Wow! Today was amazing! The place was slammin’! The music was great. The video we used was insanely funny. But we talked about the church. We talked about the important of the church being original (That is, we are going to be different than any other church because of who we are, where we are, and what period in history we’re in) and then we talked about how we need to be linked to our origins. The first of which was love. Love is supposed to be our calling card as Christians. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was actually a group of people that were so loving that people knew they followed Jesus just based on that. It’s quite a concept!

But I believe that every church needs to be both original and linked to their origins and that’s what we are trying to be.

Too often, I hear people talking about how “_____________” churches need to look alike, sound alike, and smell alike. I don’t buy that at all. We get this McDonald’s philosophy about how if people show up to our church they should get the same thing as if they were in a “__________” church in another part of the country. That might sound great on paper, but it doesn’t work in the real world. My church should NEVER be like aother church in another part of the country! That’s why copying models doesn’t work. We have to do the hard work of creating an original ethos and understanding our community.

The origins part is that every church, everywhere should have common elements like love and grace. The stuff that links us with the first followers of Jesus. Too many times people are trying to kill our originality and clone us. Don’t allow it! We don’t need a clone of another church. We need the original of yours!