All of us are known by our dominant traits – even among our churches. Have you ever considered what your habits tell others about your commitment to your church family?
I was talking with someone in my office at the church when their expression troubled me. Peering through the blinds, my friend noticed someone siphoning gas out of my vehicle. In an open church parking lot in the middle of the day, some desperate individual was working so diligently to remove the fuel out of my vehicle and transfer it into his.
As I confronted him in the parking lot, he spat out some gas residue and provided me with a story of this vehicle as mistaken for his girlfriend’s. He then abruptly grabbed his equipment and peeled out of our parking lot before I could process the absurdity of all I had just observed. What’s remarkable about that situation was how common it seemed to me.
He wasn’t the first person who had ever driven to a church campus, only thinking of how he could take from others there.
If we gather with a church only thinking of how it benefits us rather than thinking how we could bless others, we have missed what it means to be the church. Being changed by Jesus should propel us to seek opportunities to serve others.
Are you known by your church as one who gives or by one who only takes?
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
