As I sit here watching the NCAA B-Ball tournament I am drawn to the thought of team unity. There were 3 very close games tonight all decided by less than 3 points. Unfortunately for me the only game that was not close was my Pitt Panthers going down to UCLA (If you know me, you know I can't stand any college team from California or Florida, that's another blog all together). The unity in which these teams have to play is something the church needs to learn. As individual churches and in a greater scale the whole body of Christ working in unity.
So what does it take? How do we become a unified body. I remember singing "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before." When singing that song as a child I never pictured it to mean one First Church vs. Second Church. Or brother vs. brother. Yet in recent years it seems that this has become a sad fact. Church vs. church, one saying, "Our church is better than your church," the other saying, "Look at us, we have more programs and can meet all your needs." Why are there so many churches vying to draw people away from other churches? I thought the Great Commission was to, "Go into all the world and compel them to come in." I didn't know it was go to the church down the street and steal some sheep.
I recently had a friend tell me about a recent sermon series by her pastor which was all about why not to be Pentecostal, and how it wasn't something that Christians should get involved in. I cringe when I here about these kind of messages being preached from any Christian pulpit. How does this bring the body of Christ together in unity? Sure our fundamental truths and specific doctrines may not line up 100%, but then aren't we to be about the Fathers business. I long for the day when the church is denominationaly color blind. A day when we are working together to proclaim to a lost world that, Jesus is ..."THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE"...
What do you think. I'll have more on this latter.
1 comment:
AMEN! Chip was recently telling me about a church that opened somewhere (I'm not real good with the details) that refused to let other Christians come to their church in the beginning. They didn't want the church hoppers looking for the next best thing, they wanted to reach the lost. At first I was a little taken back that they wouldn't let any other Christians come, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it also meant they weren't bringing all their baggage and preconceived notions of what the church should look like with them. I recently read somewhere that "The main this is to keep the main thing the main thing." Seems a lot of churches are forgetting that these days.
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