THE SHEPHERD’S CORNER

Fill in the blank

 At Bible Study on Wednesdays we often have fill in the blanks on our worksheets. When I have a fill in the blank worksheet, I often try to guess what the right word will be. Often times you could put multiple words in that would make sense, but the speaker always has a word in mind. Let’s try:

The purpose of the church is ___________.

 It’s important what word we put there because it will impact “how” we do church; what we talk about, what we spend money, what type of songs we sing, or how we decorate. Many things will be impacted based on how we fill in this blank. 
 What words came to your mind? 
 If you said something like Fellowship, then you can imagine that we’d focus on developing relationships, having fun activities to help us to grow closer together. We’d be thinking of our community and the relationships within our community.
 If you said something like Worship, then we’d focus a lot on our worship experience; maybe what type of songs we sing, prayer, creating a setting that helps people to worship better. 
 If you said something like To Serve, then we’d be hoping for everyone to be involved in some way, serving in the church in areas that we find value and importance in. 
 I hope we can agree that how we answer that question is very important because it’s not just a reflection of our values and understanding of God and the community of followers of Christ, but it will also shape and mold “how” we “do” church together. So, what’s the right answer? We’ll see next week. 

Pastor Steve