Being a family

September 2, 2010 at 9:36 pm | Posted in church | Leave a comment

Well we’ve officially left our church of two and a half years here in Leiden and are in the process of getting to know a new one, Crossroads Leiden. We’ve known the leadership of the church for most of the three years that we’ve been here.

Incidentally, we reached our three years milestone just this week.

Last night we hosted the first of two vision sharing evenings for people who are wanting to get to know more about who Crossroads Leiden are. We found it to be a very refreshing evening and was encouraged that the basic tenets of what I think it means to be a church are pretty much the same as I would have stated. The highlight for me was that one of the central values of the church is building relationships with each other. This is what I have sadly missed in church for the last 5 years or so.

A rather sober indication of this I encountered just a few days ago. The discipleship group that I lead recently helped one of our members, a single mum on benefit income, to move flat. Someone else in the same church had heard about this and was startled to learn that other Christians in our church would give up a whole Saturday and a discipleship group evening to help a fellow believer move flat.

Why should this be so surprising? Didn’t Jesus say that people would know that we were his disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35), and Paul taught us that we should do good to other people, especially other believers (Galations 6:10). If these are lacking in God’s family, then surely we’re not much of a family. This is why I found it so great to hear that Crossroads Leiden have relationships at their heart.

I look forward to seeing this in action!

P.S. sorry for the long silence, I have more to share soon. Watch this space!