When Paula and I started this insane process of planting a church in a town that had too many churches already, my dear friend and at the time planting coach, Bill Herzog gave us a book. It changed the coarse of what we intended to do as a church. Bill has a blog titled, "Thought from a regular guy" and I have stolen a quote from him about this book and its ideas.
Listen to the description of the church author Jerry Cook writes in his wonderful book, “Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness”…..“The Church is people, redeemed, filled with His Spirit, equipped to serve, meeting needs everywhere in Jesus name.” In another place Cook says this, “Among other things, I’m saying that we need to direct the church away from professionalism and into the hands of people who do not know what they are doing. I can say from firsthand experience that this policy is both scary and at times, utterly ridiculous, but always, in my mind, necessary.”
Basing a church on these three things has brought us both all kinds of headaches and heartaches, but as well it has been a source of blessing and inspiration. Loving whomever God brings to us, accepting them (this is even tougher) warts and all, and forgiving them or maybe I should say getting them in a place to understand God's forgiveness, is the greatest challenge we have face. I find I have a lot to learn about all of these. Try it!
No comments:
Post a Comment