Read his post to see his comments on all of these.(1) Make the connections
(2) Welcome the mess
(3) Stop pretending
(4) Stop performing
(5) Eat and drink with broken people
(6) Give people time to change
(7) Focus on the heart
Monday, November 10, 2008
Forming Communities of Grace
Tim Chester offers some advice as to forming communities of grace at your church:
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Such good thoughts! I'm striving, joyfully (I hope), by God's grace, to do every one of these things every Sunday at DSC. I fail often, but by His grace, I'm trying.
About the eating part, I'd like to see that happen, somehow, at DSC, perhaps with a church-wide lunch each Sunday after the second service. I don't know how we would find the space in the building for all of the brothers and sisters who might come, but I'd like to think about it and try to come up with a way! Maybe we could have lunches at each other's homes, as possible. After-church lunches were a *huge* part of fellowship at Capitol Hill Baptist-- older, younger, male, female, married, single, all together, loving Christ and each other! I'd love to see more of that at DSC (and I should pray for it more often!).
Numbers 1 and 3 are particular passions of mine. I am trying to "stop pretending" in my own life. Yesterday, in Sunday school, in the context of Ryan's teaching on the sovereignty of God in salvation, I shared about my unsaved (from all that I could tell) mother's suicide when I was nine, and how I have had to wrestle with her eternal status.
I realize that not everyone is comfortable with sharing such painful things at church, but I hope that by my doing so, other brothers and sisters will feel more free to unburden themselves too.
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