What are we good at?
It’s a strangely hard question to answer out loud, isn’t it?
Ask most of us what we’re bad at and we’ll give you a list. Ask what we’re good at and we go quiet, or we deflect, or we change the subject. Naming a strength can feel like boasting, so we don’t. Especially for Australians!
But this Sunday, at our Last Breakfast, we’re going to try anyway.
We’re continuing our series writing The Letter to the Church in Box Hill, and we’ve reached the letter to the church in Pergamum. It’s a church living at a hard address (Christ calls it the place “where Satan has his throne”), and yet the first thing he says to them is not a criticism. It’s a commendation. He tells them what they are getting right. “I know where you live… yet you remain true to my name.”
That’s a pattern worth noticing. Before the difficult word, the positive word. Before what’s lacking, what’s good. Christ names the strength first.
So this week we’re asking it of ourselves, and of each other. What has God actually made us good at? Not to boast. But because a gift unnamed is a gift half-received. Because the strength you can’t quite see in yourself is often obvious to the person sitting across the table.
And we’ll ask it of us together, too. What is the church in Box Hill good at? What are we like at our best? Those answers become the next line of the letter we’re writing.
Of course one thing we are definitely good at is putting the food on the table, so come and eat with us! And come and find out what someone else sees in you.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Box Hill Baptist Church 