Church is lots of things.  In one aspect it’s an army, in another sense a hospital, in yet another a school.  But above all, church is family.

Family is a wonderful thing, and none of us would ever want to lose it.  Family is the place of closest trust and relationship.  But the places of closest trust are also the places of deepest hurt.

That’s why we need to be so watchful about the health of the family of God.  Church is God’s family.  It should be the place of closest relationship, but when things go wrong people get hurt.  And badly.

Nothing in God’s economy ever goes to waste.

And if relationships are at the heart of that economy, then it is God’s heart to use the relationships he has given us for his purposes.

It is a tragedy when relationship breakdown occurs among Christians.  That applies in particular to marriages but also in a more general sense.  We can make light of church divisions and splits, but they must break God’s heart.

We live in a culture obsessed with not causing offence.  Sensitivity training has become big business.

This leaves us Christians with a problem.  Jesus described the gospel as a skandalon - something which would offend people.

It’s a good thing to be sensitive to people, and it’s certainly a good thing to respect each person as a unique creation of God.  And we have a mandate to offer the unconditional love of Christ to everyone we meet.  But while we need to be caring and respectful for people, we do not need to respect everything they believe, say or stand for.  Dietrich Bonhoffer was not sensitive to Hitler, even though it cost him his life.

Jesus talked about sowing seed.  The seed fell all over the place and a lot of it was lost - at least three quarters of it if you take the parable literally.  He could have looked at the results and felt discouraged.  But instead he chose to look at the small portion of the seed that actually produced fruit, and that is what he focussed upon.

This week we toured Winchester College, the oldest private school in England, founded in 1394.  What stood out to us was the power of tradition.  In many ways, the school has changed beyond recognition, but some practices have remained virtually unchanged from what you would have seen five or six centuries ago had you been touring the college then.  Even the dining hall was original.

And that is the secret of the school’s success.  It is built on foundations that have stood the test of time.  Outward features have changed to suit the times but the things that matter have not.

Why is it that sometimes we can get things so backward in church?