I often wonder what the Northwest Church of Christ is known for in our community. I think that is a good thing to think about. If we don’t have a good answer to that question, chances are, our salt is still in the shaker. So, what is your congregation known for in your community? How did that happen? What are you doing, as a congregation, to actively engage your community with love and the Gospel of Christ? What tough decisions did your elders have to make and what vision did they cast to see that it took place?
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Matt Dabbs
April 10, 2024
0 Responses
I’m not sure that our congregation is well known by the community at large. We do not have much media exposure. But we seem to be well known by people who are hurting. People in government housing and homeless shelters know us. People with drug and alchohol addictions know us. Pregnant teenagers know us. I guess that they know us because we have been aggressive in our efforts to help them. It started with leaders who ran toward people with problems rather than away from them. Those leaders have infected the rest of us with a passion to help people who are hurting (whether the pain is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual).
Terry,
That is exactly what I am talking about. I think these things start with the leadership getting a vision for something more impacting and Christ-centered for the church to get involved in and then making plans to get people on board and actually go and do. I am so glad to hear what your congregation is doing!
Matt,
I can understand why comments are minimal on this post. Yet, they shouldn’t be if we were really about the work of Jesus. A few months back, I posed the following two questions towards the end of one of my lessons:
“If tonight, we were to close the doors of the building and were to never meet again as a congregation, would our community notice? Would they even care?”
I stood there for a few moments and listened to deathly silence mixed with a few “gulps.”
The question you pose is humbling to the core. I don’t have a clue what we’re know for, save the usual monikers of “Impersonal,” “Judgmental,” and “Elitist.”
And I hate it!
Doug,
I think you echo the thoughts of many. It seems to me that many don’t know where to start. I think it starts with taking a good like at Jesus Christ and his ministry as well as the early church and then start to model ourselves after their core values. This takes having some elders who are willing to set a biblical direction for the congregation that is more than just worshipping properly. Too many have thought that was all there was to being a biblical church – have the right beliefs and proper worship. We have to be men and women who actually live out our faith.
I pray more elderships take up a biblical vision for the church that includes actually being on a mission. That they take that vision and make actual plans to carry it out and then recruit other Christians to specific responsibilities within that plan.