Skip to content

I Stand In The Gap

Standing in Prayer, Serving The World

Menu
  • Welcome
  • About Us
    • Purpose
    • Who We Are
    • What We Believe
  • Reflections
    • Kathy’s Reflections
    • Steve’s Reflections
  • Prayer Alerts
  • Prayer Updates
  • Request Prayer
    • Prayer List
  • Resources
    • Prayer Closet
    • The Gospel
    • References
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
    • Subscribe to Our Mailing List
    • Support Steve and Kathy
  • Cookie Policy (EU)
Menu

Church CARE

Posted on 10/31/1401/03/23 by Steve

CAREIf you have read our Ministry Update, you know that we have been worshiping with Harvest Church in Winterville, GA. Pastor Curtis Parker has been focusing the past few weeks on the vision of the church, embodied in the acronym CARE – Compassion, Awareness, Responsibility, Engage. This is the focus for Harvest Church to the world. As I thought about this, I was given another focus – the focus of the Church (as a whole, not just Harvest Church) to the its members. This is not conclusive or meant to be exclusive – in fact, I looking for a graphic to go with this post, I found another great use of the CARE acronym. So what do I see as Church CARE?

C – Challenging

I believe the Church should challenge its members. We are not Christians to be entertained or comforted, we are Christ followers to be challenged to be more like Jesus. I believe the meat of Paul’s letters and the letters in Revelation are challenges to the readers. We should be no less challenged in our worship and teaching moments together.

A – Accountable

God has really been getting my attention about this one! In the span of a couple of weeks, I had one of my spiritual mentors remind me to be accountable, several devotions and emails that covered the topic, and the realization that when we move, I will be without an accountability group for the first time in several years – at least until I find another one! I believe this is one area that the Church fails on too often – especially for Church leaders. It is too easy in today’s world to be a “lone ranger” in life – in work, in home, in church. The Bible calls us to meet together, to work together, and we need each other for the gifts that God provides each one of us. I definitely don’t have all the answers and pray that I stay wise enough to realize that I need the counsel of other godly men (and women) in my life.

R – Relationship

This goes hand in hand with Accountable. You need relationships. God saw that is was not good for Adam to be alone. We all need relationships. And relationship is what God is after, not religion. The Church must be more than just strangers gathering together for a few moments of “worship”, we must be brothers and sisters united in love and service to our God and neighbors.

E – Encouragement

The world does much to destroy us. The Church should and must be a place of encouragement. As we are challenged to live and service and held accountable when in relationship with brothers and sisters, we receive the encouragement to face life. We need Jesus but we also need to see “Jesus with skin on” and this is the encouragement we get from being part of Church at its best.

Again these are just some thoughts. They’ll be fleshed out some more, I’m sure. I’d welcome your thoughts.

Be well,
Steve

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Reflections

  • 10/18/22   The Fields Are White For Harvest
  • 12/24/21   Christmas
  • 12/20/21   Advent: Love

Recent Prayer Alerts

  • 02/14/23   Prayer Alert: Earthquake in Turkey and Syria; Relief Information
  • 09/09/22   A Prayer Upon the Death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Recent Prayer Updates

  • 02/06/23   January Prayer Update: Truth in Love
  • 02/06/23   December Prayer Update: Review: Looking Back to Lean Forward
  • 12/22/22   November Prayer Update: Expectancy and Anticipation
  • 11/17/22   October Prayer Update: Discipleship
The Gospel
Facebook
Support Steve and Kathy
Subscribe to Our Mailing List

Translate

References & Copyrights | Send Prayer Request
Any material may be copied & distributed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice and our World Wide Web URL https://istandinthegap.org
Privacy Policy
© 2023 I Stand In The Gap | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}