Jealous?

One thing that's become very clear to me recently is that jealously can be an Achilles' heel of churches doing work together.

Well what if we lose "members"? Ok, fine. You lose them. But we have to ask ourselves, (and often do)...why did we lose them? Don't get me wrong, I understand the framework for people covenanting with a community of believers. The commitment is to Christ and his people, and the common purpose of glorifying Christ and building of the kingdom--not commitment to a building or a name or an individual.

So when we see other churches doing incredible things, why not seek to join them? A merger is not the idea here, but some have went down that road with success. But actually coming along side and pairing up our fellow believers of other churches, with the community of believers we've chosen to walk in life together with, is what I'm getting at. One of the ways we're seeking to do this is to go to a church that's thinking outside the box. We're taking a team to the Unleash conference in March. It's not the only way to do church. But they're successful and we want to tap into that and see if we can apply some of their techniques to help our own community be a better place to serve God in.

I want our students to go to other student ministries. I've told them this. I'm not afraid of them joining another ministry. I want them to see what God is doing in other churches, and to bring back ideas that will improve our kingdom impact! If they leave and start going somewhere else...ok I shouldn't be one bit jealous, but rather question my efforts at making sure their connections within our community were actually helping them live life for God, and not just filling a void on Sunday or Wednesday.

Shame on us if we think that church is "our" church. It's God's Church. We identify with the community he has brought together, and to those we covenant our lives to.

We all know eyes are on the church and how we interact with different "flocks". Let's give them something to talk about rather than validating their suspicions!