Kid's Ministry Coffee Break | A Few Minutes of Spiritual Refreshment for Children & Youth Ministers.
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
"EARS & EYES" Kids Ministry Coffee Break 19: Misunderstanding other people is a normal part of our lives. We can and should embrace diversity as an intentional part of God's plan for the church.
Do you ever have moments when your people don’t seem to understand you or one another? Or maybe you don’t understand them? Or maybe other ministers from other churches are doing/believing/practicing/preaching things that just don’t make sense or connect with you.
It can lead to all sorts of questions. It can be unsettling. It can even lead us to judgment and resentment and frustration among other things. Are you with me? Has this happened to you? You are not alone.
The Apostle Paul dealt with this time and again. He traveled around Asia Minor and helped found churches among all sorts of people and cultures. He got to know a myriad of people with a myriad of perspectives. And he did this without a single Gospel narrative!! There was no Christian scripture at his disposal. He couldn’t read from any of the 27 books we now read from regularly. I don’t know how he did it, honestly, except by the Holy Spirit.
Multiple times he wrote letters to groups who were struggling to understand one another. Multiple times he uses the image of the body to help people find peace with unity that was not uniform. (By the way…that’s what we’re after…unity…but not uniformity) —this is why I love that we have different denominations. People will connect with you church that wouldn’t connect with the church across town…and vice versa.
I turn to Paul’s image of the body to help me. He says in 1 Corinthians 12 we are all different parts of the same body. This can be applied to a congregation… and it can be applied to congregations who are part of a denomination… and to denominations part of the whole worldwide upper case C, Church.
He gives this funny account of an ear telling an eye they aren’t part of the body because they aren’t an ear. An entire body of ears couldn’t do much, right? It would be excellent at hearing…assuming it had a brain to process the sound. A body of eyes would be great at seeing, right. But neither body holds a candle to a body with both an ear and an eye. The ear can’t say to the eye, “You don’t belong.” First off, without a mouth, the ear can’t say anything. And, without ears of its own, the eye can’t even hear what the ear is saying. In fact, if the ear and eye were able to have a conversation…could they even explain to the other what they do? How do you explain sight to an ear? How do you explain sound to an eye?
So many times today, I wonder if various groups of Christians who are debating the things they debate are just like a group of ears and eyes trying to explain what is unexplainable. They have an entirely different sense of what is going on…and they expect the other group to understand. Sometimes…we can’t. And that’s ok! It’s even good! This is what makes us diverse and far more able to accomplish our mission on this world than a bunch of churches that are all eyes or ears or hands or feet, etc.
We need each other. And we need each other to be different for the sake of better serving the whole body.
So…the next time you find yourself struggling with someone’s point of view or understanding…just picture yourself as an eye and the other person as an ear…and know that, perhaps, you aren’t even able to understand one another. But you can still praise God for the abilities you both are offering for the good of the body. You can trust the Spirit knows what its doing in bringing it all together.
Message brought to you be Rev. Joseph Sanford of Sanford Curriculum (Student ministry resources available on The Sunday School Store written by he and Lauren Sanford).
https://10bibleverses.com/scripture-quotes/10-bible-verses-for-encouragement/
https://sundayschool.store/collections/free-downloads
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