The New Testament commends the phrase one another many times. We are urged: Come on people now, smile on your brother…everybody get together; try to love one another right now…Oh wait; that is The Youngbloods Vietnam-era song all the baby boomers will remember!
But the Youngbloods weren’t far off: our scriptures urge us to:
Bear one another’s burdens…encourage another…forgive one another…be at peace with one another…accept one another…be kind and tenderhearted to one another…seek the good of one another…
Paul sums this all up in the famous passage in 1 Cor 13:
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Wow you might say—those are hard things to do! But Paul is not commanding us to do these things. He is teaching that this is what LOVE does…our role is interact with God such that we receive so much love from him that his kind of love—the kind Paul describes—naturally and easily overflows from us to one another…
Clearly Holy Trinity Church would be living into our vision well to have a revival of that kind of love. But in our over-packed, long-commute lives, how are we to do this? Especially when you consider that regular attendees of Holy Trinity Church come from all over Orange County, parts of LA County, Riverside County and North san Diego County? How can we connect when we live so far apart and weeknight commutes are so impossible?
We’ve tried to create the relational part of our lives with southern California life in mind:
- Conversations
- Monthly Spiritual Formation Gatherings
- Quarterly Retreat Days (diversity – from retreats at art museums (The Getty Center & Villa) to retreat centers around Southern California
- Quarterly New Comer’s dinners – introduce vision & values; meet new people
- “Social Dinners @ The Hunters”
- Small Groups” (women, group spiritual direction, young marrieds’ home group)
- Men’s & Women’s Reading Groups
- Periodic Home Group Bible Study
We would love to connect with you…give one of these a shot…