Wellington Church of Christ

There’s no New Testament person, excluding Jesus, that I admire more than the Apostle Paul. It’s truly amazing how much endurance and boldness that Paul exhibited throughout his ministry.

In all of the ways possible, it’s my desire to be like the Apostle Paul and do as he commands the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11:1 when he says:

There are many calling cards of false teaching that can be easily identified if we know what to look for. 

However, if we don’t know what to look for, we can be easily manipulated, or at a minimum, confused.

Confused Christians are in danger of making horrible mistakes, with one of the worst being the drawing of false conclusions which will lead us into false beliefs, which will lead us to taking wrong actions.

It seems to me that in order to follow Jesus like I’m called to do, that a lot of the work I do isn’t physical work, but rather mental.

When I was very young, I didn’t really enjoy watching sports.  It wasn’t so much the watching of the sport that I didn’t enjoy, it was the sitting still for hours part that I couldn’t tolerate.

But I also hated not knowing what was going on when everyone was talking about the game the next day.  My predicament was solved by the ESPN highlight reels.

There are many motivations that can be observed in our lives that demonstrate why we do what we do.

For instance, let’s look at the law of the land.  If I don’t break the speed limit, it’s not because I love the law, it’s because I fear paying a speeding ticket.  If not for fear of the ticket, I would probably speed more than I do.

Over the years, I’ve heard or been a part of endless conversations about the relationship between grace, faith and works.

I don’t mean to oversimplify things or overcomplicate things in this never-ending discussion, but after so long, you have to come up with an explanation that you can live with.

One of the most difficult things to do as a follower of Jesus is to understand when to speak up in regards to our faith.  And, just to clarify, when I say, “speak up” I mean with a literal, audible voice, or sign-language if you are deaf – not a social media platform.

When I became a minister, I suddenly had loads of sympathy for every minister that I’ve ever known because I suddenly realized what those men were up against. I can also sympathize with the congregants of the church, because, like them, I too was a pew sitter for many years.

If all goes to plan, in less than two weeks, our mission team will be worshiping at a little church in the mountainous rainforest of southeastern Honduras.

We will be busy building a new school, working with the students of the village in whatever form their current school is in, and also providing a soccer clinic for those same students.