Blogging Through The Alphabet - C

This post is linked to "Blogging Through The Alphabet" with Marcy at "Ben and Me"

I didn't get this post done early in the week, because I kept thinking of different things to write about. Should I do....C is for Castles, since we are learning about them with our recent lapbooking adventure? I have a really cool picture of a castle I visited when I was in the UK. Or...C is for Chipotle?  I fell in love with Chipotle after tasting it for the first time several years ago, while we were on a trip. The restaurant chain finally came to New York, and now we don't have to wait till we are traveling to get some....And I have learned to duplicate most of their yummy food at home, so we can eat it pretty much on a regular basis.

But I finally decided that this post would follow in the steps of last week's more serious "Blogging Through the Alphabet" post, and I went with.....

C is for the Church

I am a Sunday School teacher, and have been teaching my Senior High Teen Girls class about Baptist Distinctives.  One of the lessons was about the church. It turned out to be a pretty interesting, enjoyable,  and interactive class as the girls asked a lot of questions.

In class, we brainstormed a list of characteristics of the church:

The church is:

• people
• a ministry
• a base to send and support missionaries
• a place of help
• a place that God works through
• An organized place to serve God!

The church is not:

• just a building
• an exclusive club
• a social network
• a place to only take care of physical needs such as food and clothes
• perfect

Here's an interesting fact: Do you know where the first church in the Bible was mentioned? Most of us think of the first church in Jerusalem in Acts 2, but it was actually the "church in the wilderness" in the book of Exodus:

Acts 7:38 "This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:"

The church can be any size:

Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

The church is special to Christ:

Acts 20:28 "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."

The word "church" literally means "a called out assembly".  The church is a special body of people that is called out of this world, to be a lighthouse and show the way of salvation. We are to be different than this world. Everything the church does should have an end goal of showing people the way of salvation and the way to Heaven. While a church may engage in social events or meeting physical needs (like food and clothes, etc) all those activities are with the purpose in mind of pointing people to Jesus.

As the world gets crazier, we need the church even more! It is a place of encouragement. Not only do we go there to be encouraged and strengthened, but we also encourage others just by our very presence and involvement!

Hebrews 10:25 "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching."

I hope this will be an encouragement to you to embrace your church, to be involved in it's ministries, to make it a huge part of your family life, and to find a place in it to dig in and serve God alongside others, for that will bring true fellowship and encouragement!

I'm so thankful for my church, and for the way it has blessed my family and our life.

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