Thursday

Knowing One Another.

How long have you been a member of your fellowship?  How well do you feel you really know the other members?

One of the things my wife and myself felt in our last fellowship was that relationships were very shallow.  We mentioned this to one individual who said that the cell group he was part of had been meeting together for years, but they didn't really know each other very well.

One of the things the senior pastor most liked to talk about was the concept of the church being a family.  But the question has to be:  How can we truly be like a family if we are all living our individual lives and we don't really know each other?

If you read the early chapters of Acts you find that the disciples  met together regularly, and you get the feeling that their relationships were very close and supportive.  Just like a family, in fact.  We don't always seem to manage to do as well nowadays.

Another thing that they ate together.  Did you know that the Lord's Supper (or Holy Communion, or Eucharist, etc) was originally a full meal, and not just a token piece of bread and sip of wine or juice?  Scholars tell us that this was true, and that they shared a meal together on the evening of the first day of the week - probably a bring and share meal.  What is more natural for a family than to share a meal together?  So why do we accept the token bread and wine, when it is not what Jesus intended, and not what the early church did?  It was a suppper, not a nibble!

I believe that we have to regain the sense of family in the Body of Christ, and one of the main things we can do in support of that is to eat together.

Tuesday

A Change of Direction.

Since I last wrote anything here, I have been going through a period of really thinking about what I believe about the Church.  I was becoming increasingly unhappy with what I was experiencing - what place do divisions, politics and control have in the Body of Christ?

Things came to a head one evening, and not long after that my wife and myself left the fellowship we were members of.  It was quite a wrench, as it meant giving up preaching, teaching in a Bible school, leading a cell group, and helping to lead a discipleship program.

But I had to do it, and over the next few days I aim to describe why I left, and where I am going now.