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The church of my childhood was a divine blessing. She carried the torch of God’s good news and passed it on to me. I hold my church of Christ forbears in great esteem.
Did they make mistakes? Yes.
Did they carry more baggage than I needed for my journey of faith? Usually.
But they followed the light they had with conviction and that light lives on in we who remain.
The emerging church model that I follow, therefore, contains no call to trash the past. But it does not bid me to live there either. I look behind me with enormous gratitude, a gratitude that fuels my progress forward--emerging from blessing to greater blessing.
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My eyes of faith see a future that only takes me and my fellow Christians closer to heaven. This means things will only get better for God’s people, even if they must get worse before they get better.
As we emerge together into higher callings of Christian service and deeper depths of adoration for God and love for each other, let us not lose sight of the legacy we received and the light that was passed to us. Never shake off your gratitude for those who passed that legacy to us. It’s not a legacy of strategy or strife, although we must learn to apply some strategies and endure some strife to carry the torch forward.
The torch we carry this side of heaven is a message of eternal salvation. If that is not our legacy, then we are not a church.
Joel Mark Solliday, B.A., M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Northern Light Church of Christ in Minnesota. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary and has worked at Pepperdine and ACU. His wife Katie is a junior high school teacher.
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