family

Community is Identity

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

From Tim Chester:

The church is not a building you enter. Nor is it a meeting your attend. It is not what you do on a Sunday. To be a Christian is to be part of God’s people and to express that in your life through belonging to a local Christian community.

Our Belonging

We belong to one another (Romans 12:5). If a car belongs to me then I am responsible for it and I decide how it should be used. If a person belongs to me them I am responsible for them and I am involved in their decisions.

Our Home

Peter says Christians are ‘foreigners’ = ‘without home’ in the world (1 Peter 2:11). But we are being built into an alternative ‘home’ (1 Peter 2:5).

Our Family

Families eat together, play together, cry together, laugh together, raise child together provide for one another. Families argue and fight, but they do not stop being families and they don’t join other families because they have different tastes in music or reading. With family you can take off your shoes and put your feet on the sofa. They provide identity and a place of belonging.

Family is one of the most common New Testament images for the church. So try re-reading the paragraph above, substituting the word ‘church’ for ‘family’…

Our Community

The New Testament word for community is used to describe sharing lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8), sharing property (Acts 4:32), sharing in the gospel (Philippians 1:5; Philemon 6) and sharing in Christ’s suffering and glory (2 Corinthians 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:13). Helping poor Christians is an act of ‘community’ (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 9:13). Christians are people who share their lives with one another.

Our Joy

How would you answer this question: ‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes?’ Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, ‘Is it not you?’ (1 Thessalonians 2:19)

Implication: ‘We’ not ‘I’

We need to say not ‘I am planning to …’ or ‘this is my ministry’, but ‘we are planning to …’ and ‘this is our ministry’. We need to say not ‘you need to … or ‘the church doesn’t meet my needs’, but ‘we need to …’ and ‘why don’t we do this’.

6 Ways to Pursue Christ Thru Fatherhood

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Scott Thomas, President of Acts 29 Network, has recently posted a brief article outlining Six Ways Fathers Pursue Christ in Their Fatherhood.  In other words, these six principles applied together help fathers to grow in grace even as we seek to lead our families in grace.

The 6 ways are:  

  1. See their children as a blessing from God
  2. Understand that their children are born with a bent toward evil
  3. Believe the gospel is the good news for children
  4. Train their children to honor and obey
  5. Practice and demonstrate submission
  6. Love their wives

To read the whole article click: 6 Ways.

Pastor Dad: E-book by Mark Driscoll

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Pastor Dad

Father’s Day has passed, but I just read a resource I thought I’d pass along to Dads and aspiring dads-to-be.  It is another e-book by Mark Driscoll of Resurgence and Mars Hill Church, this one titled Pastor Dad: Scriptural Insights on Fatherhood. 

The premise behind this free 48 page book is:

Every dad is a pastor. The important thing is that he is caring for his flock well.

Typical of Driscoll, this book combines sound Biblical insights with some of Driscoll’s brash, over-the-top, in-your-face applications.  So it is not a book for the overly sensitive or the timid.  But, while after a quick read I can say I don’t agree with all his positions, Driscoll’s thoughts are Biblial, practical, and worth considering for those who appreciate, or are at least willing to engage, his style.