As we collectively strain towards what's ahead, and dream dreams of a return to our First Love, perhaps it is not so important that people have a "passion" for the work, but more important that we simply move out in obedience with the faith that all the emotional "buy in" will follow. In the midst of just such a conversation the following words were penned in a letter. I hope they find a place of inspiration and challenge in your heart and mind as they have in mine.
"The friendship of Christ toward us is the foundation of the church.
The Spirit holds us together with God. Trust and faith lets us believe
and rest in that. Without the practice of trust then the church
doesn't live. Individually, we can learn to trust God, we can learn to
trust God together, we can even learn to trust one another. This makes
a brotherly love-spirited church, an authentic community of christains
for christains. And that's where these churches are (with an open door
to the marginalized).
My issue, my question is how can we be friends to Christ if
we won't befriend, as a church, the very people he says he is among.
Invitations for the feast are sent to those who must learn to make
priority the guest of honor; participants who are gathered are the ones
who need the celebration. Young protestant churches need to form an
identity of knowing and befriending the communities it says it serves.
The difference is doing it as a community of believers and knowing how
to shape the church so it can. So, do these churches have the same
vision of trust building with communities at need as it does for its
own? Can it structure itself to operate in such a way? We need only
wait on those who are willing to work with us, not wait on the work.
Christian obedience is inspiration."
~ nd
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