Some things are universal, even in the church.

"After the message we congregated like our own church in the States does after church, simply talking & sharing with each other. I guess somethings are common in church life all across the world."

A year ago today I returned from a 9 day mission trip to Honduras. Earlier this week I re-read the journal I kept during the trip. I read the statement above and it reminded me of how universal some things are, especially when it comes to matters of faith. In the instance referenced above, I preached in a "church" under three beautiful mango trees in southeast Honduras. The lady who's property the church met on, was constantly running dogs out of the "service." It was hot and the sweat was rolling. But once the service was over, everyone just stood around and talked and had a good time. We talked about putting together a community game between us (the U.S.) and the locals (Honduras). We talked about the work we were doing on the house and VBS. We shared and they shared. While talking about basketball, I even playfully jumped completely over a standing kid who had scored a goal on me in soccer the day before. We truly had a great time of fellowship.

What we found out that day in Honduras was that worship of God, fellowship and many other things are universal in the church. The diversity and uniqueness of each church (and individual believers) adds to the flavor and vitality of the church. If God wanted us to all be the same, act the same and worship the same then He would have created us as robots and never given us freewill. Instead we should embrace the differences among churches and ourselves when it comes to the uniqueness and similarities that we find. We should always be willing to embrace different ways of doing things because we never know if we will like it until we do. The things that should remain the same are the teaching of God's truths from His Word and the worship of God. As long as we have those two parts down pat, then church can be universal and can be diverse all at the same time.

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