A People Who Have Genuine Love for One Another
Continuing our series on the Apostolic Foundations of our Catalyst family, this week we are looking at how we can be a people who have genuine love for one another.
If you missed any of the previous posts you can read them here:
Post 1 – The Apostolic & Prophetic Foundation Of The Church
Post 2 – A People Who Follow Jesus as Saviour and Lord
Post 3 – A People Who Are Devoted to God
Post 4 – A People of the Word and Spirit
When brothers and sisters in Christ dwell together in unity and love, the bible tells us there is a promised blessing released over them (Ps 133:1-3). Jesus clearly commanded His followers to love one another (John 13:34-35), following the example of His love for us as He laid down his life (John 15:13).
As the Holy Spirit filled the early church, believers shared their possessions to the point where their collective wealth was shared between the community. They ate together in each other’s homes, ‘with glad and sincere hearts’ (Acts 2:44-46). We believe this is a sign of the work of the Spirit among us, that we genuinely love one another and are unified by the life giving message of the gospel (Eph 4:1-3).
We aim for our churches to have a model and culture that enables friendships to form and ‘one-anothering’ to be expressed healthily in a diverse community that expresses ‘one new man’ in Christ. Regularly taking the Lord’s supper together in appropriate contexts. We hope to give to one another financially and serve willingly in a way that demonstrates that people do not just attend a meeting but belong to a family. Help them to know how to resolve conflict healthily and do so. Our churches should welcome and serve guests, newcomers no matter their background and also those of different ages and stages across the church family and have clear and effective ways of doing this. As spirit-filled evangelical churches we wish to develop church cultures of healthy sexuality where we equally love and welcome everyone whilst promoting an honour for singleness and heterosexual marriage as God’s blueprint for living.
These may sound like nice ideals but the indwelling work of the Spirit is what enables them to take place. It also means we have to keep following His promptings to forgive one another, to be authentic and vulnerable with one another, sharing our real lives together. Inevitably this will mean we sometimes clash and disappoint each other. When this happens our hope is that our churches have cultures that equip them to handle conflict well and know how to resolve and overcome that which seeks to divide us.
In our next post we will continue our series and look at how we can be a people that have anointed leadership operating in team.
If you missed our last posts in the series you can read them below:
Post 1 – The Apostolic & Prophetic Foundation Of The Church
Post 2 – A People Who Follow Jesus as Saviour and Lord
Post 3 – A People Who Are Devoted to God
Post 4 – A People of the Word and Spirit
