The thought this week was written by Graeme Ross, EBA Regional Minister
As I was praying earlier this week I was reminded that the strength of a rope is determined by the amount of strands that are woven together and it dawned on me that a rope is a helpful metaphor for what God intends His Church to be. There is only so much we can do alone, but when we are woven together our strength and effectiveness is multiplied.
Did you know that there are 57 references to ‘one anothering’ (eg love one another, encourage one another etc) in the New Testament? In other words, there are 57 commands from Jesus that can’t be obeyed if we try to live out our faith alone.
Do we need to repent of an individualistic attitude towards faith? Is it time to paus e and consider, who is God weaving you together with? Who are your sisters and brothers in Christ who he is calling you to walk alongside? How can we work with God, rather than resisting as he weaves us together? Who can we encourage and build up today? If you are interesting in thinking about this some more, you can join our relational church Zoom conversation on 9th or 10th June.
One of the potential weaknesses in our Baptist way of being church is that we can end up with the false belief that we are individual and independent congregations and I am left wondering if this is a Biblical way of thinking? God has called each of us to join His people and perhaps as local congregations we need to reflect more on the things we can do together well as we learn to share resources, gifts and our experiences together. Together we can accomplish so much more and this may be within our existing churches or it might be that as groups of churches that we could work together to birth something new and to resource new missional adventures.
Thinking about your own faith and that of the congregation that we are a part of, perhaps it is time to ask whether we are content being a strand alone or whether it is time to commit to being fully woven into the rope!
Photo by Matthew Bornhorst on Unsplash
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