Together

Growing, serving, reaching together as followers of Jesus Christ.

This is the mission statement at my church that the church board recently came up with. The past few weeks, my pastor has been preaching on this statement. He didn't talk about growing, serving, or reaching individually today. Instead he talked about doing all three of these things together.

Last week, we did a reading called Christian Unity. This morning during music practice, one of the pastor's daughters who does the weekly bulletin realized that the same reading was still there. The pastor said it was probably meant to be there. I hadn't thought about it much last week when we read it, but this week while reading it, I got to thinking. Here's what got me thinking:

"I appeal to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree with one another
so that there may be no divisions among you
And that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought
Be completely humble and gentle;
Be patient, bearing with one another in love.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit
through the bond of peace."

Lately, or in the last several months, I've noticed how much the youth group seems to be lacking unity. My friend Rebecca was talking to me before practice this morning; she was warning me that two of the pastor's kids kept arguing about things. What's new? That's my question. Every weekend, it's the same thing. There are a ton of arguments during rehearsal. It's ridiculous.

After church, my friend David wanted to talk to the youth group about his Eagle Scout project. Once everyone started arguing with each other, I backed away and wanted nothing to do with it.

Then during choir practice, I got so angry with one of the pastor's daughters Hannah, that I almost just walked out. She wanted to know where her dad was going to stand. It really wasn't her place to ask I guess and it wasn't like it was a big deal anyways. I told her that it didn't matter at the moment since her dad wasn't in the room, but she said argued back that she wanted to know. I almost said out loud that it wasn't her place to ask and in fact, I did say it under my breath. She heard it and wanted to know what I said, but I decided to just shut up right then. It's not worth arguing with her.

I have a little brother who is 15 years old, so I do know what sibling rivalry is and I have participated in arguments. Most of which, were pointlessly stupid. The sermon today was called God's Unique Calling to Our Congregation-TOGETHER. This congregation is a family. Families have arguments; families have problems; families bother each other; families apologize to each other. We're supposed to be together as one family.

I have two families: my biological family and my church family. I totally understand when you don't want to hang out with your biological family because of silly arguments and what not. After spending a terrific afternoon with my friends, I'm usually a really crabby person at home. I'm easily irritated by my parents and my brother. Arguments usually occur right here.

Arguments are ok in the family sometimes because that's totally normal. Now take the church family for example, there are many adults, teens, kids, and babies. In my views, I see the teens as a group of brothers and sisters in Christ. At least that's what I would like to see. I see a mess right now. Brothers and sisters argue, I know, like I've said before, but all I seem to hear is arguing and I can't stand it anymore. It's not healthy for this group to be arguing about stupid things that aren't important so much.

I want us to be the ones who others will point to and know we're Christians. I want us to love each other. Didn't Jesus tell us to love our neighbor as ourself?