This week we will continue with The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups for the God-ordained way reading schedule for the churches in Anaheim, Cypress, and Orange. Detailed information including the full reading schedule is available at churchinanaheim.org/gowreading/.
This week we will be reading The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups, Chapters 5 and 6. This book is available for purchase from Living Stream Ministry. You can also read it online at ministrybooks.org. (Please note: Because the Introductory Word is counted as a chapter on ministrybooks.org, Chapters 5 and 6 are listed as chapters 6 and 7 there.)
The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups Message Five presents the burden that we would see a change of generation in the recovery. We have seen that God’s ordained way has four stages: the stages of begetting, feeding, teaching, and building. Nearly everybody in the recovery likes the God-ordained way, but when we actually begin to practice it step by step, we will be a changed generation. A vital group is a group of normal Christians. A normal Christian lives the normal church life and preaches the gospel in a normal way to save people into the church, into the Body.
Message Six presents the burden that we would build up a habit of contacting people. We should read 1 Corinthians 9:16-27 with much consideration as this is the top portion in the Bible concerning our burden in preaching the gospel. In this passage Paul presented a pattern of one who was entrusted with a stewardship, becoming all things to all men, partaking of the gospel, running on a racecourse, exercising self-control in all things, and buffeting his body and making it his slave. The vital groups cannot be with those who are loose, lazy or sloppy, but we must discipline ourselves and exercise to run the race by practicing to contact people. We can contact people by calling them on the telephone, contacting them on the Lord’s Day morning, and by inviting others to our home and being invited by others to their home. This kind of contact will revolutionize the church. We need to practice this one lesson—to contact people.
Quote from p. 54: “A vital group is a group of normal Christians.”
Prayer on p. 65: “Lord, grant me to have a change in contacting people. I don’t like to contact people. I don’t like to be invited by others to contact them, nor do I like to invite people to contact me. I don’t have this kind of disposition. Lord, You know I don’t have this capacity. So You have to transform me, Lord.”
Week 12: June 3rd through June 9th
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