What if…

What if being a ‘member’ of a church wasn’t about accessing communion, or submitting to the church’s authority, but was about committing to one another’s lives no matter what. A covenant even, that we will pursue God’s best for one another.

That we will do life together – through good times and bad.

That we will take down our masks, revealing what’s really going on in our lives and hearts.

That we ask each other difficult questions.

That when you sin against me, and when I sin against you, we are committed to forgive and work through the issues.

That there’s no bailing out when things get tough.

What if we made that covenant to each other?

What if the ‘church community’ wasn’t about weekly meetings, but about being in and out of other people’s homes and lives, day in day out?

What if it involved breaking down the different compartments of our lives – our homes, our families, our work, our friends, our neighbours, our communities – but instead tried to integrate them?

What if it didn’t pursue ‘ministry’ – but simply ‘life’?

What if it was committed to a specific geographical community, dedicated to bringing God’s values to that area?

What if it committed to pursuing love and justice, no matter the cost? How far is it willing to go for the sake of the lost?

What if it really believed that each time we walk past someone in need, we walk past Jesus?

What if it didn’t accept hard-heartedness to sin, selfishness, and poverty as an option?

What if it rejected the notion that Christian values = middle class values – that Christianity shouldn’t be ‘respectable’?

What if it committed to building friendships with the types of people Jesus himself preferred to spend time with – the broken, the forsaken, the poor?

What if it opened its homes, not just to one another, but to those in need as well?

What if we’re holding out for some sort of revival that we actually need to initiate?

What if our ideas about love have to take a step up?

What if Isaiah got it right when he said that only when we spend ourselves on behalf of others, then our light will break forth in the darkness?

(This was produced by a member of the Community Church Dundee, copyright Charis)