Thanks Elizabeth,

 You brought up the key to our church's involvement in the Lord's kingdom. There isn't a true muddled middle other than in the minds of humans. God;s word (the Bible) is clear on what should happen.

 One problem is people read the Bible in bits and pieces. When you do that, you get a false impression of what God is saying because of context of situation and time. When you read the Bible as a complete story  leading up to Jesus and being fulfilled by Jesus then the Word become"s obvious. Jesus tried to simplify God's model for the church(I Am the Fulfillment of the law) and the followers ran with it. How we got here as a church I 'm really not totally sure.  Thanks

Ken

Hi Ken,

I think you're right - the polorized sides and the muddle in the middle is because of human frailties and messing things up - not reading the Bible as a whole or really understanding how we need to live.  But the key to getting out of the mess we have put ourselves into (however we actually got here) is to make sure we are reading God's Word and in the conversations we have with each other about God's Word and living that Word out in our lives.  The conversations need to refocus us to the right places so we quite putting ourselves on different sides and start to really communicate and follow Christ together.  I really hope that here we can have these types of conversations - that strengthen the church for the ministry God has called us to.