6. Is Your Church A “Come Alongside” Church?
The following question has been asked many times: What is God’s purpose for His church? In other words, what is God’s plan for these buildings, these many acres and these people? Or to ask the question in another way: from God’s perspective, what is our daily and eternal purpose here at our church and where does He want us to go from here?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers to those questions. The answers, I’m sure, will be discovered as together, we ask God to help us do what He wants us to do.
I am sure we will soon be called on to, with the help of the Holy Spirit; make many decisions that can have both current and eternal consequences. As we all know from experience, every decision has consequences, so we must pray for the Lord’s guidance as we ask the questions that will help us make the right decisions.
In my opinion, the answer to those questions can be found by looking within the people who have been attending the church for a long time. I think you will agree during our years in church, all of us have been lovingly trained and nurtured by the Holy Spirit.
To say it another way, over the years the Holy Spirit has groomed us, molded and formed us in many ways that make us more useful to Him as together, we face both the trials and the victories sure to be ahead of us.
In short, the Holy Spirit has “come alongside” us collectively and individually. By His example and guidance we are now a better group of people than we used to be.
Therefore, it seems to me that God wants us to be the kind of Christians who do our best to “come alongside” others in our community. When we become aware of a need, within the church body or outside of it, we need to put our heads together, prayerfully discuss the need and then do our best to come alongside of that specific need – give a hand and - help.
Pray and think about all of this. Write down your ideas. At your next church meeting, present your ideas to the group. Then together, and as a team, pray for guidance and make plans, plans to come alongside and help as much as you can.
By:Terry Weber
