Living Like the Community We Are

Here are five suggestions toward living like the community we are as the church that I mentioned in my sermon this past week.  If God has created us as a new sort of revolutionary community, then we need to inch toward that reality in our local churches.

What would you add to this list?

1. Stop trying to find the ideal church – the church is not an ideal to be grasped but a divine reality that exists – as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: “By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world”[1]
2. Recognize what the church is – it is God’s creation not ours; He created it at great cost; appreciate the church don’t deprecate the church
3. Find reconciliation at the Cross – we all come into the church with baggage but we need to bring it to the Cross of Christ who is our peace (Ephesians 3:14); there is not place for smugness, pride, arrogance and ethnocentrism in the church
4. Love the diversity that God loves – Be grateful for the ethnic, social, class, economic, and academic diversity in the church; it is a reflection of the Revelation 7 picture of the church; let’s appreciate it now
5. Love one another (Ephesians 4:1-3) – learn to love through the strenuous way of humility, gentleness, and patience that Paul describes