On Spiritual Holiday - Praxis

Think. Love. Live.

These are the three pillars of Praxis Church. And this three fold cord is amazingly strong.

Praxis, like the Second Mile, is a missional church networked with Acts 29. Both churches are vibrant with sound bible teaching. Praxis has more singles, while Second Mile is more geared to families; but both have all ages. Praxis also seems a little more open to the charismatic – though that is just our sense, and you would need to check with leadership to confirm.

Praxis has been around for a while and they are negotiating a permenant location. Currently they use two different churches for their meetings. Check their website for locations and time. We predict when they have their own place they will grow even more.

Worship on Sunday is vibrant and passionate. The worship band has incredible talent – even wowing our son-in-law who is a musician and is very discerning. And they impressed us as well – not only with their talent, but with their heart towards God and their ability to lead us into worship. And we worshipped with new songs, old songs and ancient songs. These young men led us from God of This City to a remix of the old Jesus People standard, I’ve Got Joy Like a River to Great is Thy Faithfulness. All in one service… and it was seamless… and fantastic.

And we were wowed by Pastor Justin Anderson sermon – both content and presentation. Pastor Justin, like the other missional pastors, doesn't use a podium. Scary! How do they do that? He preaches expositorily. The morning's text was Mark 1:14. For 45 minutes we listened attentively as Pastor Justin teased out this verse and provided ample application for today's living.

We loved the approach of looking at the verse in context. Pastor Justin took us back to verse one, reminding his hearers to take note of what these eye witnesses saw and heard. Often he stated we create our own Jesus that looks nothing like the eye witness account. So he went on to exhort that our goal is to understand what the eye witnesses say about Jesus, not necessarily what a professor might say about Jesus. Good advice! We remember from our college days the professors questioning everything like God, the Bible, and family, but never encouraging us to question them.

From verse 14 Justin talked about repentance, which he defined as changing direction when we "re wrong. Then he unpacked the idea of the Kingdom of God: It is more than fire insurance from hell or Sunday night church attendance. The Kingdom is gigantic. It covers all aspects of life, including family, work, school, community, country, the world. It covers attitudes, actions and beliefs. The cross was the turning point of all history. Pastor Justin highlighted this portion of the sermon talking about Act 17:6, 'these men who turned the world upside down.'

So after worshipping with this flock and listening to this young, animated, on-fire-for-Christ pastor, we could not help but think that this congregation was in capable hands.

The services allow children in the service – in fact they encourage parents to get their little ones for the closing song and weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This congregation is heavily young adults. The church is strategically and purposefully located in Tempe – and though most of the congregation is college/ young career age, there are some young families, some teenagers and even some of the more mature crowd.

But let’s move on to the second cord or pillar.

Praxis has small groups - called missional communities. We have not visited any of them, we were invited to attend - and they are not age segregated. In fact when I asked about it they were puzzled that anyone would want to divide up by age.

And, finally, the pièce de résistance: The Learn Pillar. Praxis has Live Training courses. One can sign up for a class on Tuesday or Thursday evenings, or perhaps both. The courses are oh so appetizing: Gospel Centered preaching – with lecture, discussion and practice. Hermeneutics, Church History, Foundations of Christian Theology (using Dr. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology), New Testament Survey: Epistles, Biblical Marriage and a “Pop-In” class on the spiritual disciplines on each night. We were not only impressed, and hungry to sample these delightful offerings, but all of our (grown) children were equally intrigued. Wow – a church that is serious about equipping their people for the work of the ministry.

Are you hungry to LOVE God passionately, to LIVE in missional community and to LEARN. Head on down to Praxis and enjoy the feast.