I was at the dealership the other day having some work done on my car. As I sat down, I saw a set of brochures for the different kinds of cars that my brand makes. Glancing inside the brochures, I saw a list of accessories that are available for my car, each of them under a headline that said something like, “Be Truly Unique,” or “Make it Yours.” The idea being that you can choose how to express yourself by what you add on to your car.
When it comes to our Christian faith, we express it in different ways. Some of our expression comes from the denomination we are a part of, with its particular principles. Some of it comes from being a part of our church, with its unique way of welcoming and forming community. But it also comes from our particular and personal understanding of the Bible, our worship preferences, and how willing we are to express our faith publicly.
But in the brochures I was looking at in the dealership, each model of car had its own accessories. It would be silly to add a car accessory to a truck or SUV, so car accessories were with the cars, and truck accessories were with the truck models. The accessories were appropriate to the model.
The same is true of our faith. As many “accessories” as we add to our faith, we make a big mistake if we do not understand and embrace the underlying basic principles of Christian faith, which are discovered as we read the Bible, and experience the life of faith together.
As you will hear about in the coming weeks, we have decided as a church to embark on the journey of learning the Bible, the substance underneath all of the “accessories,” by working together through a study of the Bible called, “The Story.” You will hear more about it in coming weeks, but this study, over the course of weeks, will give you a great framework in which to understand the over-arching story of the Bible.
More to come later…
Blessings, Sonny