living as a church family

Recently, on my way to church I caught a glimpse of a bank advertisement on a billboard that read something along the lines of, "Join our bank family." I sort of squinted my eyes and pondered the message from that billboard for the next mile or so. Truly, it is a great marketing strategy. After all, the idea of 'family' is peaceful, comforting, and calls for trust and loyalty. This works well for the bank who wants loyal customers that enjoy banking with them, and it works well for the customers who want to feel secure that their bank is trustworthy, will take care of their money, and will treat them well - as I'm sure many of you are aware that customer service has completely vanished off the face of southern California, but that is another blog entry all together.

As I think about using the term 'family' when discussing an organization, I don't see any gathering of people being more of a family than the Church. Now, whether a particular church is living as a family is indeed another issue, but the fact remains that the church is supposed to be a family - brothers and sisters united in Christ Jesus as sons and daughters of the living God.

Today, I was able to help some good friends move into their new apartment, but I was not alone. There were 9 other people who gave up their Saturday morning to help. It was a proud moment for me because, as the pastor, I want our church to do well at being the Church. Part of living as a church family means sacrificing for one another, however small or large that may be, and investing into the lives of one another. After we finished with the move, we all sat in our friends' new apartment with 3 extra large pizzas and two tasty salads. I looked around and felt true peace, true comfort, true loyalty, and true love, which is only found in Christ. Then I thought, "Now this is truly a family."

I pray we continue to grow in our understanding and desire to live as the Church. I also pray we do well at going beyond our church walls and living a life of love in our community - and to people with whom we are connected outside of the church. But, for now, as we move forward in that direction, I can say I am grateful and very blessed to be a part of my church family.