Scripture: Luke 5:33-39
Then they said to Jesus, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
Thought for the Day: I believe God is always doing something new within the life of the church, for our God desires to be relevant to the changing needs and concerns of the world. Yet as God’s dynamic spirit sweeps across the mission and ministry of local congregations, the innovative aspirations of God are trapped by the old wineskins of conventional Christianity. I’m not talking about the debate between traditional and contemporary worship, for God can use all kinds of styles and expressions to touch lives. The world is facing matters of much greater consequence, and the church needs to ask itself whether it will have a voice in the conversation. If so, then those of us in the church need to prayerfully reflect on how the spirit is attempting to reshape us as containers for the contemporary expression of God’s unconditional and transformative love.
Prayer: With butterflies in my stomach, God, I do my best to relinquish my narrow definition of church to the movement of your spirit in this moment of history. Amen.
TONIGHT — WEDNESDAY NIGHT
Dinner at 5:30pm
Study at 6:30pm
Pastor Bruce begins a three week study on:
“How to Read the Bible”
Join us for the conversation!
1 thought on “Ecclesiological Etchings: 01-23-13”
Amen! I feel it is well past time for church to start being a voice in society again–and I don’t mean the voice people usually hear, from the fundamental, radical right. I mean the voice of the original church, the voice of Jesus–radical, rebellious, able and willing to call out every systemic injustice the modern Empire is throwing at us. Amen, amen.