One body acting as many

Last year our church did a Disciple Now weekend for our youth. It was a blast, and the students really had a great time. Our youth group is pretty small, with only about 6-10 regulars, but we had almost 20 for D-Now last year. When we started planning for the weekend this year, we thought it might be fun to team up with some of the other small churches like ours in our area, churches that didn't have big youth groups. The more we brainstormed, the more excited we got. We met with a couple of youth leaders and they were on board and thought their students would be excited. We continued to plan and prepare for the weekend and thought we might have 100 or more students come. We were super excited!

As we got closer to the date, our projected numbers dwindled drastically and our host homes started backing out. After talking to the other leaders, it turned out that parents were anxious about their kids attending, for various reasons. I was shocked... What makes me so sad about this whole situation (and the whole reason I write this) is that we are the church of Christ, the body of Christ. We are not the bodies, we are one. It made me realize how rarely, if ever, I hear of churches doing something together. Isn't that missing a huge part of what we are about? Aren't we all in this together, fighting for the same thing, that everyone would know the love of Christ. How sad is it that we feel we can't trust our other brothers and sisters in Christ. Or maybe the whole problem is that people don't see their church family extending beyond the walls of their own building. I wonder if God doesn't sometimes see his church as a body with all the parts doing their own thing. What would happen if we all came together, if instead of competing with the church down the street for someone's membership, or trying to out do each other with events, media, or buildings, what if we acted like one body. I think it could be HUGE.

Disciple Now is this weekend and right now we have 3 definite host homes and about 35 definite students. Austin and I are super excited about it, and know that it will be an awesome weekend. We met with some other people from our church Sunday to pray about the weekend, and it was a really encouraging experience. We are trusting that it will all come together and will work for the good.