Church is a business, but it is a mistake for us to see church as a commodity to be sold.   Good business practices are important so that the institutional church remains solvent and provides space for the Spirit community to live and thrive, but church is a gift of the Spirit.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history"  ("An Experiment in Love," Jubilee, September 1958, pp.11f)    The church is a gift we have the opportunity and obligation to "re-gift" and share.

  Finding a good balance between being a community and being a business is not an exact science.  It's more an art.  As a business, however, our product is not God.  Rather we are God's product.   We are in the business of changing people, in partnership with the Spirit - people who will change the world.  

  Every life needs a vision -- every business too.  What is our vision as church?  It is said that the dream of God for creation is summarized in the idea of Shalom -  the oneness of humanity - that we are connected with each other and all of life.   The vision we share as pilgrims in the Spirit, as church and as communities of faith, is to cooperate with the Spirit in the realization of God's dream.  Shalom is the direction of the change we seek - peace in the world, peace in our hearts, and peace in our community.  

  For us to cooperate in the realization of that dream requires that we embrace our own dreams and our own uniqueness.  We have the right and our responsibility to be different.  Partnership with God requires that we respect diversity and the rights of others to be different.   This includes different religious traditions.  It requires us to trust that the best way to express the mystery of the reality of God in this world is for us to be the best Jews, the best Christians, the best Muslims, on and on, that we can be - the best people and the best people of faith we can be.  

  How will we accomplish this?  How can we realize God's dream?       It takes commitment to exercise:  meditate every day at least fifteen to twenty minutes in order to open our awareness and release conscious thinking.  Also, pray every day for what you see and need.  And always prayer that God's will be done so that relationships will grow together and we will be open to growth, the ability to love and value and accept.

  Crossroads Church, like many other communities of faith, has a dream -- a vision to cooperate in the realization of God's dream.  I believe that the truest expression of faith is this:  around, through, in between, and because of our differences, God is revealed.  Dr. James Forbes, Pastor Emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City shared something recently that applies to Crossroads Church and to each of you who read these worlds.  I paraphrase him:  "I saw a dream walking.  I saw a dream talking.  And the dream I saw walking and talking was you."

  As people of faith, we commit our time, talents, and treasures.  We give our lives to grow, to be born, to be created, and to become ourselves.   Let us commit, each one, to the vision before us:  to walk in this truth and to live as church in the miracle of new creation.   Be the dream and help the world be reborn.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
    
Jack Price

Return to the Enotes index