2022_02_09 Insight Post- Rusty Coram

When New Hope was in the early stages of starting (before we even had the name “New Hope”) we had a commitment to be a church that was primarily aiming for people that didn’t have a Christian or church background. Part of the reason stemmed from my experience as a new Christian. Many times, I was treated as “less than” because of my appearance and unfamiliarity with religious terminology and practices. This is similar to the situation that the new Gentile believers faced among the Jewish ones. For the early church this was a watershed moment, and God showed, and used, Peter along with Paul, Barnabas and some others to show that the Gentiles were fully family (Just like the Jews) when they crossed the line of faith.

Over the years we have had some guests from other churches visit New Hope and say that we are not a good church because we don’t urge people to bring a physical bible with them, and we have a casual “come as you are” dress code. The simple reason we do this can be found in our purpose. We know that our non-believing friends and guests probably don’t have a bible, so we put all the passages on the screen and offer a Take Home Sheet so that we are all together and no one feels out of place unnecessarily. Regarding the dress code… well, we would rather aim for comfort and variety than a formal standard that again, could spotlight who is “in” and who isn’t.

It’s human nature to create barriers that show who is in and who is out, but Jesus broke these down so that the great news of God’s love and forgiveness could be shared with everyone.

“¹⁷ And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?” ¹⁸ When the others heard this, they stopped objecting and began praising God. They said, “We can see that God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of repenting of their sins and receiving eternal life.” Acts 11:17–18 (NLT)

Rusty Coram
Senior Pastor