Recently, we participated in a special time set aside by over 150 churches in Nashville to pray for each other.
You don’t think about churches praying for other churches so much. It’s a curiously novel idea. Music City West is founded on the idea of unity between churches. In our very first year, we began having Community Prayer and Praise services to gather members of churches in our communities to sing worship songs together in a casual unplugged setting and to have pastors offer prayers. We want to provide the opportunity for people churched and unchurched to see the Church (with a capitol C) in action, loving God together and in mission together. We’re all on the same team, right?! That’s why we were so excited to learn about Operation Andrew.
Operation Andrew is an organization that connects churches with each other and with communities. They also conduct studies about what people think of church. I suppose a lot people don’t think of church at all.
Why would people think of church? Why consider it, why go, why church? A loaded question from a theologian, but I am feeling the simple beauty of it all these days.
People need a God connection. It’s a default need that came with our original human settings, like the need for water and sun and love, all of which, I might add, are gifts from God.
Church is an expression of the mystery of God, the manifestation of God experiencing life with us, expressing love and forgiveness and beauty among us, and a place where your heart can find home. Church is how Jesus keeps healing broken hearts in this world.
One team. One love. One heart of God.
One Sunday after another we pause to remember and give thanks. Let’s keep going!
We will continue to pray for our church neighbors, like Jesus did.
“I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.” John 17:23