Not far from the school our church meets to worship in is another Baptist church with whom we share sweet fellowship. In many ways, our churches are very different, but we share a love for the Gospel and the God of the Gospel.
When our church needs to baptize someone, we almost always use this church's facility. And just so you get a sense of the humble and servant-hearted nature of these folks, you should realize that they just give us their building on a Sunday night, then cancel their own service to sit in and worship with us... while we use their electricity, microphones and water!
Besides having this corporate fellowship, I have been personally blessed over the years to learn from their pastor, Ken Davis. Ken is the real deal and what I love most about him is seeing him change... growing in godliness and spiritual maturity. There are few things sadder to me than a stagnant, unchanging pastor. Ken is the farthest (furthest? - help me out Lynn!) thing from that!
Anyway, Ken was one of those folks who volunteered to list out some things he loves about his church - Thistletown Baptist Church of Rexdale, Ontario (the murder capitol of Canada). He noted in his email that he had to stop at 20 in order to get back to work. Something tells me that if he had the time he could have easily gotten to 120!
Here is his list...
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY CHURCH
1. I love that this church wants the Scriptures preached to them. Some don't get it and some wrestle with stuff and others are rejoicing in the sovereign grace preaching.
2. I love the fact that many of our people hold to great theology without even knowing what the theological terms are.
3. I love how several people just think that all Christians hold to the doctrines of grace because that is all they have ever been taught here and it is such basic Christianity to them.
4. I love that people get angry at me for being sensitive to the clock. They do not care about what time they get out of church and "pastor you shouldn't care about the time!!"
5. I love our two hour (almost) services.
6. I love that the dress code for Church is finally tuning down a little and people without finery will no longer stand out.
7. I love that this church has made a conscious commitment never to move out of crime ridden, gang infested, economically depressed, socially needy ... Rexdale and that if the Lord should ever bless us with great numerical growth we have already decided to send people out to be a new church.
8. I love that this church is not competing with any other church in our area.
9. I love that we can share our building with other Christian groups and churches to help them in their work. Churches without baptistries and buildings and groups just trying to influence the community for Christ find a welcome here for the common cause of the Gospel.
10. I love the multi-culturalness of our church - over 27 nations last year at the parade of nations at our missions conference.
11. I love the fact that sinners are welcome here - regardless of their sins. We have homosexuals, single parents, lawbreakers, alcoholics, wife beaters, drug dealers, porn addicts ... some saved from their life of sin and some not yet. This church shows no reticence in welcoming everyone because the people know that such were some of them (I Corinthians 6:9-11).
12. I love the fact that we have Masters degree people and illiterate people worshipping together, serving on boards and committees together, working together, and not caring about such differences.
13. I love that this church has a heart for the disenfranchised, the forgotten, the abused, the neglected, people who make up such a large part of our community, and that this heart is translated into real, concrete action for our community.
14. I love that this church does not equate biblical corporate worship with dead, lifeless worship. Most of them have come from very demonstrative charismatic churches but they seem to have found the balance between that extreme and the deadness of the other extreme.
15. I love that this church knows that the pastorate is not just preaching one day a week and that I am prayed for daily for work that they know is very challenging.
16. I love that this church has kept me on for 14 years despite how well they know me.
17. I love that the leadership of this church does not expect me to do what I am obviously not gifted to do and that they do expect me to do what the Scriptures say a pastor must do.
18. I love these people.
19. I love how there is no generation gap in our church.
20. I love how there is so much visitation, telephoning, letter writing, to those who need such things. They don't wait for the pastor to do it all.
Now that is a great list!
Submissions are still being accepted... send your email to the[dot]kerux[at]gmail[dot]com and I will continue to post the best ones.
