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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2002
From the Pastor
The Church As Family
The church is the place that celebrates with you the great moments in your life. It is God's family on earth.
Two weeks ago we had an infant dedication at the church. In addition to the parents and grandparents, there were great grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins present. It was a beautiful service and with the family the congregation embraced the infant in its arms and celebrated with the parents the birth of their son.
A week before we had gathered in the same place for the funeral service of a long time member of the congregation. We grieved along side the two daughters and granddaughters. We prayed, we sang and we remembered. The casket before us, between the pulpit and the lectern, and in front of the communion table, had in a sense brought home the one in whose memory we met.
Next Sunday (April 28, 2002) a member is bringing several guests with her to worship. They were all state officers at the time this member served as leader for the state. They are gathering for a reunion and part of the reunion is worship.
At Easter and Christmas going to church as family is a tradition. This Mother's Day is another occasion when many families make worship a part of their celebration.
In June we have Graduate Recognition Sunday and throughout the year the church is the chosen gathering place to solemnize wedding vows.
All these occasions reveal how God has created the church not primarily to be an institution but extended family. The church is God's family on earth. It is an earthy expression of a heavenly reality. When you open the doors of the church to enter you are coming home. You are meeting Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Your friends and fellow worshipers are your brothers and sisters in Christ.
I would like to see this sense of church as family more fully integrated into our lives.
A place to begin could be Mother's Day, May 12. In recent years we seem to have fallen away from the church as the center for our observance. Mother's day began in the church!
There are other possibilities for strengthening the sense of church as family and home in our lives:
• Mark special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries by attendance at worship.
• When out of town family or friends are visiting with you over the weekend make worship an extension of your time together. It will enhance the ties that bind you to one another.
• When you move into a new house of apartment request one of the pastors to conduct a special "Blessing of the home service." It is a brief service of dedication that I or Pastor Hendrix would be delighted to conduct.
• When something good happens in your life let part of your response be on that following Sunday when as an act of gratitude you return "home" to church with a joyful heart and in the Silent Prayer say "Thank You" to your Heavenly Father.
To merely limit family to those with the same last name or blood relatives is to miss one of the great realities of our lives as Christians and that is when God created the church, He created family, and every Sunday when we gather for worship we are not only "going to church," we are "going home."
Dr. David W. Andersen
            
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