Fruitfulness: Pruning | Rachel Riddall at 7pm | 12 July 2020

12 July 2020 - 7pm Service

Fruitfulness

We're continuing our FRUITFULNESS series during July. Joe and Hannah will be hosting tonight and Colse and the Woodlands band are leading worship. Rachel Riddall, one of our pastors, will be sharing a special message this evening on pruning from John 15.

STUDY NOTES

Introduction 
Here are some questions you might want to reflect on about 'fruitfulness' - read John 15:2.

A gardener prunes a tree or a bush to enable it to be fruitful, not to waste nutrients and growth in producing leggy stems or branches. Fruitfulness, not size is the goal. Pruning looks like a painful process- equivalent perhaps to 'discipline' in Hebrews 12: 11, a discipline that feels unpleasant at the time but produces a 'harvest' (fruitfulness). What elements of pruning might we be experiencing individually and corporately?

1. Pruning helps us prioritise; the vital over the urgent or extraneous. In your life where is the 'urgent' getting in the way of the 'vital'?

2. Pruning simplifies where life gets over complex. What could you helpfully simplify in your life?

3. Pruning humbles, where we have grown over-confident in size rather than fruitfulness. What has this season helpfully challenged for us as a Church as well as individually?

4. Pruning leads to growth. (In church life it energises and gives capacity for people). What do you have renewed appetite for right now?