Faith Community Church Of Hopkinton

God has called us to serve Him. Our call is to be a bi-vocational minister for Jesus Christ. We have been called to make a difference with our lives. Serving God with your life creates joy, improves all the relationships in your life, makes your life meaningful, and leaves a legacy from your life.

  God has called us to become like Christ. We call this discipleship - the process of becoming like Christ.  

God has formed us for His family, another name for the church. It's there that we learn our true identity, find support from others, discover our unique value, receive caring protection, and become productive. This fellowship is an important gift from God that helps us fulfill our call to be productive members of God's family.

God is love. He created us in order to love us. Therefore, my calling is to enjoy a relationship with God as a member of His family! You are called to be a son or daughter of God. Because He is love, God wants to express His love to people. The Bible describes God's love as wide enough to be everywhere, long enough to last forever, deep enough to handle anything, high enough to overlook my sins. This means you can feel accepted not ashamed, bold to bring my needs to God, peaceful in pain you don't understand, courageous to take risks. You are free to worship God, not worry about your life.

God has a calling over every person's life. It answers the questions, "Why am I alive? What am I supposed to do with my life?" Your calling is a gift from God, a gift that reveals His purpose for your life. It is unique to you. Your sins won't remove it or eliminate it. Your job may play a part in fulfilling your call, but your call is greater than your job. The church helps you fulfill it. God empowers you to achieve it. There is a prize for those who live out their calling. Over the next five weeks, we're going to explain your call.

Pastor Mike addresses different generations--teens, young adults, parents, and empty nesters--directly with encouragement for them in their roles and gently challenges their choices that inhibit their spiritual growth as well as their ability to raise up the next generation.

Churches that support every member in the family help the next generation. The Christian faith is best passed on, one generation to the next, by building relationships, sharing Biblical truth, encouraging family members, supporting & caring for them during difficult times, investing in them with wisdom and love. Ministry partners can serve the next generation by directly investing into children and teens as well as their parents. Many adult believers speak to the influence of Children/Student ministry partners, coaches, teachers, extended family members, and others in their development. Coming alongside parents in Faith Groups, providing financial advice, relational counseling, and encouragement has an impact on the whole family. Everyone has the opportunity to help a family by caring for someone in a family. We'll look at biblical practices for mentoring for direction in how to help.

The Family is the primary source of spiritual influence into the lives of children and teens. They spend a few hours a week (at best) at church and many times that under their parent's influence. Studies consistently show that parents are an important influence into the lives of teenagers and children, their values & worldview influencing their children's. If we want to reach the next generation, the church has to consider how it can help and partner with parents. (For the sake of this message, we will consider a family as any household raising children - two parents, single parent, foster parent, grandparents). As partners in this important role, the church needs to care for broken families, guide healthy families, equip family members with resources and lead every member of the family to a deeper relatinoship with Christ and a greater love for others. No family is perfect, but every family is vital to a child's spiritual development.

God cares about the next generation of believers. He always has. The Bible contains stories of young men and women who He used to do a great work (Joseph, David, Esther). They are both the future of the church and a present mission field. Every church is within forty years of disappearing. God cares about the Next Generation because they are the future leaders of the church. They will shape, direct, preach, persuade, care, inspire and lead the church in the future. If we care about the future of the church in America (and around the world), we will invest in guiding them to a deeper relaitonship with Christ and a greater love for others. God also cares for the next generation because they are a mission field for today. Over 80% of people who are Christians started that journey before they turned 18. They are open to faith discussions, a relationship with Christ and growing spiritually. They just need a church that values them, treats them with respect and seeks to guide them towards a Christ centered life.

Pastor Mike's Vision Sunday Message.

Week 4 of the series "Time of Your Life". If we live as though the best satisfaction, purpose, pleasure and meaning we can experience is while we live, then we will be disappointed, finding life to be meaningless. Solomon reflected on the meaning of life. He discovered that life has no purpose or meaning if we define it only by the days we have "under the sun". If we consider eternity, then we will redefine the purpose and meaning of life. We will invest the days of our lives in what contributes to eternity.

Week 3 of the series "Time of Your Life". There is a cumulative value to investing small amounts of time in important activites. In a corollary fashion, there is no value in investing small amounts of time in random things that interfere with the important. This is why God advises us to carefully consider how we use our time. As Paul states in Eph. 5:15-17, we should count our days like an investment. If we invest wisely, it will pay off in the long run of our lives.

Week 2 of the series "Time of Your Life". The secret to achieving your capacity isn't about getting more done, it's about prioritizing correctly. Priority determines capacity. We need to take the time to identify our priorities and then plan the rest of life in around them. As Christian, we're called to make God's will the organizing principle to our life. We need to give God's desires, ambitions, priorities first place in our lives. In order to do that, we need to examine what is taking priority in terms of our time, money, attention and energy. Then we have to evaluate that against God's desires and adjust accordingly. Only then will we operate at our best capacity.

Week 1 of the series "Time of Your Life". The "Time of your Life" series comes from Northpoint Church. It's based on the premise that we have a limited number of days to our lives. Therefore, we should use them thoughtfully and carefully. When we realize how short our lives truly are in light of eternity, we see how foolish it is to live as though life revolves around us and our interests. If live as though we are the minor characters contributing to a story that revolves around God, we find purpose and meaning for our lives.

The Faith Community Church Student Missions Team shares testimonies from their trip to Philadelphia.

Week 5 of the series "Everybody's Watching" from Faith Community Church. Society has become fascinated with anti-heroes: people who do the wrong thing for “right” reasons. Breaking Bad transforms a chemistry teacher into a Crystal Meth drug dealer in order to provide for his family. Dexter is a troubled man trapped by the desire to live out a double life as a police officer and a serial killer who strives for justice. In both stories, the main character learns that our choices catch up with us. Bad choices hurt people we love in ways we can never anticipate. The Bible warns us that doing the wrong thing for the right reason still has destructive impact. God has established universal morality for a reason. We need to learn how to live according to His will even when it hurts. Living outside His will/morality only produces greater suffering.

Week 4 of the series "Everybody's Watching" from Faith Community Church. The People's Chocie Awards picked "Iron Man 3" and "Gravity" as two award winning movies. Both movies explore the way suffering shapes us and how we can overcome it to be reborn anew. Tony Stark is trapped by debilitating fear from violence and Ryan Stone is trapped by the tragic loss of her daughter. They have to find the means to escape their prisons. In Gravity, the director purposely put in images of rebirth to walk his character through suffering to become a new woman in the end. In Iron Man, the character had to come to grips with fear in order to find life. The Bible has a lot to say about how God can use suffering to shape us, transform us and change us into people who are stronger, more mature and deeply spiritual.

Week 3 of the series "Everybody's Watching" from Faith Community Church. The 2014 Kid's Choice Awards picked Frozen as the animated movie of year. The movie explores the dimensions of true love between two sisters and how it can save the people we love. Another Disney movie, Saving Mr. Banks, based on the real life story behind the scenes of making the original Mary Poppins film, also explores the pain of family members whose choices leave a lasting impact on their children. Both stories share the helpless feeling when family members unintentionally cause pain in the lives of those they love. Loving family members whose actions produce pain is one of the most difficult relationships to manage. There is a burning desire to save them. But in the end, we need to realize that we can't 'save' these family members. We can learn to love and forgive them. Only the sacrificial love of Christ can save them. In this message, we'll explore how to do this in a way that is both healthy and biblical.

Week 2 of the series "Everybody's Watching" from Faith Community Church. In 2014, the People's Choice Awards picked The Voice as the best reality competition television series. Along with American Idol and The X-Factor, these shows give vocalists/musicians the opportunity to perform in front of celebrity judges with the possibility of receiving a record contract and other lucrative deals/prizes. The compelling forces of these shows are based on the desire to see a "rags to riches" story. We long to see the one-in-a-million success story of a person rising against all odds to achieve their dreams of being the next superstar. While we as humans dream of attaining various goals, what does God himself desire and dream for us? Looking at the writings of the Apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:9), we see that Gods desire for us is to embrace our inheritance and endure life’s trials.