Years ago, during the height of the Baptist controversy, I remember a button that was being sported at the SBC’s annual gathering. The button read, “Doing the Word.” Those who donned it were making a statement that regardless of all the rhetoric that was being bandied about concerning the importance of the Bible, what really mattered was our faithfulness in living its message in our everyday experience. I have to say that the button made quite an impression on me, and I haven’t gotten over it yet. The greatest testimony of my own appreciation for Scripture is my commitment to bear witness to it in tangible, practical ways.
And I’m glad to be a part of a church that thinks the same way. That thought crossed my mind this past Sunday as I surveyed the bulletin to read of the many good things happening in the life of our church. Sometimes you look at a church bulletin, and while that congregation may have a lot of events listed, you wonder how many of those events necessarily serve the purposes of God’s Kingdom.
That’s not so with our church. This past Sunday I looked at the items listed and I thought of our commitment to the poor, the devastated, and the imprisoned – all parties Jesus mentioned in his famous teaching about what he called us to do “unto the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46). I saw signs of people seeking to use their gifts and abilities out of their desire to see God’s love poured out into the lives of others, which is exactly how the Bible defines love to be more of an action than an emotion (1 John 3:16-20). I noticed announcements that spoke to the need we have for fellowship (Acts 2:42-47) and the importance of readying ourselves to meet the Risen Jesus in a fresh way (Philippians 3:10-11). In short, I saw signs of a church seeking to be true to its mission of being “a God-centered, Bible-directed, people-focused, caring body of baptized believers in Jesus Christ.”
So, you might want to pay closer attention to what you read in both the bulletin and the Bible (though one should obviously not equate the former with the latter). The point is that we commit ourselves to living our faith in ways that reflect our heart for Jesus and our desire to experience the abundant life he came to help us know.
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