47 and Counting

I'm now up to 47 hours of work in four days. I'll probably hit 60-65 hours by the the time I finish on Saturday afternoon. This makes it a little easier to pay the bills, but much more difficult to see my family. Blogging has to take a back seat. I want to complete the Romans 14 series but will have to wait until Sunday to do that.

While at work, I keep mulling over a question that we all deal with: how can we at the same time both discuss important church issues and remain united as the body of Christ?

One way I've seen some folks do this is to focus almost completely on world missions. Missions does seem to be an issue of church life that is relatively easy to agree upon - at least at first. We all agree that everyone on the planet needs to hear the gospel in an understandable way. However, we don't all agree on the types/styles/forms of churches that should be planted. The issue remains. 

As children of Christ, we are one. John 17 makes this abundantly clear. This is Jesus' desire. So how do we go about living this out as the church while asking hard questions about the church? One step in the right direction is this: instead of focusing so much of our energy on being right, we should spend our time thinking about what would most benefit our brothers and sisters. We may end up coming to the same conclusions, but the path we take and the words we write/speak may be different.