Yesterday my family and I went to two different places, heard two different sermons, but were part of (sort of) one community. The church we attend, Christian Fellowship Church, is having a leadership identity crisis right now, which means that we, as members, are having a member identity crisis as well. This weekend a consultant came in to help the present leadership at CFC work together, reconcile, etc.
I bring all of this up to explain partially why there haven’t been so many posts here lately, (because what I wrote in my journal was not fitting for the blog) and also to give some background into the two sermons I heard yesterday.
One was from the consultant, who preached at CFC in the morning. The other was from Jeff Kinkade, who was the pastor at CFC when all of this stuff hit the fan. A bunch of people have been asking Jeff if he would lead a Bible study, so last night a gazillion people met together and we sung some songs and Jeff preached a lesson.
The cool part of the two sermons was that both talked how about really living the Christian life is not about duty, but about love. Both camped out on that for a while.
The weird part about this sermon, though, was that it seemed like something was missing. I’m still not totally sure about what it was. If I summed up the gist of it in one sentence, it would be:
We should go above and beyond everything Jesus commanded us to do out of love rather than just doing the minimum requirements like a disgruntled slave, especially when it comes to forgiveness.
That still doesn’t quite sit with me right.
So then we went to the “bible study” on Sunday night. And here’s what we got:
The three points at the bottom of this note might be the thing that was missing from the morning sermon. If any forgiveness is going to happen, if any LIFE is going to happen, it is going to have to be Christ’s life in us making it happen. I can’t just grunt and make it happen any more than the apostles can throw a tree into the ocean with their faith!
So at the end of the day, I’ve got a lot to think about and a lot to let Jesus work through in me.
The other thing that is going on is my ecclesiology is getting stirred up again. Why was Sunday morning considered “church” & not Sunday night? But I’ve already written too much. More about tails & monkeys another day.