Make A Place for People

I don't know where I heard it - probably at a conference years ago - but it was such a great statement I have never forgotten it. The line that I remember to this day goes like this..."Church should be an experience of finding a place for people and not keeping people in their place."

I have heard unfortunate stories of where church has become an experience of "keeping people in their place." That phrase, "keeping people in their place", has a feel of judgment and punishment. It has a feel of someone just waiting for someone to mess up so that they can be corrected. It has a feel of superiority. If you are on the receiving end, it doesnt feel very good. Accountability is good and helping people to live in the way of Jesus is necessary. But, turning church into an experience of "keeping people in their place" conjures up images of moral finger wagging. Worse, it describes an environment that is not too full of grace and mercy.

I better approach and vision would be to see church as an experience of "finding a place for people." Folks today are looking for a "place"...
> a place to serve
> a place to discover meaning and purpose
> a place where grace is real
> a place live out their unique gifts and calling

We serve folks well when we make a place for them to do all of this and much more. Jesus was always making a place for people - a place at the table, a place in his life, a place in his Kingdom. Jesus was never about "keeping people in their place".

How can we make a place for folks at Deep River Friends? Who do you need to make a place for in your life?

Happy July 4th!
This weekend is July 4th and an opportunity to celebrate the birth of our country. There are probably a variety of ways we all celebrate this weekend - mainly with cookouts and fireworks. And, we take time to reflect upon the freedoms that we have. I would invite us, though, to also reflect on how our freedoms can be stewarded to bring goodness to the common good. It's easy to use our freedoms to simply look out for ourselves and our own individual rights rather then steward our freedom to seek the good of others and our country...and even our world. It seems that if we as a country have been blessed with so much freedom then it wasnt necessarily for the purpose of hoarding it for ourselves. Let our freedom lead us out into creative goodness on behalf of others.