The Doors of God's Transforming Love

God’s Love for Us

Some of us have heard this statement all our lives and have never questioned it.  Others find it an insipid phrase void of real meaning.  Still others have never encountered this notion.  Come, see what the Bible and the church say about God, love, and you. We want to create a School of Love.

Our Love for God

We are reminded that we aren’t God, that (as one writer put it) “there is More.” We name this in weekly worship, in small groups, in learning how to pray and commune with God, in sharing our resources for the community good.

God’s Love in Community

Every person in our congregation – young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, Cardinal, Wildcat – has a voice and a vote that counts equally in the community. We are called by God to embody Love to each other in acts of forgiveness, healing, generosity, joy.

God’s Love Beyond Community

How can we embody God’s Love to those not in our community of faith? How can we serve, give, share, empower, bless, heal, restore in a spirit of humility and love? These questions prompt initiatives of mercy, understanding, faith-sharing, solidarity with others.

God’s Love as Justice

For far too long churches (especially Baptist churches!) divorced faith and a passion for justice.  We’ve misunderstood “separation of church and state” to mean we shouldn’t mix politics and religion.  To the contrary, while we are adamant about separating faith and partisan political activity, we are seeing that you can’t love Jesus and let injustice to Jesus’ followers go unchallenged. We are called to stand alongside the voiceless and powerless.

To say that God’s Transforming Love is the Heart of It All is a life-long experience that results in more centered, Christ-like people who are liberated from all things in order to be fully the children of God. And so we continue examine:

• Are lives being transformed by God’s Love – our own and others?
• Are we faithfully bearing the Love in ways that have the power to transform hate into hope, fear into courage, division into healing?
• Would our community be different if we were to stop doing our work of Love?
• Are all other pieces of Highland – our buildings, budgets, programs, place in the city – being used in the service of celebrating God’s Transforming Love as the Heart of it all?

That Highland grows numerically and financially stronger year by year is affirming and assuring.  However, these statistics pale in comparison to the urgent call to step forward as agents of God’s healing Love, to sacrifice in the name of Love, to believe that Love is stronger than hate, to understand at ever deeper levels what the writer of 1 John meant in “those who do not love do not know God.”

Nothing else matters, really.  Nothing else has its potency, its permanence, it broad perspective by which to interpret, inspire, and integrate all that surrounds us in these days.  Ultimately, as the apostle Paul wrote, “Love never fails.”

Highland is called to make God’s Transforming Love the center pole around which we orient our future. It is the core of Christ’s gospel and the heart of all that makes faith alive and vital.  It is, in Jesus’ words, “the pearl of great price.”

For information on Highland’s call to embody God’s Transforming Love, contact Joe Phelps.