brians blah blah blahg

everybody has their “that”s. so many churches and so many variations and styles. what is your that when you finish the phrase “i want to be part of a church like that…”?

what kind of church are you looking for? what kind of church do you want to be? a church that loves God, loves people, serves the world? hopefully yes. those are pretty much the big three at cedar ridge. but beyond that there is another list. we want a church that has a certain kind of teaching, music, building, location, coffee, thing for kids, things for parents, is friendly to me, authentic and other stuff like that.

so here is a deeper question. where do your thats come from? probably from one of two places: we look around and see other churches that have it going on. and we want that. or we just know what that is. it comes from inside.

but the problem with jonesing the “that’s” is that beyond the fundamentals, we are a church with a distinct personality and so are all those other great churches with their really cool thats. we weren’t designed to do all that they are doing and they weren’t designed to do what we can do. otherwise we are just in some kind of trendy competition. but that is so not what the bible says. in john 17, God demands one-ness and unity in his church. not competitive but complimentary. the other problem with copying the trendy next things in other churches is that we should know we can’t totally trust our sense of style. i mean somebody once thought that polyester leisure suits were stylin.

and the downside of feeling our thats…well some of us would change churches as often as we change moods. but that would rob us of community-long term, deeply invested relationships.

so where should the thats come from? how about from the One who designed the church to do and be all THAT it can. the book of acts is one story after another of the journey of the early church. God spelled a whole bunch of timelessly trendy things that a church like that should have on its list.

over the next 10 weeks we will be opening the windows and peeking in on the church in its earliest form-in the first 30 or so years after Jesus told peter, paul and a few others “go…and i will build a church like that.”

it is great time to jump into a small group. all our groups will be synced down into a study of the book of acts that is runing alongside the sunday messages.

one last thing, be honest, what are your thats? how have they changed over time? have some fun and drop them in the comments.