Church Voices

I was talking to a couple of friends of mine in a couple of different conversations about church, and an observation came up. The average church size is at 70, when was the last time you sat in a room with 70 people and agreed on every major issue? The only way a church, even what we’d consider a smaller church, can stay together is through alienation or love.

Alienation
You can be so relationally separated from your brothers and sisters that these issues don’t come up. You can show up on Sunday mornings, talk about the donuts and coffee, avoid talk about doctrine, lifestyle, confession of sins, needs for prayer, and any other controversial subject.

Love
Or you can love each other with a love strong enough to overcome doctrinal differences, sin against each other, intentional and unintentional offense, personality clashes, and every other issue that can come between sinful and fallen people.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3.17-19