Thanks for doing our original moment with us.
Now we really, I think we could keep doing this.
We are so glad that you're here at Origin today.
My name is Joshua. I'm a campus minister here with
Origin Church and I'm excited to have this kind of special Sunday
with you. As Susan said, you may have
noticed the balloons, you may have noticed some me wearing
red, some other people who happen to wear red.
Thank you for joining out on accident.
We are glad that you're here with it's going to be a fun and
unique Sunday because today is Alpha Sunday.
So welcome to Alpha Sunday. We're excited that you're here.
It's going to be fun. All right, so I want to start
with a question for you today. I want you to start with a
question. What are the biggest invites
that you have ever given to other people?
What is the biggest invitation or or special invitation that
you have given to other people? I remember when I was in
elementary school, I don't know if any of you guys did this, I
would I would bring little invite cards and a little little
like sucker to my class and say, hey, come to my birthday.
Did any of you guys do that? Any of you guys do that?
Yours. No, maybe that.
Oh, yeah, you did that. I see your hand.
Thank you. That was one thing I did is I
get thank you for admitting it and joining me on that.
That was a special invite. I was so excited to invite my
friends to my birthday. Another invite that I gave was
when I got married, I had to invite people to my wedding and
that was like, wow, that made it.
Thank you. That was a special occasion.
Yeah. You guys who came and accepted
the invites, Thank you. I'm grateful.
It was actually, I remember inviting and being so excited
about that because I was like, wow, it's happening.
That made it feel real. That made it really feel real.
Other times you invite is when you want to hang out with
friends. Like last night I was hanging
out with some friends at my place.
We had pizza, watch movie. And that was a great time.
Like, it was a great time. Yeah.
And so invites are really important.
They're part of every single week and aspect of her life.
Invitations are really important.
And so we're excited to think about the importance and
invitations and Alpha today. And the next question I want to
ask you is this. Do you know how every single
person has come to start a relationship with Jesus, a
relationship with God? Well, I've had to think about
this. Do you know what what what
usually is one of the first things that happens.
Every person who has followed Jesus received an invitation.
Think about it with me for a moment.
Have you? Did you receive an invitation?
Maybe it wasn't like, here's a letter from God to follow to
follow, follow me, but maybe somebody invited you to a
church. Maybe somebody said, hey, come
hang out with me. You got to know them as your
friend. Or maybe your parents were the
ones that said, Hey, we're going to go do this together.
And and then they were the ones that helped to follow Jesus for
the first time, whatever that looks like.
Every person has received who followed Jesus received some
invitation. You'll notice this in the Bible
too. Actually, I think about think
about Bible examples where people received an invitation.
Peter he was fishing in a boat and Jesus was like, come follow
me and I will make you fishers. Amen.
Paul he was blinded on the road and then he and he encountered
Jesus and Jesus saying why, why, why are you?
Why are you persecuting me? Why are you doing these things?
But then he invited Paul to follow him and very unlikely
people to follow Jesus to am I had then there was there are
other people in the Bible like Zacchaeus.
Where was he when Jesus invited him?
In a tree? Some of you guys might know that
story. He, he says, I'm going to your
house today. And so there's awesome stories
in the Bible too of people being invited to follow Jesus.
So not only in our lives, but in the story of the Bible.
And so it goes on and on. Every single person has an
invitation story. And last week we actually read
from Galatians. I don't know if you remember
some of the points we talked about, but I wanted to remind us
of them because I think they're really, really good.
The first one was this three important reminders for our
lives, that we are part of a bigger story in our lives, that
we are part of a bigger story. We're part of God's story.
You as an individual are part of God's story and the story of the
world and the story of what God's up to.
We are part of a personal story. The story is real for each one
of us and our relationship with God.
It's not an impersonal thing. It's something that's deep and
means a lot to us and it's significant.
And then we are also part of an ongoing story.
And so I remind us of these things to say, 1 You are invited
to a relationship with Jesus. You have been.
You're invited here today and I also want want to ask you a
question with that. So not only are you invited, but
will you be part of this bigger story?
Will you be part of this personal story, an ongoing story
that we are going to share with you about today?
I really want you to consider this for yourself.
So the first invitation I'm offering is for you.
And then I want to share about a church's vision with this
because I think you need to know that you're invited, but I think
you need to know that your church is partnering with you
together and this, that this, this on the screen what you see.
It's our church's vision and we share it often.
We are really hoping that when you're invited, three things
will happen when you're part of our community.
The 1st is that you will get to know Jesus, that you will get to
know Jesus. That's a really significant one.
And then become like Jesus and then join Jesus and his mission.
See, we start with getting to know Jesus and then you get to
do that for the rest of your life.
When Jesus would invite people to dinner with him, he would
start getting to know him and then they'd be changed like
Zacchaeus who got to know Jesus. And then he was like, I'm going
to give all my money away and pay back the things that I, I
didn't do right or the things I took from people.
They, people are changed when they get to know Jesus.
And that what happens is they're becoming like Jesus.
They become like him. And then the last one, which is
our focus today, we're joining Jesus in his mission.
And this is a choice that we make.
And if you choose to, you will join Jesus and his mission.
So I want to start here. How did you first start getting
to know Jesus? Like what did that look like in
your own life? I'm asking reflection questions
today, so I really want you to be reflecting yourself.
How did you first start getting to know Jesus?
What is your earliest memory of getting to known Jesus?
Getting to know Jesus? Mine was watching a movie of
Jesus. I don't know if you've ever seen
the nativity stories of the stories of the movies where they
showed Jesus and his life and what he did.
But there was one story I remember watching where Jesus
was sitting with his disciples, and this was when I was like 7
years old, so this was a while ago.
He was sitting with his disciples and his disciples, I
don't know, only a few things I remember, but they were getting
annoyed with some kids that were in the room.
And then they were like, we got to get the kids out of the room
because we love, we love kids. We love kids, obviously, but but
kids, they can sometimes be loud or running around.
And but Jesus in this story wasn't like I, he didn't want
them to send them away. He actually told the disciples,
no, let the children come to me. Like I, like most people don't
remember all these things at 7:00, but I remember the
invitation that said of Jesus saying, no, let the kids come to
me. And he actually looked at the
kids and he said, come, come to me, come to me.
And that moment of the invitation of Jesus to the
little children who the disciples wanted to send away
felt super special to me as one of my earliest memories.
And I remember that moment is actually when I think I really
started wanting a relationship with Jesus when I was when I saw
Jesus even welcomed little children to him.
That was really special for me when I was 7 to actually see
that. And so when was your earliest
memory with Jesus? Now you also received an
invitation to origin church. How did that happen?
I think that's another specific invitation or something you
found out about that. We're glad you're here.
You might have seen our signs are on campus.
You might have have a friend from Bridges who invited you.
Those guys. We really appreciate you guys
give invite, give invites. I'm saying like you guys do a
great job or you might have had other friends of different
groups invite you. However you did, you're here for
a reason. It's because somebody invited
you. Somebody invited you and you may
have also been invited to Alpha for at some point in your own
life. I actually be thinking about how
did you get invited to alpha for the first time?
If you experienced that, if you didn't, you're officially
getting your invite today. So today will be your marker
point for that invite. But if you but if you dig invite
to Alpha, how did that happen for you and why did you say yes
to go to going now at the I just want to remind us of something
something something cool attached to our vision with
origin. At the beginning of the
semester, we started this big vision called operation.
What was it? Operation 1516.
Yeah, we have this big vision to reach 10,000 people with the
love of Jesus, and by God's grace, I know that we've reached
actually 1002 thousand even, maybe even more people than that
through Operation 1516. So I'm thanking the Lord that
we've been able to do that. And Alpha is one of the ways
next semester that we really want to extend that and go
further. We really want to see our campus
reach with Jesus because we believe as a church, as an
individual's, that Jesus chose us and sent us out to go bear
fruit, fruit that would last. And so church, you are invited
to be part of this vision to join Jesus and his mission.
And here's our vision for Alpha. OK, we want to help you reach
your friends with Jesus. So how does Alpha join Jesus and
his mission? By helping you reach your
friends with Jesus, by helping you reach your friends with
Jesus, that our church seeks to not only reach you, but to help
you reach your friends. And Alpha goes further and
really helps us focus on sin, on reaching our friends.
When we ask for prayer requests every week, almost every week
without fail, we have one person who will say, hey, I'm praying
for my friend. I want to share Jesus with them.
I don't really know how to do it or what what to say or they were
going through this thing, but I want to love them in the midst
of this. And so we we read those and we
think, oh, what can we do? And actually Alpha is one of our
answers for how we want to help you reach your friends with
Jesus. You are somebody's friend
potentially and they are thought I'm going to pray for that
person. I want to reach them and I want
them to know Jesus. And so we want to do the same
for others. You know, one of my favorite
life verses has got to be John 1513.
Greater love has known than this, to lay down one's life for
one's friends. You know Jesus that called you
friend and He cared for you so much and we know the story that
He gave up His life for us to have a relationship with Him.
That was a significant step that Jesus said that has blessed me
beyond words ever since I that 7 year old where it felt like
Jesus invited me. Have you felt like Jesus was
your friend and was trying to reach out to you?
And what does that mean for you to be?
I'm a friend of Jesus, but I could help somebody else become
a friend of Jesus. That's pretty special.
And so now I want to take a moment to consider what does
Alpha actually look like and how does Alpha help us reach our
friends? You may see this photo.
This is actually from one of our Alpha gatherings that happened
last year. Alpha basically is this it's
friends gathered around dinner tables to enjoy food, to enjoy
each other, to have easy conversation about God, faith,
and significant, interesting, important questions that you
might be wrestling with. When have you had questions
about God, Jesus, survival, all these things?
When have you, when have you had those that in your life?
Maybe you're having some now. Well, I find it's often easier
to, to have these questions and sometimes it's actually hard to
find answers to these questions. But the joy of Alpha and the
thing that gets me really excited about this is you don't
have to have the answers at Alpha.
We actually, I, I don't want you to have all the answers at
Alpha, but what we do want you have is curiosity and, and, and
excitement about just being together with people to enjoy
food and spend time with one another, because we enjoy being
with one other and embrace being curious.
And So what does Alpha look like?
It looks like a large group of people gathered together to
enjoy meal and spend time with each other and reflect on
significant questions. And who is Alpha for?
Who is Alpha for? It is for you.
It actually is for you. We really believe it could be
for you. We believe it's for your
friends, for the curious. Now, an interesting thing about
Alpha is that we invite everyone to come, but our, our, our main
focus is to help our friends who are searching, exploring, maybe
new to Christianity or not, not, not too, not sure where they're
at. That's the group that we're
mainly hoping to come because we want to reach some of Jesus.
If you're a mature believer, we're actually so glad that
you're here and we want you to keep growing.
But your opportunity now with Alpha is to say, Hey, I want to
invite my friends to be part of that.
And I have more to say about that.
Yeah. Alpha is for every student, for
everyone searching for answers, for everyone struggling, for
everyone wanting to find maybe hope or something that something
to give them confidence or courage.
And so one other important thing about Alpha that I actually love
is that it's hosted by the Association of Christian Clubs.
You may have heard of this group before, Origin Power to Change
in a Varsity, Bridges, Navigators, UCM, Every nation
and so many other groups are a part of the Association of
Christian Clubs. And we host it together and we
have over 100 people that join us for this every single week.
And it's starting in January and we're inviting all these groups
and all these ministries to be part of it.
And so we're really excited to gather with you and others and
these groups all together. It's the same vision to reach
our friends with Jesus because we all have the same belief that
that your friends best life would be with Jesus.
Do you believe that, that, that your friends around you, their
best life would be with Jesus? Not a perfect life, but a best
life because you have hope and joy and you have community and
fellowship and you know the way, the truth and the life.
And so we're so excited to host Alpha.
Now. I don't know if you know this
also, but that there are 7000 Alpha courses across Canada this
year that there were 7000 / 7000 hosted.
And this is an interesting fact. Over 3000 of them were hosted by
youth that are younger than us. And so I'm just saying I think
we have an opportunity here to host something and convert to me
really special. And here Alpha UBC has been
going on for many years now and we get to continue that.
And so all right, why and how should I tell others?
Why should we reach our friends with the love of Jesus?
I just want to review a few things that I noticed in this
that the word go is mentioned 1513 times in the Bible.
So Jesus tells us to go like he he mentioned that.
I thought that was great. And the gospel means good news.
I love that. That's really cool.
I thought that the phone, the phone call thing was the
funniest thing. Like he tried to call people and
the news got fat, like got past him faster than he could share.
I wonder if that's ever happened to you.
And we love sharing good news. It's so significant.
And then the last part is this is that Jesus said you are the
salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
When he's saying you are, he's saying that is your identity,
that is who God has called you to be, and he is making you into
that. And so becoming like Jesus,
you're becoming the light, like the light of the world, and
you're joining him in his mission to be a lighthouse to
other people. And now I want to transition to
a testimony from Alpha. We're going to do a testimony
video that I think is actually really special from a really
unique and really kind of a interesting story there.
That testimony with you. Well, I, I actually really love
this one. It feels so authentic and just
like he went, he's like, I don't even almost know why I'm here.
And then then he was had noticed all these things and of
resistance that he was feeling. Yet at the end of that video,
what was the word that he used to describe how he felt?
Peace. So I don't know if you've ever
had this experience, you've seen it happen in other people.
But it's very normal actually, for our alpha experience to have
people come who are at first, like, I don't know if this is
for me. I don't know if this is what I
want to be about or if I really should be here.
Or, And you may be feeling like your friends might be having
similar feelings about the idea of going to something like this,
but also God has some feelings about how he wants to meet that
person and offer peace to them in the midst of what they're
feeling. And he wasn't even paying
attention to the prayer, but the Holy Spirit was at work in his
heart in ways he didn't even know.
And so that's something that I'm really excited about office,
that we can invite whoever God puts on our heart and trust the
Holy Spirit to work through them through whatever they're
thinking or feeling. And so that's pretty neat.
So everyone who comes to Alpha has a unique story.
I want to share a story specifically with you and some
of you guys will be here. And I, I didn't ask to show this
photo, but we're showing this photo.
This is from. Yeah.
So this is from our Alpha experience that we had last last
year. It was my time, my experience of
Alpha that I really loved. And what I realized looking back
on this Alpha experience with these guys was, was that this
was the most fun and most joy I've ever found talking about my
faith and questions about God with anybody.
Was sitting around this table with these guys, meeting with
them every single week because they came from different
backgrounds, different levels of maturity in their faith.
And we had one or two other guys that were there that weren't
even weren't even Christians that came to our group.
And I was blessed to be with them.
And so the stories are super personal and wonderful.
And so my thought as what I realized about this is what I
thought is that felt like I was part of Alpha and that I was
part of Jesus mission and I got to enjoy doing it.
That's what that group of guys telling me that I could enjoy
being a part of Jesus mission through Alpha and that blessed
me and that you can be part of Alpha as well.
And so there's a few ways I want to invite you to be part of
Alpha. The 1st is this.
I would invite you to consider participating with us.
We would love for you to participate in Alpha with us.
Being a part of our church is the first step of you being
involved in Alpha. You are part of Alpha and we
really think that you being part of our community, RA says.
We're in doing this together and if you can't participate or come
to Alpha, you can actually still participate in another way.
You can actually still engage and invite friends and pray and
other things, which I'll share more about in a moment.
The next ways you can help serve with us, We actually have many
ways that we'd love for you to serve and use your giftings and
what excites you to serve, whether it be with with food or
helping set up or tech stuff or or any of those areas.
We would really love for you to be somebody to say yes, I want
to help with that one thing so that my friends and so that
other people's friends can be reached by Jesus.
And then the last way we invite you to service by hosting a
table. This is a really special and
significant way for you to consider serving and I don't I
all these other roles are great, but by hosting a table is you
get to meet with friends and facilitate a conversation that
talks about Jesus and other things that just significant.
And then the next one I want to give you is is this to invite?
I have two questions by inviting one.
What excites you about inviting people?
Hold on to that. Is it lives being changed?
Is it friends finding Jesus? Is it just having a good
conversation? The second question is what
fears do you have about inviting people?
What fears do you have about inviting people?
Because those fears are honestly, they're valid.
I have. I have one story I just want to
share with you about this. I remember being in a ministry
in California a couple years ago when I was doing college and
some things there and we were having a Bible study and a dorm
and I was standing in the lobby just inviting people who walked
into our dorm like that. That's what we decided we were
going to do. And this girl walked in and I
remember I was singing some, this is almost embarrassing.
It was embarrassing. I was singing some song.
It got really awkward when she walked in and I was like, oh,
hi, because I was trying to invite and I was like, hey,
this, I know this is random. We're having a Bible study.
Would you like to come to this Bible study?
And she's like, are you guys a cult?
And that was her first question. And I was like, oh, take it.
How in the world do I answer? I'm like, I don't think so.
Like I think I remember saying like, no, I'm pretty sure we're
not. It was the most, it was the most
awkward moment of like invitation I've ever given.
And I was like, there's no way she's coming to hang out with
us. There's no way that she's
coming. And little I know the next night
or that evening, she actually came to our group from based off
this really awkward invitation. I was given her.
Her name was Jackie. And then months later, one of
her friends had the opportunity to lead her to Jesus and then to
baptize her at our church, all because of this stupid
invitation that I gave and that moment.
So, so I'm telling you, the power of invitation is not in
the words that you say, but in the Holy Spirit who's behind you
in the invitation. And so you have an opportunity
to offer an invite to somebody, whether you're fearing maybe
being embarrassed or being rejected, or maybe I'm
forgetting what to say or feeling like they might not be
interested, you have the opportunity to ask and let the
Holy Spirit figure out the answer.
And so my, my, my request is that consider participating,
consider serving, consider inviting, make it personal for
yourself why you would want to do this.
And then consider also giving to this Alpha ministry.
I would share more about all these things, but I'm running
out of time. But, but, but I really want to
emphasize one of these things about Alpha that we, that we
love is how many people can reach, but it takes actually a
lot. We pay over $10,000 every time
we do do United Alpha. And that's not like we're like
saying, Oh, we really, we really need your, your help.
We're not begging, but we, what we're saying is God has blessed
us when people want to participate.
And if you feel like you have a church at home that wants to
bless students, invite them to be part of this.
If your ministry wants to be part of it, please be part of
it. If you have an opportunity to
give a few dollars to help a meal happen for somebody to
reach Jesus, that's it. Special.
I've had coffees, conversations that cost $5 where I got to
share the love of Jesus. And at the end of it, they
decided they want to follow Jesus for the first time.
And so it's a special, it's a special thing to give to
something like this. And so I'm going to wrap up my
sharing about that. And now we're going to take some
moment for action. Now is the time to make a move.
It's a time to make a move. So I'm actually going to invite
the people that were invited to to, to come down to the
different spaces and they're going to have some cards for us.
So if you're people that they're going to be going to those
places with the cards, go to your positions.
I'm going to explain what's going to happen.
OK, This is a little unique and I'm actually inviting you to
take some action here. In their hands they have two
things, and in my hands I have two things.
The first is a prayer card. The 1st is this prayer card
here. Did you?
Oh sick. OK, the first is this prayer
card. On this prayer card, you're
going to notice a couple things. There's going to be 3 spots for
you to put the names of friends that you want to intentionally
pray for and invite to Alpha. We're actually going to take a
few minutes just to reflect and get you a chance to think who
could I invite to Alpha? And then we want you to write it
down on here. If you don't have a pen, ask a
friend or write on your phone, but we want you to write it
down. That's the first card.
We're going to give you the second.
Can you it people in the row hold it up with me.
We have these, we have these Alpha invite cards.
All right, these we're going to give you 3 per person for you
invite those three people who you wrote down on the card.
We really want to be intentional about inviting our friends to
this event. This is not just like what
Tabling want to give them rooms. We come to his table now to
recall that Jesus did indeed give a costly gift of Himself
when he made us friends. When he made the way to
friendship, He gave. And so we're going to take the
bread and we're going to take this cup.
And as we do so, would you recall again his great gift to
you? Because I think you have to go
forward motivated by love, to invite someone else to Jesus, to
invite them. The invitation to Alpha is
really an invitation to get to know Jesus and his people.
And so we want to encourage you that the step forward here is
just really recall and reflect on the great love of Jesus for
you as we come to this moment. So those helping with the Lord's
Supper, I'm going to invite you all to come.
I'm going to invite you all to stand, stand up together, and
we're going to worship. Let the Lord remind you of three
people and recall them. And as you take this bread and
you take this cup, just think about Lord Jesus.
What would it be like to get to do that?
Paul reminds us that very rarely will someone die for someone
else. Very rarely will someone die for
a criminal, though perhaps for a good person.
Someone might say you're worth it.
And here's the extraordinary thing is that God looked at me.
God looks at you and he says you are worth it.
And so in Christ Jesus, God looks upon us and says you are
worth it. And he lays down his life in
order to pay for our sin, become sin for us, so that we might
actually have life and a life giving friendship with God that
goes on and on and on. And so we never want to take
that for granted. And so we're called to
regularly, whenever we break bread, whenever we take the cup,
remember, we remember the Lord Jesus, that on the night he was
betrayed, he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he
broke it. And he said, this is my body,
which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after the supper, Jesus took the cup and
he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.