Soft Launch Week Three

Sunday, August 23, 2026

Scriptures: Matthew 4:1-2; Matthew 4:15-17

• Sermon Summary

  Commons Church in Marda Loop launches on September 20, 2026

• Discussion Guide

  Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.
  
  Summer Discussion Guide 2026

  If your group is meeting this summer and wants to talk about the sermons, here are a few questions that you could use to engage with our teaching. 

  • What specific part of the message resonated with you the most? Why do you think that particular part, or idea, or story caught your attention? 

  • Did the sermon speak into a particular struggle or question in your life or your faith journey right now?

  • How did the message challenge or encourage you personally?
    And what do you think the application could be for our church community? Was there anything that could strengthen or stretch us as a church? 

  • How did the exposition of the scriptures used in the sermon provide you with a new perspective of deeper understanding?

  ——
  It is good to remember that the conversation experience in the group is shaped by the personal stories of those who participate in it and how willing the people are to be open and vulnerable in the group.

  So if you’re leading the discussion, feel free to model and encourage person-centred and story-centred sharing by reflecting on how some parts of the sermon resonate with you personally.
  ——

  Additionally, what contributes to a more authentic group discussion is when people can share not about the abstract and theoretical applications, but one or two practical things they are taking away from either the sermon or the discussion. 

  So, you can end your time together with this question: 

  • What is one thing you are taking away from either the sermon or the discussion we’ve just had?

• Service Songs & Prayers

  Just a week ago we had set up a tent at the annual Marda Gras festival held on 33rd Ave here in Marda Loop. There, we invited festival-goers to write a wish, a hope, a prayer on a tag and hang it on the branches of a wishing tree that we had made.
  The response was incredible. Lots of folks passed by, but many stopped to write something. What they wrote ranged from the frivolous to the profoundly meaningful. They were the hopes, prayers, and wishes that were on their hearts and minds.
  It seems fitting that today we would pray a prayer that reflects the prayers shared by the people of this neighbourhood. I invite you later, during the break in our service, to examine the wishing tree and read what was written.
  Right now, let us pray,
  
  Loving God,
  It is no secret to you the things that weigh on our hearts. You know our prayers before they leave our lips or the tips of our pens.

  There is—somewhere inside us—an intuitive muscle that wants to share with you the things we care about. Because we know you hear us.
  
  You hear about the skills we hope to learn; the places we long to go; the pets we hope to welcome into our homes one day; those virtues want to see take root in our hearts; the type of person we wished we could become…
  The loved ones in faraway places that are just out of our reach and whether we’ll get to see them again or not one day, we pray they feel our love; we pray for all the things we feel about money and time and all of our bills and businesses…
  Our deep yearning for an end to war, and earnest disarmament; lasting world peace and leaders that would want it just as much as we do…
  Our beloved seniors whom we pray experience the dignity we know they deserve; our sons and daughters, bothers and sisters, moms and dads, whose bodies and minds aren’t able to do what they wished they could; all the diagnoses—the good news and bad news that we’ve heard and will hear…
  We pray for friendship and someone to sit next to us and listen; for that special someone to come into our life and love us unconditionally; and we pray for all the little newborn babies we’re expecting to meet soon and very soon.

  Jesus, hear the prayers of your people—the words spoken and left unspoken. May your kingdom come and will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.

  In Jesus’ name, the name above all names, we pray,
  Amen.