The Church Local/Loco

Church (gatherings of professing followers of Jesus) can be the most loving, giving, gracious groups of care or the most petty, irritating, frustrating fellowship centers imaginable. So can marriages, families, relatives, co-workers in various occupations and students in any sort of learning you'd care to consider. Yup.

If you were to do a deep study of church history you'd find an incredibly wide range of theological positions, doctrinal variations and wider still, methodologies across the centuries, planet and perhaps even in your own local church regardless -fully independent house churches clear to denominations with hundreds of years behind them. This is reality.

People vary therefore think, believe and act on an incredibly broad spectrum of issues.

Unless and until you make peace in your own heart and mind that this is so, you will often find yourself at wit's end due to disagreements, hurt feelings and judgments that you ought not make even if "they" do. In simple terms, Jesus' -command- to love one another, neighbors and even enemies holds true in and outside of any sort of Christian gathering.

I'm posting this as a reminder because it's always timely and especially when in a season of intense polarization, plus an election year...

So let's re-consider my first sentence above changing only one two-letter word:

Church (gatherings of professing followers of Jesus) can be the most loving, giving, gracious groups of care and the most petty, irritating, frustrating fellowship centers imaginable.

Yep. All at the same time.

Prayer, extending grace, truly loving though flatly disagreeing, these are part of God's call to we who call ourselves His in Jesus Christ.

As always, thanks for stopping by. -Glenn