Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.
Real community doesn’t happen on its own—it takes time, patience, repentance, forgiveness, and love that covers a multitude of sins. The church community is not just a crowd of people on a Sunday morning; it is the gathered, worshiping people of God in a congregation where masks aren’t needed and where real friends help bear the real burdens of one another. Community is not just getting together; it is living together, suffering together, rejoicing together, and dying together.
Oh, yes, the black hole of time. This is that period of time following the service when the visitor is standing around awkwardly, knowing not a soul. As the church bustles about, clumped together in their familiar groups, catching up and fellowshipping, the new family nervously gathers their stuff, looks about the room and waits.
They’re hoping to be included.
That Part of Gospel-Centeredness We Avoid
But one aspect of gospel-centrality remains under-emphasized among us: interpersonal reconciliation. The Bible says, “God . . . gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). It doesn’t say, “God gives us the option of reconciliation now and then, when it suits us.” No, God has given us the ministry of reconciliation as a matter of sacred stewardship. There is nothing more gospel-centered.
Do we pursue reconciliation with that urgency?
may need to address conditional forgiveness idea...