James: Sameness
I’m going to make a simple observation, ask a simple question and then I’m going to ask for your feedback on our website.
James, the brother of Jesus, feels that the things that we see in the world are not the same things that we should see in the community of the church.
If you were to name two or three things that should be common in the community of the church and are not common in the world around us, what would they be? I’d love to hear your feedback.
June 10th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
1) Lifelong marriages, divorce should be unheard of in the church.
2) Sharing – whats mine is yours because it all came from God.
3) Speaking the truth in love – we should know each other well enough and love each other well enough that when we ask someone how they are doing we really want to know and they will really tell us.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I can think of a few. Marital fidelity would seem pretty obvious but I know several people “in church” who were not able to do that. You would think that loving one another would be very easy to do in the church community, but I have experienced the lack of that in churches that I have attended in the past. I guess that I have never had really high expectations even in the church community as I realize that the bottom line is that we are all people with crud and that crud doesn’t mysteriously disappear when we walk into a church.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Tolerance, Forgiveness, Selfless-ness
June 12th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
1) forgivness…keeping a grudge and writing people off is too common of a practice in society. Forgivness is one of the healthiest things we can do for ourselves as well as our relationships.
2) Accountability.. not so much of this in the church but more than in the world i think. at least accountability is a virtue that is taught in the church anyways.
3) Stillness…society is so go go go that we forget we need time to just be still.