The Perfect Church

Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted. A couple of times I have sat down to type something and actually wrote some, but I did not feel the Holy Spirit guiding me in it so I deleted it. So hopefully this is from God and for His glory. Little update on me, I recently was asked to pray about going to Morocco this summer with IGO. After praying about this I did not feel any leading from the Lord nor any peace from Him to pursue this option. So once again, I find myself waiting on Him or maybe more appropriately, He waiting on me till I'm ready for Him to send me.

"Let the fellowship of Christ examine itself and see whether it has given any token of the love of Christ to the victims of the world's contumely and contempt, any token of that love of Christ which seeks to preserve, support and protect life. Otherwise however liturgically correct our services are, and however devout our prayer, however brave our testimony, they will profit us nothing, nay rather, they must needs testify against us that we have as a Church ceased to follow our Lord." The Cost of Discipleship

For years I grew up believing the church is rated on how big it was, how many programs it had, what type of events they held, and so on. Bonhoeffer is expositionally teaching from the sermon on the mount. He comes to how we should treat our brother and he makes this claim (stated above). The church should be rated on how we treated our brother, showing love to the people that are despised by this world, and treating kindly those that persecute us. It does not matter if we have the largest sanctuary in the city with the most high tech gadgets. It is about relationships with your brothers and with the lost. If these large crowds and gadgets get in the way of our relationships then we should get rid of them or more likely we as individuals should leave them. The body of God is about living in a community that reaches out to all types especially the oppressed and broken-hearted. When you see a church doing that then you have seen a healthy church.