Archive for Church Is Family
God’s Family Shares His Name
In the past few years, Christians have been emboldened to “take back Christmas” by saying, “Merry Christmas!” whenever they can, especially when greeted with “Happy Holidays!” While I’m not a big fan of being confrontational in the “name” of Christ, I am thrilled that more Christians want to be identified openly with Jesus. In Ephesians [...]
Family Grows Fruit Together
When Mark began his series about the fruit of the Spirit, he told us that we need to uproot those things that keep fruit from growing in our lives. Mark reminded us of Paul’s words in Galatians 5:16, that we should “live by the Spirit” so that we will not “gratify the desires of the [...]
Families Celebrate with God
The more we study the Bible, the more we can see that God’s Word contains one central message: Grace. My Sunday evening class has been studying the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings found in Leviticus. Yes, there is a lot of blood being offered to God in order to have sins forgiven, but we’ve also [...]
Family Celebrates Together
Our annual meeting on October 13 was a turning point in our life as a church family. Rather than conducting a business meeting filled with reports from all the various ministry teams and committees, we celebrated the new additions to our family by honoring those who had been baptized in the past year plus those [...]
Family Shares
Coming from a large family, I’ve learned the value of sharing. Sure, when you’re eight or nine years old, sharing a new toy or sharing the last chocolate chip cookie doesn’t seem like a great idea, but later in life, sharing makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out [...]
Family Encourages Each Other
On Sunday, September 12, we kicked off our fall programming with a concert and the first group meeting of the elder care teams. That evening was a great example of how important it is for the family of God to encourage each other. Several people in our group mentioned how good it is when their [...]
Family Life Is “Bible School”
In 2 Timothy 3:15, the apostle Paul reminded Timothy of “how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Paul says that the Bible makes us wise so that we can be saved, and Timothy learned this since he was a [...]
Family Encourages Growth
I come from a long line of farmers and gardeners. My grandmother would save every seed from every tomato that she ate and start what would become a jungle of tomato plants every season. My dad has kept at least one major garden and sometimes even three at different locations around our community. I have [...]
Family Takes Care of Family
You have probably heard the phrase “Charity begins at home.” This Fathers Day weekend, I had an opportunity to see that in action. On the third Saturday of each month, we have the serve our community by distributing food to people who need it. This month, our whole family worked together to help set up [...]
Families Are an Example to the World
Throughout the long winter we have been dreaming about how we will get away from it all. Whether it’s kids dreaming about a two-month summer break or families planning a week or even a weekend away, we long for a change of pace. But with all the changes of summer, we find ourselves altering not [...]
Families Give Together
It is fairly easy to teach children to give, especially when we provide the gifts they give. First, there’s excitement when they receive the gift, usually followed by disappointment when they learn they can’t keep it. The excitement grows when they learn that the gift will help feed people; it grows when they learn they [...]
Families Teach Each Other
Our culture has trained us to be self-reliant. This becomes painfully obvious when other people begin to get involved in our personal lives; then we bristle. However, I was recently encouraged by several young men and women who said that they want to find some older men and women who would be willing to give [...]
Family Love Is Sacrificial Love
Forgive me, but one of my favorite memories of Easter is our family’s annual egg hunt. For me, the only thing better than searching for eggs was getting old enough to be allowed to hide the eggs. One of the most exciting things for me as a kid was to know that my parents, grandparents, [...]
God’s Family Shares His Comfort
As a parent, I can honestly say that there isn’t much higher praise than to be recognized when my kids say and do the right things. So, family, I want to thank you for reflecting your Father in heaven. From March 6 – 13, we hosted a group of students from His House at Central [...]
Restoring Family Roles Within the Church
While it’s clearly biblical to consider the whole body of believers within the church as our extended family, many times we seem to be missing a real sense of family roles within the church. Most times we are content to think of God as our Father and everyone else as our brother or sister. But [...]
