Church weekend

J and I went to Caddo church of Christ last night for the last night of a "Campaign for Christ" meeting. The meeting was hosted by a group of preachers-in-training from Bear Valley Institute in Denver. So anyone who knows our church situation can see there was a tad bit of awkwardness in seeing the upstarts who left our church last year amid a series of arguments over God's Word. In short, they made a big ruckus about elder qualifications before leaving the church and taking a good chunk of the membership with them.

These people were our friends, but they're really not now. No big falling-out; we just stopped keeping in touch when they chose to leave our fellowship. I'm not sure if this was sinful. I think we should have tried to come to some sort of understanding, or at least let them know that we thought what they did to the Lord's church was wrong. But I didn't really understand myself that it was wrong until months later. God doesn't want His people to waste their time bickering about His words. That's one of the reasons He did away with the old law; so that His children could unite in the Spirit, and not live by the law anymore. We've got so many things to do, and arguing about the "little stuff" should not be on that list. People win souls by preaching Jesus, not arguing doctrine. It's taken me a while to realize this, but I think a lot of people at our church learned this lesson in the past year, as God gave us the strength to persevere through that tough time of being without a preacher, down to two overworked elders, and about 25 members smaller.