run through Thanksgiving week.

Here’s what I’m asking: take this step with us.

Join a Step Group for the fall, and see how it goes. We’re only asking for a 6-week commitment that, hopefully, you’ll be excited to re-commit to for the winter. If you want to do a Step Group with your spouse, let us know; otherwise, you’ll be in a group of men-with-men, or women-with-women. The books are $17, but if you can’t afford it – we’ll help you cover the cost. There’s a little bit of reading, a little bit of question answering, but really what it’s about is getting together with your Step Group and talking it through. What we find is that it’s in relationships like that where discipleship really takes off.

So that’s what we’re going to do this year at Central, and my hope, is that you’ll decide to do it with us.

Take this step. Sign up today via email, or on a sign-up sheet on Sunday.

If you have questions, please ask away!