To Follow Jesus, we begin with community. Any study of the Gospels will illuminate the simple fact that Jesus spent time with people. He spent time with the disciples, and he spent time at the tables of people. Jesus knew that community was not only essential to the Christian life, but essential to human life entirely.

The local parish has been the “life-blood” of Sojourn Montrose. We, as a community of believers, covenant to seek Jesus together, serve together, eat together, play together, pray together, cry together, grieve together, worship together, labor together, and, together, invite our neighbors to join us in this life-long endeavor. We are a family of adopted sons and daughters, and we belong to one another. We share our gifts and resources with each other, and our neighbors. As a community, we enjoy a place and role in God’s ultimate plan of redemption.

To Follow Jesus, we must pray. Jesus spent time in deep personal prayer and spent time praying for and with his people. On the cross, in the most intimate moments of suffering, Jesus turns to the father in prayer. To follow him, we must learn prayer from him. 

Jesus teaches us how and what to pray, assuming we will pray. God’s people have always prayed, and God has always heard their prayers and responded lovingly. At Sojourn Montrose, corporate prayer has been a rhythm of our church life since we began. This month, we hope to grow together in our prayer life to experience God's power, sit in God's love, and participate in God's work.

To Follow Jesus when it comes to Scripture, we must first realize our teacher was a master of the OId Testament. On the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24) we see that Jesus, while walking with two down-trodden disciples, interprets the Old Testament scriptures entirely. Moreover, he shows them how they point to Himself!

Many of us find the bible hard to understand and thus intimidating. This is certainly understandable, and in fact 2 Peter 3:16 says some parts of the scriptures are “hard to understand.” But, when we spend time in the word, we spend time hearing from and learning from God in Christ. To quote a professor, much of the scriptures are “shallow enough for a child to splash in and deep enough for an elephant to drown in.” No one, outside of Christ, will plumb the depths of the mysteries of the Word of God. And yet, the word is open and accessible to all. 

Sabbath comes from the word shabbat in Hebrew, which most literally means to stop. But it can also mean to rest, to delight, and even to worship. Sabbath is ultimately about how we manage our time. The one thing we can’t make more of. The one thing that everyone is constrained by. If we look at the Ten Commandments, Sabbath is also the command that our culture is the most proud of breaking. Following Jesus not only means we believe he is who he said he is, the “Lord of The Sabbath” but also engaging in the sabbath practice as he did!

Dan Allenander says: We live in a dark day, but it is still rare for someone to publically tout his or her violation of the Ten Commandments, with one exception—our debasement with busyness 

This month is all about being a people who lean to Sabbath, and to fight against our culture’s obsession with busyness, replacing it with the rest we can find in Jesus.

In our society, the joy of music has become a passive pursuit. Music is something that most of us listen to rather than something we create. But as Christians, we are called to raise our voices to The Lord in song (Colossians 3:15). We only have two recorded instances of Jesus singing: the first, is the night of his betrayal, at the last supper. The second is in Hebrews 2:12, where we are told that Jesus sings over the congregation. In order to Follow Jesus, we should gather and join our Lord in song.

And of course we do this every Sunday together. But for some of us, our voices have atrophied. We mouth the words in case anyone happens to be watching but we don't dare raise our volume. And it's no wonder that we feel awkward singing loudly when our conception of 'musician' has been shaped by the polished recordings of the best singers on earth. But what if, in the context of worship, we could redefine what it means to "sing well"? What if our goal was to sing confidently, to sing boldly, to sing with abandon? What if "singing well" was more about posture, and less about pitch?

In the Kingdom of God, what matters most is not the melody, or the timbre, or the rhythm of our worship; it is the object of our worship. And when God is the object of our worship, our song is perfected. So this month, for the theme of worship, we will focus specifically on singing and recognize it as a spiritual discipline, a practice that forms us further into holiness, into rest, into joy, and into the image of our savior. 

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