Church isn’t a show you rate. It’s a family you join, with the same weird uncles.
GRATITUDE
WHAT THIS MEANS
Audiences evaluate and members participate, and you cannot do both at once. Treating a community as a performance keeps you permanently in the seat, comparing it to better versions elsewhere. Joining means accepting a specific set of actual people, including the ones who talk too long and the ones who are odd. Families are not curated and that is roughly the point.
Stop reviewing and start belonging somewhere specific. Learn five names, take a job, turn up when it is inconvenient. Decide in advance that the irritating people come with it, because they do in every group you will ever be part of.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Which group do you review from the outside instead of joining?
MORE IN FAITH, GRACE & PURPOSE
- You’ll need grace for people who are slower to grow than you. Somebody once gave you the same patience.
- God tends to hand bigger things to people who handled small things well when no one was grading.
- The early church met in houses and shared meals. Most of faith still happens around a kitchen table.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.