Last year I spent time thinking about the church as the family of God. To me that is one of the most powerful explanations we have to help guide us in fostering relationship, community, and how we worship. Often I have said that unless people at All Nations Church see each other as family we will never be a healthy successful church. We are just not good enough at all of the sexy things to compete in those areas. I think in my personal life I have been encouraged that as God's child I am never kicked out of the house, even though often I deserve it.

So now I am looking at what type of family are we. You see it is great to have such a rich Biblical idea to work from, but we only understand that idea from our own experience. Often I think functionally we are a "dominate child" driven family. Most of the decisions and work that is done at ANPC is done by either the pastors or the worship leaders. Okay some of this is functional because we get paid to do it or we have the most invested in it, but what gets lost in the mix is that we are not the "head" or Father of the family. We are functioning like one of those families who cannot choose where to go to dinner without one of the children deciding. How can we work to make worship, especially Sunday worship a place where the entire family takes part? Of course not everyone every week will be able to do it, but does that mean the only people who get to use their gifts are the teachers/preachers and the musicians? Let us find away in which each member of the family is contributing, within their gifts and in ways they would like to.


Some of it starts with me. I need to stop being that child who has to decide where we go to dinner. How can I be a vessel rather then control, how can I use my gifts while developing the gifts of those around me. Less of me and more of Him.