The Body Pt. 3

The suburbs can be very Politically correct.  Even as a follower of Jesus, I find myself not always sharing my faith because I don’t want to offend others.  I don’t mean beating people over the head with my faith- just not talking about God at all so as not to be deemed “offensive.”  As I talked with my wife this week I realize how disingenuous that is- to have a great group of people to share life with, and to not make that available to others.  We often talk about how hard it is to get our neighbors to let us help them when they need it.  Even simple things like shoveling snow or raking leaves.  We are so conditioned to be self-sufficient that we bristle at the thought of being unable to “carry our own weight.”  But as my wife and I discussed this fact, we realize that we are just as guilty.  Just one example… Last fall our leaf blower broke down, and, instead of asking our neighbor to borrow theirs, we went out immediately and bought another one.  Then later that winter, we offered to clear the snow from the same neighbor’s driveway and almost had to argue with them for them to allow us to help.

Once again I am reminded of Ghandi’s statement, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”  If I want to teach our neighbors to depend on others, we must be willing to set the example and depend on them when we are in need.

Over the summer, our faith community is collectively participating in a series of missional experiments designed to help us get out of the rut of seeing church just as a place you go, and engaging our friends and neighbors as we go about our lives.  Our group has moved off site from the church building we were meeting in as a way to help us reengage our faith life without the trappings of a building.

Well, the opportunity has come about for us to utilize a building rent free when we relaunch in the fall.  We have been hesitant to fall back into seeing the building as “church,” however, we have come up with a way to combat that.  We are planning to open the building up as a community center that our group serves as “tenants” in.  This will allow us to host events that will directly benefit a local neighborhood and bring the community together.  This way we can start to bring the positive change we want to see in the community and keep the building from being a potential barrier to bring that change.  Then the neighborhood can reap the benefits of a “church” being active and alive in the community, which is the real mission that God gave the church in the first place. I’ll continue to provide updates as we go along.

categories Church, Society and Culture | Mike | datetime June 16, 2009 11:06 pm

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