Competition

One of the great things about many of the blogs I read is that there is an openness to share ideas and encourage one another.

Recently a friend and I talked about how difficult it was for him to get his church into a local denominational association. My friend filled out all of the paperwork including doctrinal positions, history, leadership, structure, etc. When he arrives at the meeting an older gentleman begins to give him grief about how some of the information isn't on church letterhead and how he'd have to go get someone to sign off on the statements since they aren't on the letterhead. My friend offers to sign right away as he is the Pastor of the church. This man goes into a tirade about "Young man you do know that YOU are not the church!" and so on.

After pushing back and politely telling this guy to use the bathroom in someone else's pool, my friend is encouraged by some other Pastors in the room who step up and remind the gentleman with the problem what the organization is there for.

This leads me to my thought about churches in general. Why are we so stinkin' competitive with one another? Why do we have to be better than the guy down the road? Why can't we work with the guy down the road and improve both churches (assuming you can get along at a basic philosophy of ministry level).

You see on blogs we share openly. We're encouraging and we help one another. Lets keep this in mind as we work with other churches in our community. Fortunately in times of crisis the church gets back to being the church as evidenced in the gulf coast region. Let's keep this in mind when we consider each day that people in our communities may have an earthly home but they lack a heavenly one. Surely we can work together to accomplish that vision.