Purpose

Sunday 30 November 2014

God critiques by creating

One of the goals of every Christian Leadership is to embody gospel-centered [grace] community, a community of unity around the common message of grace, serving as a model to the rest of the congregation.
When God made us one with Christ, he also made us one with each other, removing the barriers of separation erected by our sinful nature, such as individualism, tribalism, judgmentalism, or personal preferences and biases. The message of the Church, the gospel, is to bring together people around the common table of fellowship who would have remained otherwise separated.
The divisive and fundamentally sinful notions of class, race, economics however haven proven to remain painful sources of fragmentation and alienation within the churches. Things the church should strive against in establishing new expressions of family have even become means of identification and segregation. Following the lead of the surrounding cultures, many churches and worship services target specific groups to the exclusion of others.

Multiculturalism
Like the pieces of a puzzle look all different yet they belong all together
Have we forgotten that we are an all . . .  community, all language, all nations, all age community, though we are distinct, all different, in Christ we are no longer divided by temporal expressions of identities but are united by the eternal identity we have in Christ. We are the visual sign of the gospel in this world. God wants us to love one another and so to live our lives together in such a way that the demonstrate the presence of the Good News of reconciliation before a world in strife.
When actual reconciliation, peacemaking, and unity overcomes our differences and uniqueness's we display the power of the Good News and we are the powerful witness of love to this fragmented world.
"Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'' (John 13:13-34). The same message is given to the disciples and to us in John 17. Remember, Jesus created the group of disciples from different social groups, even from among women of ill reputations, like Mary Magdalen and tax collectors, like Matthew. Jesus critiqued not only the world, or Israel but also the religious elite by creating a group of people who would have remained separated in any other way.

God will reverse the damage resulting from the fall in all and every area of life, not only to humanity but to nature itself. Nothing is unaffected by the fall, nothing is outside or beyond God's grace, and the church is the beginning.

The truth is, as much as we need one another to be united in one body so does the world. The world desperately needs to see the love we have for one another within our diversity. The only way to maintain our diversity in unity is by living out our commitment to Him through our commitment to one another.

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