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The way for a church to glorify God is simply to be the church. We don’t
decide what kind of ministry we will be, who can come to worship, or to whom we
will minister. We pattern ourselves after the model of the church found in the
Scriptures as God gives us light and ability to do so. There is freedom to
develop various strategies to perform the ministry of Jesus in our community but
we are concerned first that we reflect Jesus. He was concerned to meet needs
around Him, spiritual and physical. Through His Spirit, He continues to work in
the world to meet spiritual and physical needs through teaching, prayer,
worship, and service in the context of His church.
Currently, our church is hindered by the building we are in. It controls our
ministry rather than allowing us to develop more and better ministries that will
expand the Kingdom in this area. It wasn’t always that way. For many years this
building has served us well. Many have come to Jesus here, have been taught
here, trained, and sent from here. But now we have outgrown it.
Change is often gradual in a church and that’s been true for us. After all,
we’ve been talking about building a church for almost 10 years. But we are at
the time when changes will come more quickly and will be very significant for
us. The kind of changes we will experience in the next 2 or 3 years are the kind
that bring pressure with them. If we don’t keep looking at the goal of bringing
glory to God by being the church, we will slip from honest and open discussion
to angry comments made about “them.” We will stop thinking the best of each
other and move to questioning motivations and feeling like we’re being pushed
around instead of moving forward as Jesus leads us together. If we don’t walk
together before God faithfully, we will begin to sound and look a lot like
Israel as they started the trek to the Promised Land.
A new building isn’t the Promised Land. It is a chance to develop a ministry
that will help us move further in our goal to minister in our Jerusalem,
Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the Earth. Pray that God will give us grace
to love each other deeply, to love our neighbors in this community, and to be
used by God together to see many more people become worshippers of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Paul
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