When we look at the New Testament church, we see that it wasn't about buildings, or programs, or services. What Christ wanted of the church was so different. 1 John 4:12 says "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." Jesus said the second greatest commandment is that we would "love our neighbour as ourselves", that we would meet, as much as we could, the needs of those in and around this community. The challenge to me, and our first challenge as a Christ-centered community, is not to explain all of that away anymore. I was talking to my Dad about this. And he was trying to explain to me that the believers in Acts 2 lived the way they did because they thought Jesus was coming back really soon. In my mind I was thinking, "And you know that any better? We're allowed to live our North American lifestyle because we know when Jesus was coming back any better than the Acts 2 church did?"
We need to put away the million reasons and teachings on why we can't be church like that anymore, why we won't aim for that anymore, why church ought to be about something else now. Shouldn't it bother us that we have to say Acts 2 church as if its some other different entity than the church today? That we have to say Acts 2 church like its different from our church? God's challenge is for us to come at "Fellowship of the Believers" with reverence and humility, embrace that I'm that camel that needs to go through the needle, and ask God for help, to fill me with the love that compelled him to sacrifice abd abandon everything.
And here I have to apologize to you guys, flipping over the table and changing everything all at once wasn't the wisest thing to do. That in my exasperation I threw my hands up and said "you guys figure this out" rather than be a Godly leader and push us through the small steps that would take us from who we are to who God wants this community to be. But that is the commitment we're making for this coming year. To take this community, take it one step at a time, one Holy Spirit-enabled moved at a time, to the church that Jesus spoke of when he said "you will be known as my disciples by the way you love one another". Bit by bit we will become more like Christ in the way He loved, bit by bit we will be more like the community Christ left behind in the way we give ourselves away. I don't know how long that will take, I don't know how many baby steps we'll need to go through, but I will not, this community will not, aim to settle for anything less.
So our first baby step, can we give a bit more of our time and care to those around us? Those who aren't praying in community make a 30 minute commitment to doing so, even if its just staying around after service to pray over someone you don't know. Those who are already doing that I challenge you to come out to prayer meetings, to pray for what this community is touching. Those who are doing both those I challenge put a 30 min commitment a week to sharing life deeply with their non-christian friends and family.
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