Just this week I was amazed again at how diverse our congregational family is.
At our new member class sitting at the same table was a lifelong Lutheran who great up as a preacher's kid eating lunch with a woman who grew up primarily Muslim. This week I will meet with a guy who was Jewish and once considered being a rabbi but now is interested in converting. I had lunch last week with a guy whose bumper stickers clearly display his suspicion of the government and another person who thought Marx didn't go far enough.
This is our family!
And yet they all have found themselves here at Christ Lutheran. They don't look the same, vote the same, even believe the same. But there is something here that they hold in common--Jesus.
When I look at the Bible and see the mismatch of people who followed Jesus, they look like, well, like our congregation. Rich and poor, conservative and liberal, opinionated and meek, Jewish and Gentile. But they all agreed that Jesus is both Lord of their lives and Savior of their souls.
If there is room enough in just one week of my life for all these different kinds of conversations, then I have to think that there is room for you at this church, too. I don't assume that you will agree with me all the time. But I do assume and expect that you will be engaged in the questions with me.
Because that is what family does. . .even one as strange as ours.
Peace,
Pastor Scott
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Fantastic perspective. Diversity is key and it was a major part of Jesus' ministry and the early church. Even though they struggled with inclusion too they had the same foundation, Jesus. As long as we make Jesus our foundation no differences can shake the mission of the church.
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