When we read the news or go on social media, we see clashes between different groups of people everywhere--harsh words, arguments, even violence and crime. It could be a one-sided misunderstanding or hatred, or sometimes it’s more complex than that. Whatever the fuel, the outcome of not valuing people who are different than us because of race, sexuality, religion, or something else always fails to reflect the heart of Christ.
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| Photo Credit: Dan Gold |
The problem is not unique to the present day. For the early church, the temptation was to keep the news about Jesus to themselves and the kind of people they thought needed to hear it. In Acts 11 though, the word began to spread. People who had suffered persecution scattered to a variety of places, and while some of them continued to only spread the word among Jews, others began telling Greeks. It seems an obvious thing to us--of course the Greeks should know about Jesus!--but there were likely Christians who disagreed with this approach, wanting to keep things as they were. Change is often scary, and certainly is when we’re not sure we’ll fully on board with it in the first place.
As we look at our own lives, we may not find outright hatred for people who are different than us, but we may also discover that the people we surround ourselves with are more like us they are unlike us. It’s easy to get caught up in our own lives and only focus on the people already within our comfort zone. Our singular focus can cause us to forget to look for the people around us who are different than the kind of people we’d normally surround ourselves with but have deep value they can add to our lives. While it’s true that no one person can maintain healthy relationships with hundreds of other people, we can--and must--seek to create the space in our lives to begin the process. As much as we often forget about building relationships with those are different than us in our personal lives, it’s all too easy for churches to do it as well.
The early church had to come around to the idea that the good news of Jesus was not something they could keep to themselves. As Encounter Church, that’s our mission as well--to spread the good news of Jesus. Over the past six years since we started, Encounter has grown a lot, but part of growth is to continually re-evaluate where we are and where we could and should be going. The reality is, the people who attend Encounter on a regular basis are, for the most part, fairly similar in quite a few ways. If we mean it when we say we believe the good news of Jesus is for everyone, we have to ask if we’re doing all we can to reach everyone. Does our current state do a good job of reflecting the community God has placed us in?
There aren’t easy answers to this question, and there are no simple, five-minute quick fix solutions. Asking ourselves if we are truly doing all we can to spread the good news to all the people around us might be a good starting point though. It might start as small as realizing there are groups of people who already attend Encounter that we have rarely, if ever, taken the time to talk to and get to know. From there, how else can we reach get outside of our comfort zones to begin building new relationships--not because it’s easy, but because it’s good and necessary?
As we seek to be good members of the community God has placed us in, how will you support that mission and take part in it?
[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]
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