Importance of Family

Between services. Awesome one last night – two professions of faith from a couple girls who have been coming the last couple weeks. One is the best friend of L., who I mentioned a few days ago as witnessing to a friend for the first time. This best friend of hers has always told L. that she’s just not interested in Christianity and doesn’t believe in God. A couple weeks ago, though, she called L. and told her that something had happened that convinced her that God exists and that she wanted to go to church with her. I think last night was her third time to come. Another friend of theirs, who L. says listens to the two of them talk about God every night, was the other girl who trusted Christ as her Savior.

We’re going through a short series now about the goals of our church. I’m really enjoying this series – one of the big emphases is ‘why you need the church, and why the church needs you.’ Not a lot of students understand that, but I think this series is helping a lot of them to make the connection. Last week we talked about the church as a community, how we are different from a club or an organization or a business. The Bible uses primarily family terms to describe the relationships within the church – we are brothers and sisters in the family of God. Cool concept for Chinese college students, since most of them are fresh out of siblings. But for those who are particularly big fans of their independence, privacy, and emotional stability, the idea of the church as family is particularly scary! Family is one of our greatest sources of joy and safety, but it can also suddenly become a mess of heartbreak and insecurity! It’s hard to overstate the importance of these students, many of them further from home than they’ve ever been, to enter a community that will care for them like a family. It’s a huge prayer – that we would see more than a bunch of students coming to church services – that we would see those in our church become a family of grace.