“To Be a Different Kind of Person, You Need a Different Kind of People….

It’s one of the first problems of getting sober — finding new environments and new friends.

For most addicts, everything in their lives is constructed to support finding and using their drug of choice. Now that they’re trying to get sober, they can’t keep going back to the same places or hanging out with the same friends.

If addicts are going to get sober and stay sober they will have to find new places, new habits and new friends. They won’t be able to maintain their sobriety if they keep the same friends and same habits.

And here’s a news flash — no one can be different.

If you’re going to change your life— or be in a position for Christ to change you—you’ll have to find new places and new friends.

Anyone seeking to follow the call of Christ and become the new person Christ is forming in him or her, will have to find new people who have followed that same call.

And this is why church is important. It’s not the church building, but the people.

The new disciple will need a new family, a new place and new habits.

That’s why we go to church. In order to become a new person, we have to start hanging around new people” (Mike Glenn).

For as long as the Church has existed, people have accused it of being full of hypocrites. That’s probably true. But hypocrites don’t just go to church on Sunday. They’re everywhere.

The misnomer is that Church is for perfect people who have it all together. But if you’re perfect, you should probably stay home or work on your golf game. The whole point of Church is that we’re not perfect or even close. We’re broken people with different talents and gifts to gather to encourage each other, love each other, rebuke each other, repair each other, carry each other’s burdens, be strong for each other . . . it goes on and on.

The beauty of a diversity of gifts and talents is that you can be strong where I am weak, and I can be strong where you are weak. When I exercise my gift, it blesses you. When you exercise your gift, it blesses me. And when we all step up and fulfill our purpose and calling, we are much stronger together than we ever could be apart.

I’ve never liked the term business meeting for a church. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but the local church is not a business with a bottom line of dollars and cents. The church is a family, broken and dysfunctional at times but still held together by one faith and one Lord.

We are still the body of Christ. We are united with Jesus as the head, and we serve as the hands and feet of Jesus to love an serve where we live, work, and play.