Shaping the New Normal
As we think about heading back to "normal" we are taking some time to ask, "what should normal look like?" As we allow God to reshape us, and our church it is good to remember the template that God is shaping us towards...

Ambition reShaped
In Mark 10, James and John are ambitious for glory. This is not the first time that Jesus dealt with ambition for greatness amongst his disciples. In Mark 9, the disciples argued about who was the greatest. On both occasions instead of rebuking their ambition outright, he reshaped it.

What shape does your own ambition take?

Even the Son of Man Came to Serve
The Son of Man is an enormously loaded term for Jesus to use to describe himself. (See Daniel 7:13-14 and Mark 14:60-65)
The Son of Man was the one to whom all authority, glory, sovereignty, power, worship, and everlasting dominion was due. To claim to be the Son of Man was to claim to himself divinity, that is to claim to be God. Yet, the one to who all creation should serve, came not to be served but to serve.

If Jesus came to serve, then we are here to serve.

A New Normal for YCBC?
At YCBC we have a great history of so many people serving generously. An often quoted figure for "normal" amongst churches and other organisations is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Our hope for a new normal at YCBC is to build further on our culture of serving to see everyone who considers YCBC to be their home church engaged in regularly serving in an area of ministry and mission through the church.

Serving doesn't stop at the church door, as God reshapes us more and more into the image of Jesus, that looks like showing up in our families, schools, workplaces and communities as servants.

How can you serve?
Where are you gifted to serve?
Where do you see an opportunity to serve?
Where do you see a need?

Serving, Tiredness, Burnout and Abiding
Our vision this year for YCBC is about learning to abide in Jesus. For some the idea of serving runs counter to that. For some the mere talk of serving may triggers feelings of tiredness and fear of burnout. Burnout is often more about what well we draw our strength from and less about doing too much.

If we draw from the well of abiding in Jesus he gives us strength and grace to serve, he gives us wisdom on where to serve and importantly he gives us wisdom on what is not ours to pick up.

As our life groups gather this week, we have attached our reference verse and some questions to prompt a deeper discussion and search into this week's topic.

If you are not currently part of a life group, and would like to join a small group of like minded people in fellowship and connection during the week, please contact Nick on 0417472474 to register your interest.

Life Group Discussion - Read Mark 10:35-45 above
1. What ambitions have you had in your life both past and present?
2. How does Jesus deal with the ambition of his disciples?
3. What is Jesus talking about in verse 38, and what significance might it have for the things that we are ambitious for?
4. Have you ever had your ambition reshaped or redirected by Jesus? What did that look like?
5. What type of serving do you think Jesus had in mind for his disciples and what might that look like for us?

Take some time to pray for one another

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