A few weeks back in worship meeting when we were looking at what the summer and fall would look like I felt the Spirit saying we needed to get back to the basics. In a couple of my Kirk’s Korner blogs I have shared that we need to get back to the basics. We are to remember what we are here for and why we are on this earth. Then yesterday in staff meeting Pastor Mark brought an article to share with the staff written by Francis Frangipane in the November 2009 Charisma magazine titled, “All We Need Is Jesus.” I don’t really believe in coincidences, so I share this one paragraph from this article: “If we divide over forms of church government or peripheral doctrines, we will miss completely the true purposes of the church, which is to make disciples of Jesus. Let me make it plain: God is not raising up 'ministries'; He is raising up bond slaves. After we recognize that the goal is not ministry but slavery, we will begin to see the power of Christ restored to the church.”

I know that to many those words may sound like fighting words. “What do you mean we are to be slaves?” But to many others who have poured their lives in to the servanthood of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross bound and beaten to die in our place to free us from our sinful self, these words fall on us as cool water to a thirsty soul. Galations 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Jesus is our master, and we are to be the slaves to the will of God. Have we forgotten the basics of the life we are to lead? Have we fallen away from living daily for Christ and not the church? To be who God requires us to be is to stop looking for the next ministry to come along and start looking at the people who God has placed in our paths daily; to share the love of Christ with a world that is searching for meaning, hope, and answers.

I receive at least 5 or 6 emails every day from well meaning people who are complaining about the way our world is being run. They consistently waste time tearing down one group of people or another and by doing so attempt to make themselves the victor. I tell you this, there is no victory in division. There are no answers in governmental systems or church polity. The answers to our lives are found in Christ. When we are willing to daily take up our cross, laying down our lives, the power of Christ will provide us our meaning, hope, and answers. Pass it on.

On the journey together,
Kirk