Comment Highlights for Week of March 27, 2011
As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I want to highlight some of the comments that have been left on my blog posts during the past week. Hopefully, this will give more visibility to some of the reasons that I love blogging – dialog and interaction.
Once again, there were some incredible comments on my blog this week, and I’m not talking about the birthday wishes from a few days ago.
Jon (among many others) left a great comment on my post “What caused you to start studying the church?” Here’s his comment:
Church unity (or lack thereof) got me started questioning the box I’ve grown up in. I went searching for common basic beliefs across denominational lines, and tried to see past the traditions and divisions that we had created.
Since I was questioning traditions, Pagan Christianity was suggested reading. It shook that box a bit more.
Thanks Alan for sharing your wisdom. Looking at Scripture on my own too, and being encouraged by others who are working out fresh new/ancient perspectives of how God’s family can live together under His Lordship.
Another John also left this comment on that same post in reply to another commenter:
I am in complete agreement, or at least think that I am, with what you write here. This is why I remain a non-Catholic, non-Orthodox classical, confessional, catholic Christian who loves the WHOLE church while I look for the wind of God in all of them. What I do resist is the evangelical impulse to keep reinventing and offering the “pure biblical model†as if “we’ve found it now.†Reform yes, reinvent no.
Swanny left a great comment on my post “Community Ingredients: Only Jesus.” Here is part of his comment:
Jesus prayed that we would be one. He did not pray it just once or twice, but the night before He was crucified, He prayed it over and over and over again.
Of all the things Jesus could have asked the Father, He seemed rather stuck on one — the idea of being one. The idea that His followers, His people, The Church, would be known to the world by their oneness; the idea that, contrary to the ways of the world, the Church would demonstrate a new way of working together, a new way of being in the world. And this new way of being would serve the purpose of revealing God to the world. The world would see the “Allness†of God.
Throughout the letters written to the early Church that are recorded in the New Testament, there are more than 100 references to how we should live with one another. These are core tenets of being Christ-followers.
And, finally, James left this encouraging comment on my post “Which one was church?”
Good post, Alan. What’s interesting is that here in the Northwest the gatherings you describe above would be considered Church. I tend to agree with your views and conclusions; I only aim to raise a simple observation of how divergent the thinking is when it comes to ecclessiology. I grew up in the South, and attended Southeastern for a season. The Pacific Northwest is an entirely different context.
There were so many more great comments left on my blog last week. Why not take a few minutes and read through some of them?