Dear Sir,
How do people know we are Jesus’s disciples? Because we love one another.
The letter in May’s en (Caring in the church?) saddened me and some of the subsequent correspondence shocked me in its rebuking tone. For surely we are all guilty of failing our brothers and sisters in Christ from time to time and the right and only response is loving humility and repentance. Moreover, the issue at stake is not primarily that it is a minister’s wife who felt so much pain that she was moved to write to en. Rather it is that a church fellowship somehow failed to reach out to one of its own.
Recently I attended a large church in England for a while and experienced rejection. It was an extremely painful episode and one that troubles me still, despite finding I was not alone. However, the lack of love and relationship I felt came from a fellowship which seems to be doing everything right – preaching the centrality of Christ's life, death and resurrection and organising many activities. Its focus is on certain categories – students, young families and professionals. The church is structured around targets and ministries and is, on its own admission, like a school. It is ostensibly successful, the talk of the town, a flagship in a Gospel Partnership. Perplexed, I discovered that some individuals fall between the cracks, feel isolated, go unnoticed and that seems not to register. This seems to be a very serious failing in a biblical church.
It is extremely painful for any Christian to feel uncared for, forgotten or overlooked within the church family, for we know our identity is in Christ and with our brothers and sisters in Christ, ahead of any earthly category we belong to, or indeed the church structure we find ourselves in. ‘The eye cannot say to the hand “I don't need you”’ (1 Corinthians 12.21). We need to acknowledge that there are those we have, perhaps unwittingly, ignored, stop justifying ourselves and say sorry, then look out for those in need outside our own set, building relationships before ministries.
Yours sincerely
