I Believe in The Church

Despite it's tendency to condone co-dependent relationships and the pretending that has been prevalent, I believe in the Church. I do. In the past few years, I've read a couple of books that highlighted some of the failures of this thing we've called the church, and they were good books. I was challenged. I understood better, some of the hiccups in my life. I'm glad I read them. But recently I subscribed to author, Glenn Packiam's blog and I've been completely refreshed by his passion for large gatherings of believers, otherwise known as "church".


In a recent post, Glenn related from the book of Deuteronomy God's instructions to the children of Israel on the WAY they were to worship. One of those thoughts involved the place of worship. Place matters. Glenn says"Their worship was to be in the context of their tribe-- or in our language, community." Having a community of believers to worship together with is God's idea.

No other day was the importance of community illustrated to me than today at Shoreline Christian Center. Our beautiful Pastors are working through what I think is one of the deepest pains, the loss of a child. Their precious 17 yr old son, Caleb died in a car accident on July 14th. Today, just weeks later they shared some of their pain with us. We sang together. We laughed together. We cried together.This morning I looked out at a building full of people. More people than ever warm these seats on a regular Sunday, and I thought there is no place I'd rather be than here in this building, with these people, experiencing this together. Something happens in these gatherings that doesn't happen alone. Maybe it's the sharing, the joining. the 2 or 3 gathering. It's special. It's significant! And I believe

Ephesians 1:20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. (The Message)