Serving Community

Last week we continued our series on the church vision by looking at serving community. This is extremely important. A recent survey of non-Christians revealed these perceptions about the church: anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, old-fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of others and confusing. The only way to respond to these perceptions (some of which are true) is to embrace an attitude of service toward our community. we do not give up on truth issue but by demonstrating love, we earn the right to be heard. Service is not complicated, it is simply seeing the need, reflecting on your God-given resources and doing what you are able to meet that need. Another survey, this time of born again Christians, revealed these as the top two or three priorities of the Christian faith: Lifestyle – 37%, discipleship – 31%, evangelism – 25%, worship – 25%, relationships – 23% and service – 18%. Only 18% of Christians thought that service deserved to be in the top two or three priorities. We must really wrestle with how this fits with the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. How did we stray so far?