Churches are full of elephants. Issues that everyone thinks about, but never discusses. How could a good God allow suffering? How can a loving God send people to hell? Would Jesus vote Republican or Democrat? Does God really hate beer?
This fall at Gateway we will talk candidly about the issues that plague us, the topics that confuse us and the questions that intrigue us and this weekend we will kick things off by exploring a few of the gray elephants in the church.
The Bible is black and white on a lot of issues, but there are also a lot of gray issues, or what the Apostle Paul calls "disputable matters" (Romans 14v1). Clearly God cares about the black&white issues, but I believe it is how we handle the gray issues that will define who we will be as a church.
Some of these issues are trivial (secular music, dancing, rated R movies) others are peripheral (Calvinism vs. Arminianism, eschatology, spiritual gifts) and many are highly emotional (In vitro fertilisation, genetic engineering, life support and end of life issues).
How will we be able to discern right from wrong? What will we do if we disagree?
The Apostle Paul exhorted the Romans to "Accept one another, just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God" (Romans 15v7). Our dream is to build a church with the capacity to widely embrace incredibly divergent views, opinions, practices and convictions - disagree about those views, even passionately - and still somehow find a way to gather around this raging bonfire that is Jesus Christ and bring praise to God.
This weekend the conversation begins. We believe something special will happen in the course of this dialogue, and we want to share that with you.
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