Of grammerlessness and sinfulness

I am truly enjoying my Jane Austen class. We had a discussion about our love/hate relationships with the work of Jane Austen. There are 8 people in the class (2 boys!) and a really fun, quirky teacher. It was hard to admit that I just took the class for a fun challenge and to appear liberal by TFC standards. (Actually, it was too hard and I didn't confess it.)

One boy (the other boy), Jimmy, was telling everyone about his first Austen experience. He was explaining about how a friend took him to the theatre to see the movie. "I was literally dragged ... or drugged ... or drug ... I'm a bad English major, to the theatre." I realized at that point that this is somewhat like what I want the church to look like.

There were 8 of us all gathered together around one single purpose. We all had different levels of experience with said purpose. One girl viewed Austen as her "in" to the world as a socially awkward middle schooler. I was just curious. No one judged Jimmy for his grammatical error. No one cared. None judged another because she wasn't in love with the writing. No one seemed to care that I hadn't read all of Austen's works. The main thing was that we were all there to learn more about Jane Austen. We didn't all pledge to fall in love with her writings ... but there's a good chance we will all do just that.

I see few churches where people can get together who are seeking a God of love - but haven't found him yet. Churches should be a mixed bag of people all looking towards the same goal. They shouldn't be all at the same point. We shouldn't seperate up into groups based on where we are at in our walks with Christ. We should all struggle together. We shouldn't judge others when they mess up.

This evening I went to an adult Bible Study at my church. I love all of the people - and I know that some of them are more along in their faith than others ... but everyone there is already saved. We have a seeker friendly Bible Study. I believe with everything in me that God's promise (that His word will not return void) doesn't mean that we can read obscure passages from the KJV to teenagers and expect them to get something, but rather, that when studied in community everyone will be able to get a message from God directed at them. The message God had for me tonight was different than the message he had for the 80 year old man seated across from me. God had a different plan for tonight for the middle aged woman with unruly kids. God's word didn't come back void for a single person in that room tonight. We all didn't get the same message though. Praise God.