Being a True Community

 We want to welcome Kathy Cushing to our congregation. She placed her membership with us yesterday. As we repeat our promises to one another as a congregation, it reminds me of how important being a true community is.

Being a community requires effort, though. There is no short-cut. The time we spend together as brothers and sisters in Christ is a crucial part of this. Yesterday I talked about how important honestly and humility are in building relationships with one another. Both honesty (in the sense of being open) and humility are qualities that may not come naturally to us. When we have been hurt in the past, it makes it that much harder for us to open up to one another in the future.

I think our times of fellowship are important for this reason. It gives us a chance to talk to get to know one another better. The times we have during the week—Wednesday coffee and devotions and Friday coffee—are other occasions for us to spend time building closer relationships.

Next Sunday we’ll be concluding our series on 2 Corinthians by talking about how we respond when relationships get messy. Because we are imperfect people who have weaknesses (2 Corinthians 11-12), there are times that restoration is necessary. The good news is that because of Jesus we can strive for full restoration.

We have an opportunity coming up November 17th from 5-8pm where we’ll be making Christmas ornaments. Can I encourage you again to come along to this? Invite a friend who might like to come and participate in this. If you can, bring a small picture of your family, too. We’ll be doing some things with these for our Advent series this year.

Invite along a friend to come to worship with you next week!

God bless,

Brian

Scripture readings for next Sunday

2 Corinthians 13—What do you think is hardest about “striving for full restoration”?

Genesis 50:15-21—After what Joseph’s brothers did to him, how would you have responded?

Matthew 18:15-20—What do you think is the point of Jesus’ teaching here?

James 5:13-20—What responsibilities to one another do you see in this passage?