What is home? A place where you live in? A place where your family is? A place where you feel loved or safe? What is home?

What is home to you?

What do we mean when we say “Welcome Home” in FCC.

I can’t speak for the church or everyone, but I think “Welcome Home” also means “Welcome to our family” – It’s an invitation join the church, to join our home and to join our FCC family.

What is family?

Is family bounded by our bloodline?

Or the fact that we all lived in and belonged to the very same parent God who love us

To be in a family is a beautiful thing, it means we are and we will not be alone. It means that we always have someone or a group of people looking out for our interests. It means that we have a place to belong and yadda and yadda

For me I know that no matter what happens in my life, I’ve always know that FCC is a safe place to find refuge and that I’ve always have the church folks and my cell group YOUnique I can turn to and depend on.

But being in a family, it also comes with hard work, effort and spending of time to make it work, to fit in.

Commitment

In a family, there has to be commitment

Commitment to the church and also towards one another

Committing to the new church means that we do just show up once a year or only for major events. It means staying and coming often to grow together as a family and as a church. The church is ever-changing and growing only because the members are constantly changing and growing themselves. Unless we stay rooted and go through the changes with the church, with the people, we will find ourselves out of place and out of touch with the church.

For those who are new with us here or those who seldom comes to FCC, I urge you to stay longer with us in this church. Because to understand the church, it takes more than a visit or two. Finding the right church is like find the right date. On the first few dates, we learn and find out some things about the date. How he likes, how he behaves, a brief idea of how his character and personality is like and some of his likes and dislikes. But to really know a person, to really know a church, it will take weeks; it will take months, to know different facets and the real character and personality of the church than what it claims to be.

Committing to one another means spending to commune, to get to know each other and to be there for one another when each other is in need.

Hanging out after service to catch up with people and to get to know new friends, joining a cell group and asking each other out for dinners or drinks.

It means we don’t simply, disappear out of the blue and leave the rest of the family worrying and wondering. It means that we consider others when we make certain decisions.

To have commitment, it also means staying even when things get tough, even when problems arise.

Contribution

I’ve always admired one of worship leader Wai Ling because she has such a wonderful spirit of giving. She isn’t the best in her technical abilities – singing and leading a band wise. But every time she’s on stage, you know that God’s presence is always always with her because she gave all that she have. She isn’t the best but she gave all that she has to the Lord and contributed to this family, this church. When people say that there are not enough female worship leaders, female representation in the worship team and on stage, Wai Ling rise up and took up the roles.

In a family, there has to be contribution.

When we see a problem in the family, we can’t just sit there, complain and expect someone to fix it. We’ve got to stand up and do something about it, contributing and even it means sacrificing to build this family, this home

Often I’ve heard people feedback that there isn’t enough “straight people”, there is not enough spiritual nourishment from the pulpit, the church is not friendly to foreigners and yada yada. My question is you noticed the problems, what are you doing about it? It is easy to just talk about it, but the problem will remain a problem till someone do something about it and why not you, since you’re part of the family too

Communication

As a family, we got to communicate

Especially when it comes to unhappiness, all the more we got to communicate

If we keep the unhappiness, it will grow and sprout into something ugly, the problem will snowball itself.

But when we do so, we got to do it in a loving way.

Humility

In a family, we all bring something to the table – Our own perspectives and our own inputs.

In FCC, our church belongs to any one particular denomination. We all come from different church backgrounds – Methodist, Catholic, Charismatic, Angelical, Seventh Day Adventist and the list goes on. Some of us are more conservative and some of us are more liberal.

Because we are so different, we get to learn from each other’s difference and it’s a beautiful thing.

But at the same time, because we are so different, it creates possibilities for conflicts and disagreements to arise. That is not necessary a bad thing. Because it’s through disagreements and conflicts, we start to understand each other better.

As a family, we got to have humility for this family stays strong and to last.

In FCC we agree to disagree. But when we disagree with one another, we got to do it with humility and also with love.

We got to have the humility to listen, to understand the other person’s perspective. We got to accept the possibility that we might be wrong. If not we’ll never grow, we’ll never to live in harmony as a family.

When we disagree with one another, we got to do it with love. When we love someone, it means we respect the person; we’re gentle and polite with bringing across our perspectives.

Often I feel that our church mailing list is like a battlefield. The email exchanges often can be fiery and intimidating. It’s great that people are fervent about their perspective and want to share with the church, which is great because we will learn from each other’s perspective. But we must always remember to consider what other may feel or think in we say and write.

If we truly love someone, we got to care for their feelings; we got to phrase our words better. And it isn’t hard to acknowledge someone’s good intention.

For example, if a person in church wants to create a set of Jesus toys figurines with a big wide smile and two thumbs up, to make Jesus more fun and accessible to kids and youths. I’m sure there will be people who will get upset and disagree with it. But it won’t be hard to acknowledge his good intention of wanting to make Jesus more fun and accessible to people and to disagree with him lovingly and politely using tactful words

What’s the point of getting our points across with the expense of hurting someone else’s feelings and spoiling relationships?

Conclusion

It’s not just about what the church, the home, the family can bring to us, can benefit us but how we can value add to the family too.