Churches Working Together

Last night our worship team was fooling around before practice and ran through the U2 classic "One". The most popular story is that it was written when the band was going through a rough patch and they wrote this song which brought renewed focus to their tour and relationships. (Or something like that) However, the background has always seemed a bit ambiguous and some have even claimed that the band has intentionally fueled that ambiguity to help the song gain wider appeal. So here's my theory.

A pastor was reflecting on the relationship his church had with the other churches in the community and ended up writing this song. The band happened to run across the lyrics and the rest is history. Okay, so that really didn't happen but if you read the lyrics and are familiar with a lot of inter-church relationships you could easily be convinced that it did.

I find this part of my job as pastor to be the most discouraging. That doesn't mean that we don't do a lot of great things together but it just bothers me when it is so easy for sin to pop up in a place where you should least expect it. The two big culprits in my book are pride and gossip.

I pray that I will always be humble and honest when I work with other churches in our community. We seriously need to "carry each other" rather than "hurt each other."