Anniversary

One Year

Tomorrow marks one year of weekly posts to the Thousand Hills Thoughts blog. The purpose behind this blog was not to demonstrate my amazing writing abilities which is probably fairly obvious. I really wanted to write a weekly message specifically for us here at Marshall First Baptist Church. The hope has been that these short blogs would be a place to go a little deeper and maybe spring into thinking through important topics. 

What a year to start with! In reality I had wanted to start a blog for a while and the Lord brought about two important things to make the blog a reality. First, the pandemic made the need to find as many ways as possible to get helpful and hopeful content out as possible. I hope the blog has been that. The second thing that happened was Lucy coming on board at church. I am horrible at the technical stuff, but she takes care of all that. Thank you, Lucy, for your hard work!

Connection

Over the year of 2020, the goal, at least in ministry and church circles, was to maintain and increase connection. Every pastor I knew was talking about how to connect with folks in their churches. I am thankful for technologies that we have been able to take advantage of over the last year to keep in touch. But connection is not just important during a pandemic. We always need to be connecting with other people. We need the fellowship and camaraderie that comes with real interactions with other people.

There are at least two important ways that we as Christians need to be thinking about interpersonal connections in our lives. First, God has not made us to be lone ranger believers. We all need other Christians. I’ll share more about this later, but we genuinely need each other.

The second kind of connection that we must be intentional about is evangelistic interactions. We need to be looking for opportunities to share with lost people about the Lord Jesus Christ and the glorious good news of the Kingdom of God. We need to be willing to talk about what we believe and the impact of our faith for both this life and eternity. We also need to understand how our lifestyle should be a catalyst to open up opportunities to tell others about Jesus.

Community

I think that after the last year there seems to be a great appetite for real community. When I say community what I mean is people forming deep relationships with those who share the same culture, character, and commitments. I think this is exactly what the local church is supposed to be. Brothers and sisters, God has called us to unity in the local church. We need these strong bonds of responsibility and accountability with those who have a covenant commitment to us and us to them.

But this type of community must be more than just the large gathering once a week. We all need the weekly worship gathering. Without that we would cease to be one united local church. However, everyone of us needs to have closer connections with smallers groups where we can connect and grow. These are the times when we can really build the culture that culminates in real community. We are sharing more than just surface level acquaintances but genuine friendships. The hope is that through these smaller, more connected gatherings we can build the kind of Christian community that edifies the believers, blesses our town and county, and glorifies the Lord.

As we meet together discussing God’s word and His work in our lives what will develop is more than just doctrinal agreement but diligent character and devotional commitment. I believe that this is the kind of connection that was the goal of the early church and the need of the current church.

So let’s do it! Let’s look for opportunities to go deeper and build community. These opportunities can look like Sunday school and Thousand Hills and Wednesday night prayer meetings or even meetings in your homes with three or four other families in the church enjoying fellowship and seeking the Lord! It doesn’t need to be perfect, just real and intentional!

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