Below is the series description for our upcoming series at NLCF. Â Will you pray for us as we seek to engage some pretty tough issues? Â
Every culture, generation, and season has had topics that made people feel very strongly. Usually these topics are complex, where even wise and good people have come to different conclusions. Our culture, today; even now is no different.
The topics shift but the way that God calls his people to respond towards them doesn’t. He wants us to pay attention and to walk closely with him, to pray expectantly and then act with love and courage.
Our culture is facing the most divisive election any of us can personally remember, a refugee crisis in Syria that is causing pain at incredible levels but that also brings questions of domestic safety, and #BLM is bringing the issue of racism into the national spotlight with more focus than it has been in probably the last forty years.
Each of these topics is complex and the way that each of us evaluates the different levels and weighs the importance of the many different pieces is causing good people to reach different conclusions. So what do we do with that?
We are going to talk about it.
The church has historically been a place where these issues can be reasoned out, where God’s direction can be sought, action taken and where grace can be shown to those who arrive at different conclusions. We don’t enter these issues lightly and this isn’t some form of elaborate click-bait strategy to get people to come. The weight of these issues isn’t lost on us. But if our walk with Christ is more than just something we do in our spare time to try to become a slightly nicer version of the average person, if it is supposed to be something that transforms us and actually causes us to look at our world, in all its beauty and brokenness, the way that God does, then these are things we must talk about. We simply must.
Our goal with this series isn’t to tell you who to vote for or what you should specifically do or not do in response to the refugee crisis. We aren’t going to make you tell us if you think Black or Blue lives matter more. But here is what we can do and what I think we should do. All of us, and I mean all of us, should look deeply at these topics and seek the Lord to see what he would have us do in response to them. Christlike responding in a Christlike way. Then we must all courageously and lovingly step forward and engage.
We invite you to join us, whether you regularly attend NLCF or the idea of church is something that hasn’t interested you much at all.
Will you join us?