Bird's Eye View

I had a convo with a guy, yesterday, who told me he loved his Bible and he thought personal salvation was important, but he didn't think is was totally necessary to be attached to a particular church. He bemoaned the many issues and frustrations that come up, which I agreed with. I hate gossip just as much as he did...and that's one thing church people seem to be good at. As much as I could relate to what He was saying, and I could easily go through my head and list issues I have with my own church, I still told him I disagreed. As Mr.Henry preached this week (shout out to the Caribbean Baptist Heritage conference), Salvation and Church Membership have to go together.  And I do mean signing the little paper, not just showing up every week.  It dawned on me how similar the 'I don't need to be a member' arguement sounded to the 'I don't need to get married' arguement - I love the person. My commitment to them won't change whether or not I sig...

The church is the body of Christ. We are his representatives on earth. I find it interesting that we are encouraged in Hebrews to keep going to ‘church’. (Heb 10:25), because church can be pretty hard to go to sometimes (when the church is being church). There’s the cliché saying that church is like a hospital, so the people you find there will not be perfect. My only problem is when the hospital doesn't seem to do any healing, and the people continue in their illnesses. Even death would be better than that. It was so pleasant, so heart-warming, tear-jerking even to be at St. Augustine Evangelical Bible Church again 2 weeks ago. Just being in that building reminded me of what church really was about. They didn't have especially exciting music, or a Charismatic speaker. What they had were smiles. People who ‘knew my name, and were glad that I came’. Genuine people interested in each other’s lives and loving each other. And when I entered that fellowship in 2003, I was a re...