Habits, Hubs & Hands
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Acts 2:42-47
In this verse we have a glimpse into what the first churches looked like: devotion to breaking bread together, prayer together for each other and others, but also empowering others to become disciples themselves. They met in homes, temples, anywhere they could just to meet, hold each other accountable and eat and pray together. And it seemed it was infections: their behaviours, beliefs and nature meant their numbers rose daily. Others saw what they were doing and wanted to be a part of it; they saw the Lord’s work working and didn’t want to be left out.
That is what we are hoping to do here at Church At Barking Riverside. We aren’t a formal church, we don’t have a formal building and there isn’t only one person able to lead us to God. We are all disciples of God; we love Jesus and have answered His call to follow Him, to learn from Him and as best we can, love and act as He did. But what does that tangibly look like? For us, this is where our Habits, Hubs & Hands come in which in turn feed into our Values and vice versa.
Urbain went into more details of what these mean for us and how we live them out in last week’s Sunday Celebration but I’ll just give a brief summary below, for those who might not have the time to watch the full video now:
Habits
Hubs
Hands
Our Habits are what we do on a daily basis to make space for Jesus as individuals. As we are Defined By Dependence On Jesus, we need that time of prayer, reflection, worship, Bible study. As a church, we collectively say the Lord’s prayer at midday each day as a way to keep becoming aware of God and t pray together regularly even when we’re scattered.
Hubs are who we do it with, we are Passionate About People. As we see from the verse from Acts, we aren’t meant to be disciples alone; we are meant to live life together, praise Him together, pray and learn together. Our Sunday Celebrations are our versions of meeting together in the temple courts, whereas our Hubs are home to home. Hubs are more intimate, where we’re able to share life, to invite people in and a place to grow together.
Hands are where we are sent, the places we live and work. Our fingers are for particular people that we know by name and our palms are for the place we find ourselves, where we may have some level of influence. Our hands prompt us to pray for specific people and places within our community and beyond. We are Dreamers Who Dare To Make A Difference, and we believe that as we pray and follow Jesus, that nothing is impossible with God.
Below is the talk from Sunday’s Celebration, we hope this helps explain in a bit more detail why Habits Hubs and Hands are so intrinsic to everything we do:
