Ordinances Of The Church Series

Ordinances of the Church

Christianity 101 Series

CCCAG October 6th, 2019

Several different scriptures today

Intro:

As many of you know I came from a mostly Lutheran with some Catholic influence background growing up. Although I was confirmed Lutheran, I didn't really apply myself during the confirmation classes to really learn about my faith.

I got saved as an adult when I was 23 years old. I got save in an independent Pentecostal church, whose pastor was Assembly of God and I found that many of the things I had learned growing up Lutheran didn't apply anymore.

The first thing I noticed about my first church in comparison with my Lutheran church was that there was little to no ritual involved in it at all. Say what you will about the older mainline denominations like Lutheran or Catholic, but they have some truly beautiful ritual and liturgy involved with them that when you dig down the basis behind it, always attempt o portray the Gospel message. Many find comfort in ritual and liturgy because and from Sunday to Sunday you always know what to expect.

I know that many people here come from the same kind of background. Some of you are more used to a church in which there are a lot of rituals or a lot of very set ways of doing church that have been passed down from generation to generation over hundreds of years.

Today we're going to talk about two of those rituals, and they are also found Assembly of God churches. They are known as the two ordinances of the church.

Before we go any further into this let's ask God's blessing over our time studying his word in his ways this morning

Prayer

Just as a reminder- Q&A at the end so hold your questions until then, or email me at pastorjohnoscar@gmail.com

This morning I'm going to try to explain two of the rituals that we have here as an Assembly of God church. These rituals are known as the ordinances of the church.

So, the 1st question we should tackle this morning is what the heck is an ordnance?

I. What is an ordinance?

When you and I think of an ordinance we think about a local law that is passed to maintain a certain quality of living within a community.

For example- There might be an ordinance about how long you can let your grass grow before you have to cut it. There might be another ordnance about how soon you have to clear your sidewalk in the winter or shovel the snow around the fire hydrant in front of your house.

These are not the kind of ordnance is that we're talking about this morning. We would define this differently

I like the definition for ordinance I found online:

Ordinance is a term for religious rituals whose intent is to demonstrate an adherent's faith.

Many of us who came from the mainline churches like Lutheran and Catholic, Presbyterian and others are very used to different rituals for different things that we do within the church. These rituals have been established for 100’s of years

Compared to those other expressions of Christianity the Assembly of God is only 102 years old. We really don't have a lot of ritual within our belief system or church services.

A little church history- Back in 1917 when the first General Counsel was held, they came up with 16 fundamental beliefs for those who wanted to align themselves with this new expression of Christianity called the Assemblies of God. It was birthed out of the Pentecostal revival at the turn of the century and experienced a freedom never before experienced so they saw tradition and ritual to be dangerous. They didn’t want to quench the moving of the Holy Spirit so they eliminated all ritural and ceremony except for 2 things that they called the Ordinances of the Church.

These ordinances, which are observed by most Christian church’s are Holy Communion and baptism. These two ordinances serve to really identify what we believe as a fellowship and they both point to Jesus.

So this morning we're going to look at the two rituals that we still follow in the assemblies.

The first one is

Holy Communion

I'm sure just about everybody here has been here are in this church or at another church when communion has been served. The way it served is different depending on which church you go to. Even within our fellowship you can see it done very differently for more of a very prescribed very ritualistic way of doing it to a more freestyle sharing of bread within a large loaf of bread shared amongst the people in a row and then even drinking wine out of the same cup.

Others churches have to come to the altar and kneel to receive the bread and wine directly from a pastor or priest.