So, have you ever had what you thought was a great idea for a blog, but then you went out for lunch and about 11 hours pass and then you can not recollect the brilliant idea you had for a blog? No, me neither, except for maybe today.
Never mind, I just remembered.
I was putting together the worship service for church on Sunday, and while I was picking out songs I came across The Family of God. My pianist always ends the service by playing this song. It is a nice song, talking about being so glad that I'm a part of the family of God. And when we sing it we think about how glad we are to be apart of our particular local church family. Or, we think about what it's like to be a part of the wider Church of God family, maybe in America, maybe in the world. Or, maybe we start to think outside of our particular faith tradition and think about being a part of the Christian family in Linton. Or, perhaps we widen it a little bit more and think about being a part of God's Christian family in America, or the world. But I can almost guarantee that no one else in my congregation thinks about the family of God in the same way that I do.
This is because I tend to think globally, but not just in Church of God or even Christian terms when I sing the song. Because even though the song says things like, 'I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed in his blood,' when I think of the family of God, I tend to think of it encompassing the entirety of humanity. You see, I don't think that God ever desired for multiple groups of people to think that they, and only they were a part of this family. I believe God created the world and everything in it (how many days it took, and whether he started with 2 people in a perfect garden or not is up for debate if you ask me). To that end God breathed life into every single human being. God chose each one of us to be a part of God's family.
Yet, even though God chose all of us to be in his family we decided that God didn't want certain people to be included, usually we decided that the people who were excluded were the people unlike us. This always seems to be the case, doesn't it? We always want to think that we are special, which means that no one else can be. To be honest if I started discounting the possibility that God loves anyone who is unlike me, I am pretty sure that in the end it would be just God and me. Personally I think that might get a little lonely, just the two of us together for all eternity, I mean I like praise songs as much as the next guy or gal, unless the next guy or gal like them more than me, but I am hoping that heaven is not one really long chorus, I stopped going to those churches, I am not seeking that sort of thing for all eternity.
Alas, I digress, this has nothing to do with praise songs, except maybe it does. Some people like to sing hymns only, others only sing choruses, some like a healthy mix of both. Still others sing in chants exclusively, some just don't sing. This is obviously a grand overview of the differences, I could break it down into many more groups, but that's not the point. What is the point, however, is that a lot of people disagree on what they want a worship service to look like, and is we started excluding each other because of what kind of songs we want to sing in a Sunday Worship Service...wait a second, I guess we do exclude ourselves based on the songs we do and do not like. We start a second Sunday morning service that will be contemporary, or even more extreme occasionally start a Saturday night one. But what if I decided that any who doesn't like to worship like I do is not a part of the family? What if I decided that anyone who doesn't sing hymns and choruses are outside the club, but not only that your membership in the club is contingent on how many times you will sing that chorus before it starts sounding like a dead horse?
If I did that you would think I was ridiculous, but in the church we do it all the time, we exclude ourselves from others and exclude others from our gathering all of the time. Sometimes we do it publicly, other times we do it in an undercover way, simply tweaking things that we know will drive X away. But what if, just what if, we woke up one day and decided to be inclusive as opposed to exclusive? What if we decided that each person who lives on this planet was a part of my family because we are all apart of God's family? What would change if I thought you were actually my brother or sister no matter your race or religion or age or socio-economic status, no matter who you loved, as long as you loved? What if we thought that everyone was a part of God's family? What could we change right now?
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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