This is a national day of action, when Australians are urged “to inspire and empower everyone to meaningfully connect with the people around them and start a conversation with those in their world who may be struggling with life.”
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The chosen day is somewhat ironic, given the historic significance of September 11. I will never forget that night, turning on the television to watch the late-night news and seeing live footage of airplane slamming into the World Trade Centre. I was so confused that I thought I was watching a movie. But then, I understood what I was watching, the moment that killed the hubristic ‘end of history’ motif and which began to expose the tectonic plates of clashing culture and spirituality.
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My daughter’s school has organised special events for today, to remind the kids of laughter and to teach them how to laugh. I guess, such is the despondency and anxieties capturing our society, that we need help to learn how to laugh.
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This morning, we all woke to the horrifying news of Charlie Kirk being shot and murdered at a College event in Utah.
Once doesn’t need to agree with every view Charlie Kirk promoted, even if he was right about the things that matter most. As others testify, Kirk’s ability to listen, engage, and respond with clarity and a smile is a dying art in our polarised world.
It is a testament to his contribution to civil life that Presidents and political leaders and religious leaders alike feel the need to offer public condolences. Yes, there are the haters too, and the whataboutism pundits who ever fail to read the room. A word to the whatabout crowd, please don’t. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are examples to avoid not copy.
The immediate outcry of sadness and shock is quite incredible. Reading the commentary today feels as though a black veil has descended upon America. Here in Australia, young people especially know the name Charlie Kirk. He was followed by millions, including many Gen X and millennials across Australia.
This murder further accentuates how our societies have lost the ability to communicate, disagree and debate. The appetite for hate and rage is strong, and like a virus, it is eating away at our soul. Police in Melbourne are again expressing profound concerns over proposed marches and protests that are planned for this weekend. We no longer speak to each other and seek to understand; we yell and spit and throw projectiles.
R U OK?
Many today are not ok.
Next week I’m giving an address at the Reformed Theological College in Melbourne, where I’ve been asked to speak to this topic: ‘Engaging Society: A Gospel Response.’
Without giving too much away, may I point us in the direction that God points. Ephesians 2 spells out God’s plan of peace and it is a heavenly vision designed to be experienced on earth. The full embodiment of this promised peace will have to wait for the resurrection day, but it is nonetheless a given and realised even in the middle of tumultuous times,
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:13-14)
God has announced his peace plan. With staggering undeserved grace, he paid the price for peace: the death of his only son. God’s plan of peace reconciles separated people, those separated from God and from one another. The Gospel of Jesus Christ really is the answer to all our brokenness and divisions, our frustrations and hates. Leaning ever closer to this Divine peace is the antidote. This plan will outlast and defeat every hatred and misunderstanding, every anxiety and fear.
I didn’t know Charlie Kirk, but amidst his words and views, a living faith in the risen Christ was apparent. That counts for everything.
R U OK?
I’m looking forward to this day spoken of by the prophet Micah when God’s peace covers the earth,
“Many nations will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.”
“For those who’ve come across the seas We’ve boundless plains to share”
Australia has a rich and wonderful history of immigration. It is not overstating the case to say that our great nation is largely built on the blood, sweat and tears of migrants. Australia also has a mixed and difficult history with immigration; from the treatment of Chinese settlers in the 19th Century, to the Irish and sectarianism, the arrival of Italians, the white Australia policy, to welcoming Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees and more.
Like in the United Kingdom and the United States, there are growing noises here demanding that Australia shut down mass immigration.
A march is being organised across Australian cities for next Sunday. I would never have known about it except for a couple of individuals plugging it on social media. The website claims,
“Australia is changing in ways most of us never agreed to. People are waking up to a country they barely recognise. Endless migration, weak leadership, and political cowardice have brought us here, and it’s time to put a stop to it.
Immigration poses exciting possibilities. Also, immigration always presents significant challenges. There are genuine questions to be asked of Islam, as there are of Christian Nationalism and other isms. Nations rightly have borders, laws, and citizenship that govern and give shape to a country. To be pro-immigration doesn’t mean zero borders and no caps on immigration. There are real and complex questions relating to social cohesion in Australia. Deciding on intake numbers and who comes into the country and under what conditions isn’t an easy task. If you have ever spoken with an immigration officer, you’ll understand that they take their work with utmost seriousness.
People are afraid, fearful of losing the known, fearful of losing identity, and fearful of the other. But is the answer to fear, demanding the end to large immigration? Is the answer to wrap ourselves around the Australian flag, close the borders and keep out those who look different from us?
There is a major problem with this ‘March for Australia’.
The problem lies both in its starting point and in its trajectory. In short, ‘March for Australia’ is grounded in fear, ethnocentrism, and at times racism. I’m sure many people who’ll be swept up in the march are not racists, they are Aussies concerned about their country, and they’re unduly jumping onto a movement who while willing to give them a voice, is promoting xenophobic and racist ideas.
When your slogan is, ‘Stop Mass Immigration’, you are in fact acting in an anti-Australian way, because Australia is a nation made up from the nations, and we have always been. Who among us isn’t a descendant of migrants? Who among us hasn’t brought our culture into our cities, both good and bad? Have we forgotten sectarianism? It’s more than that, it is this Christian notion of the dignity of every human being, loving your neighbour and welcoming the poor and oppressed, that gave moral impetus to welcoming people to our shores. We do not welcome them because they are like us, but because we are ‘the lucky country’, and, to quote our National Anthem, “For those who’ve come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share”.
If your starting place is ‘immigration is bad and we must stop it’, then what follows will almost certainly be unhelpful. If, however, we begin by affirming the goodness of immigration, then we can have a conversation.
The trajectory is already being shown. When I hear a promoter say that ‘Australia has too many Chinese and too many Indians’, that is racism. And that way of thinking is gross and an affront to huge numbers of Aussies of Chinese and Indian descent, and I take it personally on behalf of my family and friends.
As one friend pointed out, this march is essentially calling for a return to the White Australia policy.
Another person alleged that anti-semitism is the reason why we must clamp down on immigration. I have said more about anti-semitism than most Christian leaders over the last couple of years, and while there is an evil anti-semitic undertone among some Muslim people, most of the anti-semitism I see is from university students and old socialists of white European heritage.
To allege immigration must stop is to say something about our character and how we view the other. It is building a society based on fear, not grace, on protectionism, not generosity, on self-actualisation, not sacrifice. In that sense, it’s all law and zero gospel. Now, that may not bother the average unbelieving Aussie, but it should surely concern the Christian. What casts out fear? Not hate, it’s love.
The wonder of the Christian message is that God includes the outsider. God’s only Son gave his life to welcome into God’s Kingdom the very people who do not belong and do not deserve citizenship. God’s Gospel is about grace, kindness, love of neighbour and for the nations.
While the Gospel and the Parable of the Good Samaritan do not outline an immigration policy, they are doing something deeper and broader. If Jesus died to save people from Morocco and Mexico, and from China and Chad, surely this changes the way we will view these image bearers of God.
Yesterday I posted a comment about immigration as a blessing, not a curse. One of the problems with my interlocutors yesterday is that as soon as I said, ‘immigration is a blessing’, they read it as saying I’m advocating for open immigration, even though my very next sentence stated that immigration brings challenges. They can’t seem to distinguish between no borders and generous immigration. But this march isn’t calling for generous immigration, according to many comments I’ve read; they want Muslims, Chinese, and Indians kept out of our country.
We are a nation of plenty. We are a nation of extraordinary wealth and prosperity. We are also a society wrapped up in red tape and layers of bureaucracy that make even simple decisions near impossible (ie solving housing). I find it interesting how Jesus didn’t say, ‘Let me come and help out so long as it doesn’t cost me anything’.
What especially stood out to me was the fact that a couple of Christians think that this march is a good idea. First of all, this protest would require you to skip church. Sure, it begins at midday, but for most people, that means missing church. If a movement or march requires you to miss church, do you think its origins are of God? Second, do they really believe that changing government policy will save our nation? That’s not a Christian answer.
Several years ago, Russell Moore was asked a question about Muslims moving into the community and wanting to build a mosque. Moore not only espoused a Baptist view of religious freedom and toleration, he also said this,
“That doesn’t turn people into Christians, that turns people into pretend Christians and sends them straight to hell. The answer to Islam isn’t Government it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the new birth that comes from that”.
Russell Moore is right.
Ephesians ch. 2 makes it clear that God’s reconciliation plan isn’t accomplished through Government or political means, but through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This kind of Jesus reconciling brings disparate people together; it unites the great divide between Jew and Gentile.
“remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household”
If you think Australia will be saved through less immigration, you have missed the gospel, you probably won’t enjoy heaven, and you’re behaving more like the Levite than the Samaritan.
Jesus didn’t side with the Sadducees (who might be described as Roman conformists) nor with the Zealots. Modern-day Australian religious zealots may be feeling and seeing social discord, but rather than bringing reconciliation, they add to the discord.
Next week’s march is no more Christian than many of the protests that belong to the left-edge side of culture. Those already caffeinated on rage and scribbling out their placards for the march, will probably not like what I have written. If anything, the rage temperature will increase; perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy!
However, if you’re one of those followers of Jesus who are troubled by social divisions and the fracturing we are witnessing in our streets and suburbs, press closer to the gospel of Jesus and believe God’s purposes through his son.
If you have issues with Islam, as I certainly do, love your Muslim neighbours, don’t hate on them; invite them over to your home for a meal with the family, don’t ostracise them. Invite them to Church and make them feel welcome, because they are.
Our Church is hoping to begin a ministry next year to migrant families in our community. Why? Because we want to serve them and we want them to know the good news of Jesus, just as someone once shared with us.
I love how yesterday in Western Sydney, a Sydney Anglican Church hosted a conference. It was given the name, ONE FOR ALL, and Archbishop Kanishka Raffel preached on the gospel that crosses cultures. Australia needs more of that.
If you hear people saying that there are too many Chinese or Indians or whoever in our country, call them out.
On Sunday, 31 August, go to Church as you ought, worship God with his people from among the nations, love each other, and hear again how the gospel of grace is our answer.
Update: the Melbourne march was attended by people from many different persuasions. However, the march was led by a group of self-identifying neo-Nazis, and a prominent neo-Nazi spoke from the platform to address the crowd.
“Esther again pleaded with the king, falling at his feet and weeping. She begged him to put an end to the evil plan of Haman the Agagite, which he had devised against the Jews.” (Esther 8:3)
Shock. Horrified. Anger. Weeping.
The world is reeling at the sights and stories flooding our screens and phones from Israel.
The attacks on Israel over the weekend by Hamas is the most serious threat to the security of that nation in 50 years. It is no coincidence that the attacks were orchestrated while Israelis enjoyed a public day to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. As families gathered and IDF members relaxed at home, thousands of rockets were fired into Israel and 100s of armed militants crashed through border fences and began killing and kidnapping.
It was 50 years to the day since the Yom Kippur War when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise invasion of Israel. As though like a blood-filled reminder and yet ironically oblivious to the outcome of that war, Hamas struck with terrifying assault on civilians and soldiers alike.
More than 1000 people are known to be dead and 1000s injured, and the situation is far from over.
“For three sins of Gaza,
even for four, I will not relent.
Because she took captive whole communities
and sold them to Edom,
I will send fire on the walls of Gaza
that will consume her fortresses. (Amos 1:6-7)
What is happening in Israel right now is of Biblical proportions. The last 2-3 days have witnessed the greatest number of Jewish deaths since the Holocaust. That is a terrible statistic to hear.
Across the globe and around Australia, there is widespread support for Israel. The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is among international leaders affirming Israel’s right to defend herself and condemn the insidious violence and brutality being carried out by Hamas. As the Scriptures remind us, the State has the power and responsibility to wield the sword. It is a heavy burden and duty and requires great wisdom, patience and righteousness, and yet a State has that right to protect herself against armed aggression.
While cities across the world light the night sky in the blue and white of Israel, as will my own city of Melbourne tonight, there are however some groups lifting their voices in support of Hamas. News outlets are now saying that Iran was involved behind the attack. A notable Imam in Sydney was on the streets last night, proclaiming to a crowd that this was a day of victory and celebration.
Hours earlier, The Victorian Socialists tweeted support for the terrorists,
‘Solidarity to the Palestinian resistance’.
Such a posture is disgusting and shameful.
I even saw a message from a Melbourne Anglican Minister supporting Palestine against Israel, as though the violence is somehow justified. It beggars belief.
In Sydney tonight, police have warned Jewish people to stay away from public spaces such as the famed Opera House because they are concerned for their safety. It is no wonder that Jewish people are fearful and many people are tonight wondering what on earth is going on?
I suspect (I pray), that those voices are like a scattering of drunken individuals at the MCG on non-game day. Their opinions are loud and carry across the G with force, but they are relatively few in number.
What is more common, although still a minority from what I have gauged, are journalists and political leaders trying to dance around the issues and employ whataboutism. As though, yes Hamas is bad, and so is Israel, and there goes the merry round. When tragedy or evil strikes, whataboutism is about as kind to victims as Job’s friends.
We don’t have to agree with all Israeli policy and affirm every past action of the Israeli Government. That’s not the point Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar! There is no justification for hating on Jews and for murdering and raping and kidnapping women and children. There is no moral equivalence here.
As much as the world moves on its axis and highlights different conflicts, movements, and moments, we rarely shift far from Jerusalem. That ancient city continues to perplex, amaze, and tilt global events, even today as the world watches on.
It’s not that we (Christians) equate the modern State of Israel with Israel of the Bible. Such equivalences fail to take into account Biblical theology and how Christ is the telos of God’s ancient promises. As the Apostle Paul describes,
“remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Ephesians 2:12-16)
As Christians, we understand the foundational role Jewish people have played in God’s unfolding plan of redemption. Abraham, Moses, and David are vital characters of both history and key to the shaping of what will become Christianity. Of course, the earliest disciples were all Jewish and Jesus was a Jew.
Gentile believers like myself appreciate our place in God’s gracious redemptive purposes. It is to be grafted by grace, as new branches into a very ancient tree, ‘You do not support the root, but the root supports you.’
How Christians can respond
How might Christians respond to the events in Israel of the past 48 hours? Here are 3 suggestions: pray, mourn, and press close to Christ.
There is something every Christian can do today. We can pray. We should pray. There is, after all, Biblical warrant for praying.
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity. (Psalm 122:7-9)
We pray for peace. We pray for justice. And we pray for mercy.
We both pray as members who have been grafted into that tree and we pray for Israel as we would another nation who have been terrifyingly attacked by men who doing evil.
Our prayers begin with Israel but they do not end with Israel, but extend to the Palestinian people as well. Hamas may control Gaza, but they do not represent all Palestinians. Indeed, thousands of Palestinians are Christian and no doubt many Muslim Palestinians are vehemently opposed to Hamas.
Second, the Scriptures teach us to ‘mourn with those who mourn.’
This is why the ‘wisdom’ of Job’s friends is so unkind. For a few days, maybe avoid whataboutism and instead sit with someone or at least show empathy to someone who is in profound grief and trauma. This includes thousands of grieving Israeli families and countless Palestinian families who are caught up by Hamas’s vile political and religious games.
When expressing anger at Hamas and showing support for Israel, let us be careful and not conflate all of Gaza with Hamas. I think of a Palestinian family whom I know. They have family living in the Gaza Strip and over the years members have died and others faced terrible conditions. In 2017 he shared on my blog what life is like for many people in Gaza including Palestinian Christians of which there are many.
“In Australia and much of the west it is very easy to take essential provisions for granted. Food, water, warmth, basic amenities, and the freedom to worship as a Church or body of Christian believers. Such rights as voting, police protection, medical and health cover, or a simple roof over your head do not exist to many in Palestine. Freedom to move around from suburb to suburb within the nation do not exist. There is no right to external travel, and no right of return. …Uncertainty and persecution is everywhere. Many fall in despair and suggest God is only a God of the Jews, and hater of the Palestinians. They consider God hated Ishmael – whereas instead God saved him in the wilderness, and blessed him bringing into his line 12 princes. The pain distorts their view on God’s true love and equitable justice. God is not the racist they often time feel He is portrayed as.”
Jerusalem was built on an ancient promise. Through millennia of blood and life, grief and joy, the very stones waited. The world is crying for ultimate justice and for ultimate hope. I am reminded of the One who warned us of wars and rumours of war, for he is the one who was crucified. He wept over Jerusalem and then entered the city as a King and then he gave his life as a ransom for many.
Today is a day where action and justice is required, to punish evildoers and to save life. It is also a day for mourning. A time will come and we pray soon, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. Pray that God will awaken the conscience and spirit, to see that the tomb outside Jerusalem is today empty and that Jerusalem’s hope, the world’s only hope, is Yeshua.
Since writing yesterday afternoon, there have been so many additional reports and comments online that I fear that the anti-Semitic voice is larger than I suggested. And I say that with a heavy heart and one that makes me long even more for the Prince of Peace.
Few people would say it quite so crassly, but the sentiment is commonplace. When visitors come to Mentone, and when people join the church and when others leave, too often the issue has to do with finding a church that has the right fit. By which people mean, it’s just like me. I need a church that provides the ministries I am looking for and with people I can identify with and where the style reflects my personal preferences.
Both as a pastor of a church and as a church member, I’m aware that finding a church that mirrors my own cultural and personality preferences isn’t an easy task. There are not many churches in Melbourne where I can find fellow opera listening, cricket watching, Carlton supporting, history loving, fine food eating, Rothko admiring, Christians. It’s not that I’m a cultural snob as such, but that everyone else is a philistine (don’t be offended, that’s a joke…sort of!).
There are good reasons for joining and leaving a church, and not so good reasons. There are sad reasons and sinful reasons. But among the most common that I hear relates to what I’m calling a spiritualised version of natural selection.
I’ve given up trying to recall all the times’ someone has said to me, ‘Murray, there are not enough young families at ‘your’ church’. Or, there are too many children. Or. the youth group is too small. Or, there are not enough people my age. Or, where are all the elderly people? Or, the Church is too large….too small. The music is too new….too traditional. No doubt, you’ve also heard all these reasons, and perhaps you’ve used them yourself. The problem is, these categories don’t come to us from the Scriptures, but from the world around us.
Why do we place so much value on finding people our own age or people who share our social preferences? On one level, it is natural for us to congregate with people like ourselves. Uni students are naturally drawn toward other uni students. Families with children find it easy to mix with other families who have children. None of this is wrong as such, but the Gospel brings together people not on the basis of natural and intuitive networks but on the basis of a supernatural work of God’s Spirit in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we dig a little deeper into the psyche behind natural selection, we discover that there is something rather insidious about choosing a church based on natural selection rather than criteria set by the Gospel of reconciliation.
The Bible reveals a vision for God’s church that is better and is the perfect counterpoint to the monotonous song that remain no.1 on the Aussie charts. One of God’s goals through the Gospel is to bring together people who have nothing in common and yet in Christ share everything.
At the time when Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus, the great cultural divide was between Jews and Gentiles. Paul reminded them of who it is that brought them together,
“remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”
To the Galatians the Apostle said,
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:18)
God didn’t choose us according to the rules of natural selection, but according to supernatural grace. When we judge our church according to the whim of natural selection we are cutting against the very means by which a church is formed and grows.
In contrast, the early churches consisted of an array of people from different cultures and classes. The fact that rich and poor, men and women, Jew and Gentile, alike were members of churches, serving one another in love, was one of the realities that made the church attractive to surrounding people. Here was a place where status didn’t matter, and where otherwise unlike people found the deepest and most stable bond that can be had in this world.
There are of course some criteria that do matter when it comes to joining a church and remaining in that Church. For example, theology. There needs to be sufficient theological alignment, otherwise, you’ve already set the trajectory for an unhappy ending. Language is another important factor. It’s difficult to talk and listen and build relationships when you don’t share the same tongue. And we mustn’t neglect location. If you’re travelling 40 minutes each way to Church on a Sunday, how involved can you be in the life and health of that Church? Are you prepared to drive that distance every week, on Sundays and for a midweek Bible study? Are your neighbours and friends (who presumably live near your home and whom you’re inviting to church) also prepared to travel that distance? Perhaps you should find a local church or be prepared to move closer to the church that you have covenanted to join.
When we allow the Bible’s vision of Church to inform and transform our own agendas and expectations, the gains are immeasurable. We begin building a church on grace, not on personal gain. We prove to the world that Christ is true and that he is enough. We demonstrate the breadth and beauty of Gospel reconciliation.
So long as we live by the insatiable individualism that is eating away at our culture, we will diminish the beauty of the church, we will deny the power of the gospel, and we hamstring Gospel centred grace and growth. To be blunt, we will walk away from brothers and sisters for the simple reason, they are not quite like us
When Susan and I were living in London we joined a small group made up of members from the church we were attending. At 23 years of age, I was the youngest in the group. The eldest was well over 80. Each week we met in someone’s living room, 12 people from very different walks of life: students, workers, retirees, singles and married, children and no children. The fact that we had little in common with other members of the group didn’t detract from the group. The opposite was true. Together we had Christ and this unity in Christ was enough Jesus. Around Christ, we learned to love and encourage one another. That’s what the Gospel does. It brings people together who in other spheres of life would never connect let alone build friendship.
While it may be counter-intuitive, by joining a church where you are perhaps one of only a handful of under 25s or the only family, you may well become that new branch whom God uses to bring more young adults or more families into the church. Instead of try and walk out, why not trust and commit?
Finding a church filled with people like me is a myth that we need to dispell. As an individual who has his own social preferences, I understand the pull to find people with whom we have many things in common. These patterns of socialising can be a good from God and therefore to be enjoyed, but they ought not to be the criteria upon which we join or leave a church.
Instead of looking for a church that is like me (or like you), let’s join and serve churches that look like Jesus and want to become more like Him.
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