Brotherhood

Its been a fair whie since I last wrote a blog, life has been getting in the way of me pouring the inner workings of my mind out onto webspace, Its not been through a lack of things to say, but rather more a case of I have two small children and getting at the computer for long enough to type anything even remotely coherent is next to impossible. Yet here I am in this rare moment of peace rambling on again.

I say that life has been hectic, yet recently we have managed to find a new TV seres to watch on DVD, since we dont have normal TV in our house, we have to get everything on DVD, normally a long time after everyone else has seen and forgotten something Menna and I start raving about how great something is. Now you may have noticed that a number of my blog are about things I have seen on DVD, movies or TV series and the like, and that is simply because it is a passion of mine, I love movies. ANd for me I find God uses that to speak to me,

So recently we had run out of things to watch and started looking to rent a movie from our local Blockbuster, when Menna stumbled across a trailer for a TV series called Sons Of Anarchy. The trailer looked pretty good so we decided to treat ourselves and bought the series off of the internet. And boy oh boy were we glad we did, two weeks later we bought the second season on DVD because we just HAD to.

For those who have not seen it, it based around an Outlaw Motorcycle club in the fictional town of Charming, California, I found this synopsis on another website that covers the basics

"Sons of Anarchy" is an adrenalized drama with darkly comedic undertones about a notorious outlaw motorcycle club intent on protecting their sheltered small town against encroaching drug dealers, corporate developers and overzealous law officers. The club is equally determined to protect their ruthless and illegally thriving arms business. Charlie Hunnam stars as Jackson 'Jax' Teller, a man whose love for the brotherhood is tested by his growing apprehension for its lawlessness. Katey Sagal stars as Gemma Teller Morrow, Jax's force-of-nature mother, who along with Ron Perlman as Clarance 'Clay' Morrow, Jax's stepfather and MC president, have their own darker vision for the club"

While I do not wish to spoil it for anyone, at one point in the show a member of the club fails to show up for a meeting at the clubhouse and so the main character Jax go looking for him, drive to his house to see whats going on.

It got me thinking about my experiences with Church. The series is about a brotherhood, and looking out for each other no matter what. During one of the interviews with the shows creator Kurt Sutter said that for the MC's if they get a call telling them to strap on a gun and go help, theres no excuses, no gettong out of it, you strap on a gun and go help out your brother.

Those two things combined, the depiction of Jax heading out looking for a member of his club when they dont turn up along with the interview with Kurt Sutter, really got me thinking about how that should really speak of how we are in the church.

Now dont get me wrong, I am not saying that I condone or encourage the church or christians to start doing the things the Sons do in the series, illegal activities and so on are not the way fporward for the church and that is not what I am saying. However the unity and the brotherhood that is displayed in the series, the fierce loyalty of the members to the club, and each other most of the time, these are the things that surely the church should be displaying to each other.

When was the last time you called someone that you didnt see in church sunday to make sure everything is ok? In this age of text messaging and facebook, its so easy to paper over the issues in our lives in a way that you feel that you have done your bit by sending a text and getting a flat yeah I'm fine reply.

Motorcycle clubs wear colours, a back patch that is earned and respected, they often have different charters to represent where they are from, bt the top rocker and logo are the same and it means something. when was the last time you were so fierce about your christianity that people came up and asked you whats so different about you? Are you proud to wear the colours of Christ?

Are you willing and ready to act upon the words of Christ John 15:13 do you love your fellowship enough to give it all up?


John 17 talks of us having unity with each other as Christ had unity with the Father, John the baptist talked of Christ increasing as he decreased, Ephesians speaks of unity as bringing about the fulness of God.

Are we not one body, are we not one family, should we not fight for each other?

Yet its the one thing that we lack, the fall down point of our lives, we have too much of a 'them and us attitude' and the scary thing is that it is not limited to a few, but its a curse that effects the many, we try to cover it over with 'church in the city/churches together' meetings or events, but when the rubber meets the road (sticking to the motorcyle theme) How many of your church would go to the local apostolic/baptist/presberteryn/add a demonination here when they were putting on an event to support them. How many of our churches would cancel their normal meeting on a sunday for the change to join with the other churches in your area for a corporate worship time?

Sadly the answer is few, there are some exceptions to the rule, but generally we are to interested in our own little services, to caught up in the way that we do things, the 'we cant change this is the way its always been done' or the back biting, name calling, cant trust them they are XYZ and they do it this way, so they cant be saved.

And then we wonder why we dont see revival, why moves of God seep away, how the enemy gets into our churches breaking up marriages and families. How the occult takes a foothold in our towns?

Is it really any surprise when the only authority to stop it s infighting and concentrated on themselves or pulling down those we should be supporting and building up.

We wont see these things we desire until we adopt an attitude of brotherhood, not just in your church building but for all the churches in our areas. Our denominations should be like the charters of a MC, it shouldnt matter if you worship with hymns or to contemporary music, or if your church building says evangelical or baptist etc. For the Sons of Anarchy, the thing that counts is that its says Sons of Anarchy on the back patch and for us as christians all that should matter is the Cross, Jesus paid much to high a price for us to pick and choose who should come. Much to high a price for us to fight each other, we should back our brothers

Body of Christ Casting Crowns