Divide and Conquer

On May 6, 2012 Jim preached a great sermon and I thank him for that. The topic was from Romans 14 and Romans 15:1-7 and was about not judging and thus dividing us. Tonight my mom is sending out invitations to Churches for the Ladies Day and she said there were usually at least 2 Churches in each city.
I know that here we have a Church that meets in the school right next to our building. I counted at least 14 churches in the area around Buda. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? What has happened is people say “WE don’t like this little thing you do, so WE are going to pack up and leave and set up on OUR own.
Awhile ago Patrick Mead did a sermon series called Identity. In it he mentioned a document called the Declaration and Address written by Thomas Campbell. Thomas Campbell started 1 of the 6 streams that formed the particular group that is today the Church of Christ. The Declaration and Address is by no means a creed; it is simply a document describing what we should do to spread the Word. It is in three parts, The Declaration, Address, and Appendix. I am going to share with you a small section of the Address.
“That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures. That although the Church of Christ upon earth must necessarily exist in particular and distinct societies, locally separate one from another, yet there ought to be no schisms, no uncharitable divisions among them. And for this purpose they ought all to walk by the same rule and to be perfectly joined together in the same mind.”
We are getting away from our roots. The word in the Bible, ekklesia which is translated church actually means community. In Mathew 16:15-18 Jesus said “Go preach the Good News to all creation”, not “Bunker down in a building and fight and squabble over every little thing”. I can just imagine Satan saying, “Hey lets divide them and make them weaker by obsessing them with little pet peeves that annoy them.” It always happens sooner or later. Think of Israel, they remembered the laws, but forgot the savior coming to free them from the endless cycle of the law.
So I have decided to put out my own declaration. That we CANNOT spread the word the best we can if we squabble and fight among ourselves over petty things that just annoy us. We NEED to reach out to the Churches around us and say “Hey lets all join together in Jesus Christ to spread the Word”.
I don’t mean like Dallas (super church) style, I mean that we need to communicate; we need to fellowship with each other. If there is a disagreement then we should call a meeting between the people that think 1 thing and the people that think another. Then look at scripture and decide who is right, or in some cases just say “Scripture doesn’t address this, so it is a matter of opinion.”
As Mr. Jim talked about in his sermon, someone might be clapping and look over and see someone not clapping and think to himself, "Well that's just a stodgy old geezer." Maybe that person could be meditating and contemplating the meaning of the song. Then that person might look over at the person who is clapping and think, "Liberal punk." Maybe that person is just trying to praise God with all his might. We should not say, “Because I don’t like what you do you are automatically a sinner.” It is wrong to press your beliefs on people. So no matter if you don’t like their carpet or their singing. We should fellowship together, we should commune together like the word ekklesia really means. It means community, it means to be together, not separated.
We should talk to the other churches about doing group stuff. Like the upcoming Ladies Day. As I said at the beginning my Mom was sending out invitations to a lot of churches. We need to do more stuff like it. Do more things that we can invite other people and churches to, and not have just our little circle that does stuff. We need to reach out and say, “ENOUGH, ENOUGH hiding away in our little corner, ENOUGH calling people sinners because we don’t like what they do, ENOUGH of all the yelling and the fighting over trivial things that are merely a matter of preference. Enough is enough, time to reach out and say lets make some time when we can do stuff together. Maybe things like, LTC or VBS, or maybe just a group get-together to sing and praise the Lord. We just need to do something. God made us to be in a community, we should not waste it.