"Of all ages, nations and races...
Not too long ago someone joined our church and we returned to the liturgy for new members which reminds us that the church of Christ is open to "people of all ages, nations, and races." This simple statement recalls Paul's admonition that in Christ there is "neither male nor female, free nor slave, Jew nor Greek." We know (or should know) that these circumstances of birth matter not in the Kingdom. The trouble is, that in our daily lives churches do a rather poor job living out this part of our liturgy. Unfortunately, we segregate ourselves far too often in the church, walling off ourselves from others. This essentially makes the church all about me and people just like me. A couple of months ago I read a blog post on a United Methodist outlet by a college student who was looking forward to being a delegate to our General Conference held last month. In this post he argued passionately that the future of the church was its youth. Everything from wors