I’m a thinker, a learner, someone who soaks in as much about the world around me as possible. One of the things I care greatly about is the church, big C and little C. Of course I belong to a little C church, a local community doing their best to love Jesus and love others, to be a blessing and a light to Katy. I also belong to the big C church, a highly diverse group of people world-wide that love Jesus and seek to follow him.
I care about both of those groups deeply. I want to see my little local church do things well and advance the gospel here. I also learn a tremendous amount from the church as a whole and I want to see them doing things better and make a global impact. For me that mostly looks like reading a lot of Christian books and blogs and interacting with a wide variety of Christian influencers through social media and sometimes in person via conferences. I like to take the positives of what I learn and bring them back to my local church and relationships and hope that somehow they can build people up.
I’ve written before about the internal turmoil I often have when I see leaders whose doctrine lines up with mine conflict with friends and leaders who I love and respect. I grew up first in the Lutheran Missouri Synod church, then in the PCA, and in a wholly evangelistic, conservative culture. Things like gender roles and the cessation of gifts of the Spirit were important.
In recent years my perspective has widened and though my doctrine is still the same my love of the body of Christ has grown in such a way that differences are less important. Discipleship and transformational growth of people are primary. Working together for issues of justice is also key. Grace trumps everything.
Last night Beth Moore was teaching us from 1 Thessalonians 5 and she hit on something really key. This section of the chapter is really Paul’s exhortation about how to live in community.
