Are you thankful for your church – for your church family?
… or do you find yourself church comparing your church with other churches … and coming up short?
Whether it be worship or the nursery, we are probably aware of churches that seem to do “just a little bit better” than we feel our church is doing.
Today, we are good at comparison – and while we can learn from the innovation of others, by simple comparison, we can end up with perpetual dissatisfaction.
One of my favourite books is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, “Life Together,” and one of my favourite passages from this book is,
Christian Community
Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.
He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Life Together,” p. 26-28,30.
I value what Bonhoeffer writes, and when I visit your church as your D.S., I thank God for you. I am thankful for what God is doing in and through you. I also pray for you and your church – that God will give you hope and clarity to know what He is inviting you and your local church to join him in doing in your community.
No need to compare – just a need to be faithful and to join God in what he is calling your church community to. Give thanks for your brothers and sisters in Christ – your community in Christ!
Here is a good word from Pastor Jay Sanders, entitled, “A Rural Pastor’s Warning About Megachurches.” He writes, “God is sovereign. He is not confined to working only in tiny little churches that meet our attendance requirements just as he is not somehow bound to work only in large churches. It is Christ, not us and our numeric expectations, who is the head of the church… And if we love Christ, we will love his church, regardless of the size.” Here’s the link: http://www.lifeway.com/pastors/2017/10/02/rural-pastors-warning-megachurches/
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I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil 1:3-6)
Please click this link to this week’s Five Minutes on Friday with the LPD Five_Minutes_on_Friday_Oct._6_2017.02.pdf
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