The Raw Materials of Diversity

I am a part of a house church, which is a part of a network of house churches.  This organic relationship between individual/family/tribe is essential for spiritual survival in this postmodern world. Let me explain.

Last Sunday our little network of house churches (the Underground Church Network) met for worship and fellowship in the basement of a family’s home.  We chatted and enjoyed some appetizers, we met new faces and reconnected with familiar ones.  We prayed, we listened, we read Scripture, we sang.  It was a full montage of spiritual ascent and a beautiful mosaic of an extended family of faith.

So many churches, regardless of their size or model, don’t have much interest for linking arms with other communities.  ’Why do we need to play nice with others in the sandbox when we’re barely treading water on our own?’  Exactly.

I was watching another great Nova science and nature documentary a few nights back – and something struck a chord when the narrator said,

“We need bio-diversity precisely because change is constant and frankly we need the raw materials of diversity to help life adapt to that change.”

That’s it.  While you are an amazing deposit of beautiful characteristics and traits flowing from a seemingly limitless strand of DNA, your amino acids have their limits.  If everyone had your characteristics, though I’m sure we’d survive for awhile, we simply couldn’t handle an outbreak that specifically broke through your immune defenses.  Not to mention the beauty in diversity we’d lose!

In our worship, in how we hear from God – if it always sounds just like we like it, who are we really worshiping? To defend against the viruses of the Evil One – we need the “ecclesio-diversity” of a extended network of faith – a family of families that love and trust each other and know how desperately we need to hear God speak through the other.

Life is constantly in flux – change is the only constant.  If you only rely on yourself and your own particular pathway to God, you may always be happy, but you’ll never be satisfied.  God wants to speak to you through the network – through the MACRO.  Engage the full Body of Christ, discover your own blind spots, and listen to the LORD in fresh ways!

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