Welcome to Starting Point!
Whatever brought you to Starting Point, we're glad you're here! Everything has a beginning. Every person, every idea, every journey starts somewhere. Whether it's one small step in a new direction or a major event, from that point forward nothing is ever the same. It's not always comfortable. It's not always easy. But it's a start. Starting Point is your next step if you are exploring faith, curious about God, or coming back to church after some time away. Each week of the 8-week experience will include a self-led video session and a brief list of the most important ideas from each section.
Want more from this experience? We want to invite you to walk through these eight weeks with a trusted member of our New Life Journey Team and here’s why; a wise man once said that …two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up... If you would like to be paired with a trusted member of our team, simply click the button below. Be assured, Starting Point is a place where your opinions and beliefs are valued, and where all questions are invited. Let’s get started!
Week One: SOMETHING HAPPENED
Everything that exists had a starting point . . . including you. You may have started on purpose. You may have started by accident (from your parent’s perspective). Whatever the circumstances, you had a starting point, and it began before you were aware of it. Physical life is one of many starting points. Your formal education had a starting point. Your career had a starting point. Your romantic life had a starting point. Your experience as a parent had a starting point. Ever wonder what the starting point for adult faith is?
Faith has a starting point as well.
BOTTOM LINES
Faith has a starting point.
The starting point for the Christian faith is a question: Who is Jesus?
The Christian faith isn’t about what Jesus said before he died. It’s about what happened after he died—he rose from the dead.
Week Two: COMING TO TERMS
During childhood, you may have been handed a faith framework through which you began to view the world. For a lot of us, that childhood framework didn't survive the rigors of adulthood. It's not enough to say, "The Bible says…," in the face of real-life tragedy. Adults often need a new starting point.
But the starting point for Christian faith isn't, "The Bible says…" It's better than that. It's Jesus.
BOTTOM LINES
Jesus raised the behavioral standard so high that no one could make a passing grade.
God is on an endless pursuit to restore his relationship with sinners.
Jesus never minimized the seriousness of sin, but he did not condemn sinners.
Week Three: SEA OF GLASS
The three largest faith traditions—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—claim the same starting point: a man named Abraham. All three agree that sin made a mess of the world and God started his cleanup operation with Abraham. God made a series of promises and Abraham’s response to those promises didn’t just have implications for his personal starting point or the starting points of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It had implications for your starting point as well.
BOTTOM LINES
The introduction of sin into the human experience left God with a choice. Instead of walking away, he waded into the mess.
God’s solution to the problem of sin began with three promises he made to one man.
The righteousness available to Abraham through faith is also available to us.
Week Four: THE ROLE OF RULES
What comes first, rules or a relationship? Practically speaking, rules are often the centerpiece of religious life. Many people think the Ten Commandments are rules that make a relationship with God possible. If you follow the rules, God will be happy. If you don’t, he won’t. But what if a relationship with God doesn’t depend on our obedience? When it comes to your relationship with God, what is the role of rules?
BOTTOM LINES
Rules always assume a relationship.
God’s rules didn’t establish his relationship with Israel; they were a confirmation of his relationship with Israel.
God’s plan, beginning with Abraham, always included us.
Week Five: NOTHING BUT
What do you do with guilt and shame? Guilt is powerful. Shame can be crippling. We all have things in our pasts that haunt us. We have sin. It only takes a word, a picture, or a name to bring it all back. We know we can do better from this point forward, but how are we supposed to fix the past? We can say we’re sorry. We can ask for forgiveness. But some of the things we’ve done hang over our lives like a cloud. What can wash away our sins?
BOTTOM LINES
Experiencing personal forgiveness for personal sins is often the starting point for personal faith.
In all of history, only Jesus offered himself as the answer to the question of what to do when we can’t forgive ourselves.
You don’t have to forgive yourself; yourself has already been forgiven.
Week Six: AMAZING
At some point in your faith journey, you will settle into a bargaining posture with God. “God, if you will . . ., I promise I will . . .”. We all do it. That’s just part of religion—every religion. In fact, it’s so much a part of human nature that even some atheists and agnostics do it when they find themselves in desperate circumstances. But is that really how God wants us to relate to him? The problem with a bargaining posture is we never keep up our end of the bargain, do we?
BOTTOM LINES
People often relate to God on a performance basis.
With God, grace is the rule, not the exception.
One hundred percent of the “to dos” in the Christian faith are responses to what God has “to done” for us.
Week Seven: DON'T STOP
We all have faith in something. The ability to believe is the most powerful force at mankind’s disposal. Everything that has been done, for good or bad, was done because someone believed it could be or should be done. Every problem that has been solved was solved because someone believed it could be or should be solved.
We constantly look for evidence to support what we believe is true. In the case of religious belief, that means if you believe deeply enough any religious system becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that’s true, isn’t it possible that Christianity is just an example of groupthink on a massive scale?
BOTTOM LINES
Faith is one of the most powerful tools at humanity’s disposal.
The thing that makes Jesus different from other religious leaders isn’t something he taught; it’s something he did. He died and came back to life.
Christianity requires faith in a person. This is why for anyone investigating Christianity, the first question that must be answered is, Who is Jesus?
Week Eight: INVITATION
Jesus predicted that he would start a gathering, a movement . . . what we call church. And that church would spread all over the earth and outlast the Roman Empire. It would change the world. His prediction must have sounded outlandish to even his closest followers. But here we are, two thousand years later, and the Roman Empire exists only in history books, while Jesus’ gathering is still going strong. The church is the hope of the world because the church is the vehicle by which God is bringing the solution to mankind’s greatest problems: sin, sorrow, and death.
BOTTOM LINES
Your uniqueness finds its fullest and best expression when connected to God’s divine purpose in the world.
The church began as a growing gathering of men and women who believed Jesus was the Son of God.
We have an opportunity to do for others what others did for us by joining our generation’s Jesus gathering.
What’s Next?
Each of us is on a journey that’s racing towards eternity. We all have hopes and fears that pull us in different directions as we go through our lives. We believe that Jesus is the answer to both our present lives and our future lives. We only have one life and one eternity. What will you choose to do with Jesus?