I love my church family and I hope you love yours

Christians are meant to be together.  We help each other in ways I never understood until I started to do mission work.  When I went on my first mission trip, my church family got behind me and seriously pushed me along in fundraising.  But more importantly they supported me with prayers and asking me to talk about after I got back.  When we first started overseas mission programs at our church to send teams over to places like Peru, Tanzania and Germany the church family got behind our work and again pushed us forward with fundraising, prayers and encouragement.

One of the best things we implemented over the years is having people in the church, family members and any other friends we could find as well as the VBS kids make or write notes to our team missionaries that we share with them every night of the trip.  Over the years this has become one of my favorite times during the mission trip to see the faces of everyone as they get notes from their loved ones or people they don't know and have to ask us who they are and especially when they try to figure out some of the more adventurous VBS drawings.  It rates right up their with seeing the kids we work with smiling as our teams play games with them.

As I have been preparing to enter the mission field full time, I have seen whole new levels of this Christian love and support.  My church family has been my major financial supporter.  They have showered me with love during talks.  About a month ago they had a special banquet in my honor where my friends got up and talked about the impact I had on their lives as well as our church.  That night my support level went from 40% to 90%.  I learned some things that night.  One is that one of my best friend has never heard me use a curse word, which makes me very happy since I have spent years at failing to control as much as I would like.  My brother wondered if he had ever watched a football game with me because I apparently still have some control issues to work out there.

The more important thing I maybe did not learn but was reminded of is that my church family will push me towards the mission field and help me get there.  They will love me and support me in non financial ways as well like taking a Saturday night of their life to come eat with me.

I am writing all this not to encourage you to join my church but because I realize there are some out there who may not be feeling all the love from their church  family.  I think there are two reasons this could be.  The first is that some churches are more about numbers and people showing up on Sunday than really making connections and relationships.  If a church is not working to build relationships within their walls then they have missed the first stage of missions and the purpose of God giving us the corporate worship experience.  If this is the case with your church make up your mind to either change it or to change churches because relationships with the people you worship with provide that rock like foundation Jesus told us to build upon.

The second problem may be you.  Have you really tried to connect to your church, your Sunday School class, your Bible Study group?  All too often I hear people talk about how they don't feel connected to their church.  All too often I find out they don't regularly attend a Sunday School class or one at all.  They don't go to special programs offered in their church or join small groups.  The church can only do so much to include you, at some point you have to decide you want to really join the activities.

I love my church family and I hope you love yours.  Because with a great church family you can accomplish a lot more than you can on your own.