Love God & Love Neighbor

Author: Rev. Dr. Jim Farrer
January 17, 2019

 

     The past two weeks, we have had someone picketing our church on Sunday mornings, and my understanding is that he’s coming back for two more. His objections to us are framed around us not following God as he deems proper. He is entitled to his interpretation and opinion… and so are we.

     Our vision and mission is to be a Jesus-centered church… to be with the people Jesus was with… and to offer unconditional love and acceptance to everyone. I guess he disagrees. Interesting thing about the Bible – there are many ways to approach, interpret and choose which scriptures to place our emphasis on.

     We love the Bible here, but our goal is to follow Jesus. We shape our discipleship process around modeling Jesus. Jesus, who said all of the scripture comes down to this: love God and love neighbor. That is what we attempt to do, and we will not apologize or compromise that tenet of our faith.

     From reading our protester’ s comments, he has made some very judgmental statements about our church and the pastors. We will continue to refuse to judge him. We believe Jesus’ admonition to not look for the speck in someone else’s eye and to judge not. We also believe Paul when he spoke of those who were sinning but said do not judge these people for when you do you will be bringing judgment on yourself.

     So what do you do with a picketer? In the last two weeks, people have spoken with him, greeted him and offered him a cup of coffee, which he refused. We will offer again for as Jesus reminded us … when ever you offer a cup of water (or a cup of coffee on a cold Sunday morning) you are offering it to me!

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