Body Life
This past Wednesday we held our annual congregational meeting. We read from 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, a passage that talks about the church of Christ as his body. As such, we assessed together the health of our body as we looked back over the previous year. A year that definitely had its challenges still coming out of COVID, staff departures, etc... As well as noting the opportunities we have in the coming year, continued growth of our membership (spiritually and otherwise), the maturing of Campus Outreach and the full moving of their leadership to GR, and the hope that Gracehill would particularize and CC would begin work on a new daughter plant. Like any living organism, threats and opportunities abound. What will be key is staying connected to our Life-Source and Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, and continuing to cherish and uphold each member of the body.
I recently came across an article by a woman named Kate Bowler, who at a relatively young age had been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She has a number of good things to say about our mortality and how grappling with it paradoxically promotes a deeper vibrancy. But she also has the following to say about the power of community coming together to embrace our struggles: There is a tremendous opportunity here, now, for Christians to develop language and foster community around empathy, courage, and hope in the midst of this fear of our own vulnerability. Our neighbors are expressing an aching desire to feel less alone, needing language for the pain they’ve experienced, searching for meaning and someone to tell them the truth. They are hungry for honesty in the age of shellacked social media influencers. They are desperate for a thicker kind of hope that can withstand their circumstances and embolden them to preach the truth of our resurrected Lord whose future kingdom will have no tears and no pain and no Instagram at all. What a gift it is to belong to the body of Christ. And in the spirit of Christmas, what a gift to share!
This week we will turn again to Jonah. Having already observed that we are objects of God's pursuit in the midst of a weary and violent world, this week we will examine our greatest obstacles to a flourishing relationship with our Pursuer. As we consider this, we will keep in mind how Jesus is the greater Jonah.