“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.”
2 Thessalonians‬ ‭1‬:‭2-4‬ ESV

For so many people it seems that church is a competition. We ask ourselves how we can draw more people than that other church down the street or how we can keep people from going to that big church across town. Pastors get together and talk numbers and averages and people judge the fruitfulness of a congregation by the size of its budget.

But read through all of Paul’s greetings to churches and you see what he is concerned about and congratulates them on: love, faithfulness and steadfastness in hard times. He doesn’t reference an attendance report or a volunteer list for the nursery. He simply speaks of their heart and faithfulness. Why?

Because when a church concentrates on being faithful, on adhering to the Word of truth and the Good News of the Gospel, then growth and volunteerism and good ministry and sound teaching will all come as a part of that faithfulness. By encouraging the basic parts of the faith, Paul points out what is important. Yes, the other churches have heard about what you are doing, and about your faithfulness and love, and they aren’t threatened by it. Instead, they are spurred on to greater love than they had shown before.

The faithful churches of Christ are co-laborers, not competitors. There shouldn’t be a hint of jealousy or enmity between churches. What kind of a message does that give to unbelievers when they see infighting, bickering and bad talking about each other? It is one thing if a church has bad doctrine, but it is an entirely different issue if they are just being successful in ministry.

So, all of the bride of Christ, the Church universal, is one. She labors as one. She rejoices and weeps as one. There will not be divisions in heaven based on church building size, pastor salary or number of programs. There will not be a section for each denomination or even each cultural group. There will simply be the bride celebrating the Bridegroom. The Church will worship and serve her Savior. They will be together in glory.

So, where is our perspective today? We work and serve and strive to see souls brought to Christ. We celebrate faithfulness, love and steadfastness. We stand together, we strive for truth and authenticity to the Gospel message. We only keep tabs insomuch as it spurs us on to better things as we celebrate the work being done by our sister churches who stand faithful to our Master, Jesus.

If we are to GoLove, our concern must be for faithfulness first. If we serve and share and witness and someone winds up going to a different church building than the one we go to, we still celebrate as long as faithfulness is what follows. Adherence to the truth, love and authority of Christ…that’s what matters.