“Our Heritage”
Categories: Church of Christ Bulletin Articles, uncategorized
From today’s Montana Street bulletin, comes the following article by brother Lewis G. Hale, preacher for the Southwest congregation in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, regarding “our heritage“:
It is becoming more and more common to hear many of our brethren speak about “our heritage.” They leave the impression that the reason we do certain things, is because that is the we have done them in the past — that is “our heritage.”
We are definitely of the opinion that roots are important. But, it all depends on “where” those roots are.
Religiously, my roots are not in the early 1800’s. My roots are in the first century. I am committed to a New Testament Christian. I claim to be a member of the same church of which Peter, Paul, James and John were members.
If one hears the same message people heard on Pentecost, as found in Acts 2, believe what they believed, do what they did to be saved, will the Lord not add them to the same church to which He added them? If not, why not?
One of the blunders we have made in our teaching and preaching, is telling people what we do without telling them “why” we do it. After all, is it any great sin to do something different from what our grandparents did? I think not. But it is a great sin to do things different from what God tells us to do.
There is no doubt that we have many members of the church who are members because their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were members. “If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me!” Maybe it was not actually good enough for them.
Let’s make sure that we do things for the right reasons. We can know the will of God as it is clearly revealed in the Bible (Ephesians 5:15-17; cf. Ephesians 3:1-4). We must do the will of God, even if our forebears did it (Matthew 7:21).