Ninety-six days…

Hello Readers.  Today’s post is a little different than most.  I’ve decided to take a small jump off the usual topics to talk about something that made me sad where the church body is concerned.  I will be back on topic tomorrow, but today, I just need to share what I’m feeling.   Here it is…

First, about the whole age thing, I went bowling with my family last night.  I think I threw my back out.  Yep, enough said…

I can be extremely competitive.  I love to play games, and we have a whole circle of friends we play board games with regularly.  We taunt and tease each other.  It’s great!  We usually team up men against women.  Years ago, Paul and I had a couple we didn’t know all that well over to our home for dinner.  After dinner, the four of us decided to play a few board games.  As usual, the teams were husbands against wives.  During the game, if the men made a mistake, the woman on my team would feel sorry for them and want to give them the point anyway.  Her husband would want to do the same when it was our turn.  All evening Paul and I kept looking at each other trying to figure out what in the world was happening.  Where was the competitive spirit?  Where was the playful banter riding the fine line of an occasional marital tiff?  You know what I’m talking about… the fun stuff!

Spirited competition while playing silly games is one thing, but recently I was made privy to a conversation that made me feel a little sick inside.  It was a conversation based on why one particular church is better than the other.  For the record, I loathe my-church-is-better-than-your-church debates, especially because the churches being discussed are two God-honoring, Bible-believing churches, whose leadership are both doing the will of God in the individual ways in which they are called.  The key word in the last sentence is individual.  Many people forget that God sometimes uses individuals differently to achieve the same result.  I feel many Christians are caught up in thinking that church is the four walls surrounding us on Sunday mornings when, in fact, the church is the body of Christ.  We need to spend more time considering what Jesus wants us to do rather than worrying about how someone else is “doing it wrong.”  Sometimes, there are people involved in large churches who think people in small churches are “doing it wrong,” and likewise, some people involved in small churches think those in large churches are “doing it wrong.”  It is my opinion that when we set our minds on what everyone else is “doing wrong,” we end up becoming distracted and doing nothing good at all.  Ministry is about showing people the love of God.  We need to demonstrate love to each other and remember we are all on the same team.  My prayer is that all of us learn to love and respect each other.  When we do that, it will be much easier to save the competition for game night.