Jesus told about a landowner who hired day laborers to work in his fields and paid them all a day’s wage, in spite of the fact that he had hired workers all day long – some right up until the last hour. To make it doubly hard on the ones who worked all day, he made them watch everyone else get paid first. Well, you can imagine there was a good deal of grumbling from this group over those who worked only an hour or two getting the same thing they got laboring under the hot sun all day. To which the landowner replied: Wait a minute. Didn’t I pay you what we agreed upon? If I want to be generous to these others, what is that to you? Take your money and go. ( Matt hew 20:1-16)

Here’s what I love about this parable: slipping away from there with a day’s pay in your pocket for an hour’s work. You’re wondering if someone made a mistake and paid you too much, but you’re reluctant to point it out to anyone for fear it was a mistake and you’ll have to give most of it back. But then you hear that the generosity of the employer was the reason your pocket is full, and you can’t believe your good fortune.

This is precisely what it feels like to be a Christian. You didn’t contract for this righteousness. You didn’t labor to get into this family. You didn’t study hard and read your Bible every day and go to church every Sunday and gain extra credit for being on the worship committee in order to ensure your place in Heaven. You are in this for one reason and one reason alone – the overwhelming generosity of God.

Grace is what makes you keep checking your pocket to make sure your life with God is still there. Worship is what happens when you find out it is. In fact, what you receive is so overwhelmingly generous that you will probably need a tote bag to carry it all!

– John Fisher in The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional

The Church is the family of God with Christ as the head. That makes us all siblings. O my! Families live, love, fife and make up or reconcile if they are to survive. If they do not they will become dysfunctional and eventually disintegrate, destroying lives along the way.

God is our father. Christ is our Lord and brother. We as a church, are then children and brothers and sisters. Jesus died for us by giving up himself because he loved us.

Self is our problem. We must deny self for the family to survive, grow and prosper bearing fruit. And loving one another is not a request it is a command as Christ loved the church.

Your sense of ambiguity about “the overall mission of Christchurch” is understandable. We have been eager not to confuse our program structure with our mission. Programs are methods to fulfilling our distinctives – not the distinctives themselves. Still, I think people will be well served to know a) what the program is (at least for now – it can always change), and b) how people fit into that program, and therefore into our collective attempt to implement that vision.

A good charge for the Eldership! Thanks, Ed – and, yes, your help will be appreciated. We’ll keep you posted.