Broadening The Discussion

I shrugged my shoulders and sighed as I watched Joey fill his coffee cup with the last of the church’s brew.  As I set my Styrofoam cup back on its proper stack, I noticed the bag of cookies hidden behind the coffeepot, and my stomach regained much of its enthusiasm.

Joey, James and I were visiting a Christian Surfer’s Church with our friends Sandra and Jill.  The three of us had met the speaker for that morning, as well as the church’s pastor two days before at the orphanage and decided that it would be fun to attend their Saturday morning service.  The guest speaker from California used an interpreter to share his understandings of repentance and then specified the topic by explaining how each person in the body of Christ is called to fill a need in their church.  I enjoyed the teaching, but when it came time for the small church to break off into groups of 3 – 5 to discuss what needs each individual could fill, our group found itself in a laughable dilemma: none of us could claim a regular attendance at the form of church that the man was referring to.

I will not go into the details of Sandra and Jill’s situations, but as for Joey, James and I, our ‘church’ in the United States meets at a home that uses very few organized traditions that might be found regularly conducted in steeple-crowned buildings.  We have all attended such churches in the past, in fact, I have grown up in those settings, but for us to keep the speaker’s discussion topic both honest and relevant to our lives, the five of us found it necessary to broaden the man’s question.

Ideas for more conducive topics jumped between us for several minutes until Jill finally landed on the one that we all agreed could be best implemented into our lives, “How can we best fill the needs of the community around us?”

The topic quickly took a dive into the deep end.

We spoke of identity, honor and love.  Every action or idea had its makings in an understanding of the true purpose of mankind, and acknowledging each person as being just as worthy of Christ’s blood as we, ourselves.  We brought up how people become objectified in their situations by others and discussed the importance of seeing people for who they are, and not limit the significance or reality of their lives to our own measuring scales of what they have or have not done.  We spurred one another on in seeing those around us through the eyes of grace.             

I could not help but notice the congruency between this topic and the lifestyle that Beautiful Feet is learning to live out and promote – a lifestyle that originated with Jesus Christ.         

What would it look like for us to see the individuals around us for the same importance that God so publically and loudly expressed them to carry? Or how much farther could our words and actions reach if each was birthed from a place of true love and honor for its recipient? What does love look like in the first place? What does honor look like?

What are your own thoughts on these topics? Please share in the comments below!