It’s messy, but
beautiful.
From the top down
and the bottom up, a2 Church is filled with messy, broken beautiful people!
The people who
attend a2 are sinners. Not just the neat little respectable sins we talk about
in polite conversation. I mean old-school, hard-knocks, in-all-caps SINNERS. We’re
talking addicts, drunks, gossipers, adulterers, people who struggle with sexual
purity, people who have a sexually promiscuous past, people who battle with
porn, people who lie, cheat, cuss, sometimes act selfish, sometimes are
jealous, and sometimes are even divisive! (And
that’s just the leadership team… I’m
just kidding… Sort of…)
a2 Church is a
messy church! It’s filled with messy, broken people, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!
The church Jesus came to launch was
never designed to encourage, comfort, entertain, inspire and challenge
exclusively “churched,” basically moral, incredibly “neat”, “we-have-it-all-together”
people!
It was never meant to be a monument,
social club or museum for the display of perfect people! It was meant to be
REAL! it was meant to be a hell-shattering, earth-moving, life-changing,
culture-shaping movement that would reach people who are broken,
messed-up, jacked-up and share a common problem: distance from God and
confusion about God.
The church was
meant to be a hospital where hurting, broken, and messed up people could move
towards wholeness! (See Luke 15; Matthew 9:10-13)
I love the way John
Weirick of NewSpring Church says it:
“Church isn’t a place for perfection, but a place for progress.
“The Church can’t be concerned with maintaining an image of
perfection if we want to obey Jesus. Jesus has never been afraid to embrace the
controversy of associating with the wrong crowd. (See Luke 5:29-32; 15:1-3)
“The Church was created for imperfect people. It
exists to help imperfect people meet Jesus and follow Him step
by step. Our imperfections are not projects to fix, but opportunities to see a miracle. Each of
us has a story about how Jesus met us in
our mess and has been changing us from the inside out.”[1]
Wow! Wow! Wow! I love that!
This doesn’t mean
we have to remain stuck in this orbit of regret, failure, sin, habits, hurts,
hang-ups and brokenness for the rest of our lives! God loves us just the way we are, but He refuses to leave us there!
His agenda is to make us more and more like Jesus! (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians
5:17; 11:1; Ephesians 4:22-24; Philippians 3:13-14)
So, if you’re
looking for a perfect or “safe” church, sorry. a2 Church is not it! But if you’re
looking for a church where REAL PEOPLE
who struggle with REAL PROBLEMS are learning to TRUST JESUS to change us from the
inside out, WELCOME HOME!
If you struggle
with disappointment, regret, guilt and shame… If you ever feel the gap between who you could be, who you should be and who you really are..
If you are broken, messed-up, jacked-up, and prone to failure… If you are
flawed and glaringly imperfect… If you sometimes drift into self-righteousness
and pride… Welcome home! a2 Church is
the place for you!
a2 Church is a “come
as you are,” “no perfect people allowed” kind of community!
So COME!
Come as you are with your doubts and questions!
Come as you are with your fears and insecurities!
Come as you are with your agnosticism or atheism!
Come as you are with your broken heart and messy life!
Come as you are with your relational pain and problems!
Comes as you are with your addictions, habits, hurts, and
hang-ups!
Comes as you are with the divorce that has left you gasping
for air!
Come as you are with your financial meltdowns or bankruptcy!
Come as you are with your skin color, social status and
identity issues!
Come as you are with your sins, past, struggles, mistakes,
imperfections and idiosyncrasies!
It doesn’t matter whether you’re loaded or broke! It doesn’t
matter if you’re white, black, brown, red or albino! It doesn’t matter whether
you’ve got a lot of hair, no hair, purple hair or patches of hair! It doesn’t matter whether you wear nice
clothes or lousy clothes (just as long as you wear clothes)…
Come as you are!!!
Why? Because at a2 Church, we’re just crazy
enough to believe that God loves and accepts us just the way we are, but loves
us so much that He refuses to leave us the way He found us! This is why I love a2 Church!
[1] John Weirick, NewSpring Church Exposed,
https://newspring.cc/articles/newspring-church-exposed?utm_content=buffer31147&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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