Summerfield Church - Fishtown

I'm very excited about all the things that are happening as part of the "Growing Healthy" lifestyle God has called us to. The inspiration for messages has been amazing, and to summarize the first three weeks of what God has to say to us, it is that health starts with these three things:

1) WE FIND OUR IDENTITY AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS. Who we are and how we live must be totally based upon being followers of God through Jesus Christ. Before we are anything else, we are followers of Jesus. That is the first consideration in all that we value and all that we do. We repent from sin, we receive forgiveness, we live as God would have us live. We are followers of Jesus.

2) WELOVE ONE ANOTHER. As Christians, we need to love each other. This isn't about a warm, fuzzy feeling called love, as nice as that may be. It's about celebrating each other in our diversity, rejoicing in each other as redeemed and active disciples of Jesus, helping each other in difficult times, and doing the hard work of guiding each other towards a deeper relationship with Christ and dealing with each other when we have problems in our relationships with each other.

3) WE EMBRACE OTHERS. We love our neighborhood, our city, our nation, our world. We are multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual, and come from a wide variety of religious backgrounds. We seek to be outside of the church walls much more than inside of them. Without forgetting that new life in Christ begins with a faith that includes turning away from sin, we welcome those who are seeking, doubting, and struggling. We don't just tolerate those who are different from us - we enjoy them!