Welc🥚me

01. WelcomE: It’s good that you’re here. 

If this is your first time with us, here’s our simple, five-part Spotlight framework so you know where we’re headed for the next 90 minutes:

Welcome > Worship > Learn > Serve > Farewell

🥚Happy Easter! This week, as we talk about Jesus rising from death, we are really trying to focus on the ways that his resurrection offers actual, actionable hope to the uncertainty people are facing right now. What comfort exists for people’s current, personal, felt problems? How do we speak to them, and how do we listen when we feel these pains?

02. Listen & Get Started: Welcome

Begin by listening to this jam. (Dancing is encouraged.)

03. Check In: Let us know you’re here

Please check in using the form below. (It’s the best way you can help us serve you well.)

04. Watch: Easter’s Certainty meets our unCertainty

Worship 🥚

06. Listen & Pray: Four Words

Music Credit:

“Forest” by Vlad Gluschenko
https://soundcloud.com/vgl9

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Free Stock Music

Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 Unported License

07. Watch: Children’s Message

08. Interact & Read: Raised Right Now

Sometimes, we talk about “eternal life” like it’s yet-to-come. The Bible, on the other hand, talks about it a little differently. 🥚

Click the volume button in the bottom bar of the frame. Once the song starts playing, use the length of the song to click around the interactive image to read the passages.

This matters because it gives us a different kind of hope. The hope of eternal life isn’t hope because it’s going to come. It’s hope because we’re living it. If you’re living eternally, right now, nothing will end your life. You can’t help but have hope!

09. Watch: Things Above

10. Listen (or sing along): because he lives

11. listen & Interact: not waiting for the afterlife

(Buckle in and put on your thinking caps. This is going to be a party.) 

First, hit the little play button to listen the song “Afterlife” by Switchfoot. 🥚 As you listen, follow along with the lyrics in the slideshow below.

After you listen, try to answer these three questions. (If possible, talk them through with a partner or group.)

1. What do you think the discomfort is that they’re describing in the first two verses? 

2. What does it mean when they say that the world is made everyday in the two choruses?

3. They do some fun poetic things with the words “forever” and “now” in the Bridge. To help you think them through…

   • How would you describe the difference between “forever” and “now”?

   • How would you express that “foreverness” is happening as-we-speak? 

   • That last line of the bridge (together now, forever now, or never now) means this: You’re living in the same kind of perfect, ideal connection with God right at this moment as you will be for every moment after this, and those moments will never end. The alternative to that truth? Death - aka “never now.” 

After talking through those questions, click through and read the slides below to see how the apostle Paul expressed the same tension and truth as this song in Philippians 1:21-26. 🥚

Read the quote above, then react:
Agree or Disagree? “If you’re too easily pleased, then you’re too easily disappointed.”

Read Colossians 3:1-4, then react.
Agree or Disagree? If you’re too easily pleased, your standard isn’t raised high enough. 

Look through the following questions. They are meant to serve you as a checklist as you examine things that please you and things that disappoint you. 

• Does it last forever?

• Is it yours unconditionally?

• Does it control your emotional response to it (or do you)?  

• Does Scripture have something to say about it? 

Discuss the 🥚 usefulness of these questions when examining things that please you and things that disappoint you.

13. watch: easter empathy

Work through these hypothetical conversations, analyzing & discussing the possible answers according to the chart. Which quadrant of the matrix above does each answer belong to?

• Fear/Discomfort: “My uncle has COVID-19, and I’m afraid.”

  • Possible Answers/Comfort:

    • Jesus said to the women who saw him Easter morning: Don’t be afraid. And he says the same thing to you.

    • “I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, but I do know Jesus loves you and him, and is with you right now. And he always will be.”

    • Jesus has an answer. Easter proves Jesus has power over death, and since he himself died for your uncle, it means he loves him.

    • Jesus proved his power over all viruses and death when he rose from the dead. 

    • “I don’t know what’s going to happen to him/her--but here’s what I do know: Easter proves that Jesus removed all their guilt, and Easter proves they’ll live forever, even if they do die.”

• Fear/Discomfort: “I lost my job due to coronavirus.”

  • Possible answers:

    • “It’ll be okay. I’m sure you’ll get it back.” 

    • “Don’t be afraid. Jesus rose from the dead.” 

    • “Jesus rose from the dead, and he said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

    • “It seems like you feel like you can’t fully support your life or family. Jesus’ resurrection promises you that Jesus is with you, every step of the day.”

    • “Well, someday in heaven you’ll be perfectly happy.”

      • Let’s take this one a few steps further… Person responds, “Yeah, but I still lost my job. We’re going to run out of money in 3 weeks.”

        • What do you do/say then?

          • (Again, with the utmost empathy, because without empathy, asking, “Why is that bad?” comes off as uncaring and probably even hurtful) 

          • Ask: Why is that bad?

          • Their answer: well, then we won’t be able to buy food and we’ll lose our home.

          • Ask: And why is that bad?

          • Their answer: well, our family will be starving and homeless!

          • Ask: And why is that bad?

          • Their answer: We’ll die!

            • Final Note: Everything eventually pushes into the lower right-hand quadrant. In general: death is the worst, and Easter specifically has an answer for death. Life through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Easter proves that Jesus will give life after death to all who trust in him.”

Farewell

15. Pray: Pray for certainty in uncertain times

1. First, express your heartfelt thanks and praise to Jesus for this day.

2. Next, pray through the prayer requests you or your group might have.

3. Pray the Lord’s Prayer replacing the AMEN with ALLEULIA:

   Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
   Give us today our daily bread.
   Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
   Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
   For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. ALLELUIA.

15. Consider Giving: support Our Mission

We don’t primarily gather offerings so that we can keep ministry going (though that certainly is a blessing of offerings). 

Instead, primarily, we gather offerings to glorify God. We look at what God has given us to manage (everything we have), and we offer a portion of what he has given us back to him. Giving an offering is an opportunity for you to express faith in and say “thank-you” to a God who has made life-giving promises to you.  

You can do just that by clicking one of the buttons below, or you can also mail an offering to:

• Illumine Church
  1262 Riverchase Blvd.
  Rock Hill, SC 29732

• Illumine Church
  11051 Phinney Ave N
  Seattle, WA 98133.

Thank you!

16. Listen & celebrate: He is risen!

Thanks for joining us.
See you back soon!

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