Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Conflict”
Our Bible verse for today: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:2-3 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Christians have to work for unity within the church”
In the book, “Handling Church Tensions Creatively” author Fred Prinzing writes of the time when he was a brand new pastor, fresh out of seminary, and of how he naively went into that position believing that since everyone in the church was at least a professing Christian, and since everyone shared the same goal of serving the Lord well, then it followed that everyone would get along.
Wrong!
Fred quickly discovered that despite sharing a common faith, Christians have widely divergent views on most aspects of church life. All of those divergent views mean that there are going to be a lot of strongly held – and often opposing – opinions about what should be done, how, and when. And so there will inevitably be frustrations, tensions, resentments, and arguing.
In the forward to that same book Dr. Joe Aldrich, the President of Multnomah School of the Bible, wrote “Diversity of opinion and varying cultural and religious traditions make tension (in the church) inevitable.”
That’s why Paul wrote what he did in Ephesians 4:2-3. Even back then in the early church, at a time so close to the time of Jesus, during a period in church history when some of those who had actually been with Jesus where still alive and could be seen and heard, even then, there were tensions in the churches.
And so Paul found it necessary to remind them (and us) that since we are so different, and since we do have widely divergent views on many things, it’s essential for us to be humble and with each other. We must have great patience and our goal must be to safeguard the spirit of peace and unity within the fellowship. It has to be intentional. We must consciously recognize the inherent dangers of tension and disunity that always exist within any group of believers, and we must work to safeguard the peace and unity which the Lord calls for and which we all want.
Do the expressions humble, gentle, patient, peaceful, and loving describe your personal approach to church life? That’s what it takes to minimize conflict and maximize unity in a church family.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 