this is how i’m doing: in case you were wondering…

This happens to me every time I read practical books (my favorite kind);  I get a few paragraphs or pages into a chapter and I have to put the book down to ponder a nugget of knowledge on a grander scale.  This just happened to me again with Adler’s “How to Read a Book”.

“If the author uses a word in one meaning, and the reader reads it in another, words have passed between them, but they have not come to terms.  Where there is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete.  Just look at the word “communication” for a moment.  Its root is related to the word “common.”  We speak of a community as a group of people who have something in common.”

After I read that, I immediately began to consider it in context of the Church.  The Church is a community of people who have one thing in common;  faith in Jesus Christ.  We come from every age, race, ethnicity, and socio-economic background, yet we (the Church) all have the same thing in common.  If we look at local churches as being a part of the greater Church, then they all should be equal.  If the local body professes faith in Christ and evidence of this faith is present (the fruits of the Spirit), then the Baptist church next to the Pentecostal church next to the Bible church are all equal.  So, then how do I choose a church to be a part of?

I’ve wrestled with this for the better part of this year.  Could I be so arrogant to think that I will choose the “best” local church?  Is there even such a thing?  If they are a part of the Church, as I am, does anything else matter when it comes to deciding on a church?  What if I could look past all of the differences and see the one true commonality — I think it could make all the difference.

I’ve been considering proximity as my main factor, which should be interesting.  The four churches within a mile of my apartment (why so many??) are, in order of proximity: First United Pentecostal Church, Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Glennwood Church of Christ and Rice Road Church of Christ.  Definitely out of my comfort zone.

One day, we’ll all focus on being the Church instead of going to church.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 in the PM and is filed under Life, Religion, Spiritual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.