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August 20, 2006
Community
Over the next four weeks we'll be looking at the issue of "community" as a church. As a leadership we believe that God's call & God's design is Community. The Christian journey is designed to take place in community. You can't thrive spiritually on your own. You can't fulfill all the one anothers of scripture on your own. You need others. That's God's design. That's why he's put us together.
At a conference yesterday I discovered two things. In all the churches that I know are doing well, and by that I mean, people in their midst are growing toward Jesus, and as a community they're making a difference in Jesus' name, in those places the common denominator is community. The kind of community that really does life together. Where we really become family. The kind of people who learn to work through our differences and as God changes us allow him to use, even, those difference to make us stronger. Community I'm finding is messy! It's not about everyone just liking everyone. It's not about everyone agreeing on everything. It is about a group of people becoming surrendered to something greater than themselves. Who Jesus would have them be, and what He would have them do. And then, together, journeying that road together.
At POG this is our direction. We want the kind of community Jesus demonstrated in his relationships, no matter what the cost, and we know there's a cost. One of those costs is our individuality. Or a life focused on individuality. We long for deep friendship, knowing that, sometimes, with deep friendship comes pain. But as the Bible says, wounds from a friend can be trusted.
We know we won't get it all right, but we want to move forward together. We don't want to be a sunday morning social gathering that does little more than tickle people's ears, even if the desire is good and honorable. We really, really want to see people become more like Jesus.
As we discovered this morning, we want a community that helps all of us be faithful to the end, and not be deceived and trapped by the attractivess of sin. We want a community that helps us all, together, engage in good deeds and in radical acts of love. We want the purpose statement that sits on our stationary to be the reality that we live as we really become about showing God's love, in action to each other and to our community.
Posted by: ed