Fikeveni

The church has failed us when it comes to helping us understand what serving God looks like from a practical standpoint. We have been led to believe that when the Bible speaks of worship, it is speaking of ritual, but when we study the root words or original text of what worship, service, and work have in common, we find the same word. Work, ministry, employment, deputyship, service, worship can all mean the exact same thing. So why have we not been enlightened about the fact that we are supposed to work or serve for six days then rest on the seventh? Why have we been led to believe that the work that we do for the customer, either through an employer when employed or directly when an entrepreneur, is not ministry or service? Many of us are falsely under the impression that worship does not include work during the week and that worship is music, when clearly it is not limited to music. Worship can include music, but it is not limited to it. We are supposed to serve God everyday with si...

Some may take issue with the title of this article because of the “Easter” connection to paganism. Most publicly recognized holidays have pagan roots or connections, Easter to the god of fertility and Christmas to the god of the weather. I chose to ignore names and focus on the festivities surrounding the holidays. Names given are important, but not as important as what is done. In my opinion, a church that conducts easter egg hunts is embracing the god of fertility far more than one that calls their Sunday service, Easter. So whether it is Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday, preaching Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and raised from the dead should be central to the activities surrounding this well recognized and celebrated weekend.  Churches are packed like sporting events during Easter weekend because people who ordinarily do not go to church decide to attend. Plus, those who have friends and family visiting from out of town are more likely to invite them to tag along on Resurr...

According to the book of Genesis, God made the earth and saw that it was good. He made man, said that it was good, but saw that it was not good for man to be alone. So he made women, who together with man, would make humanity good; “man and woman, he created them.” This means that a woman is a gift to a man, not in the possessive sense, but in a complementary sense. The only problem is that men have forgotten that God gave them women. They do not grasp the fact that a woman is an equal and a gift from God that they cannot own. This means that no man can give a woman to a man and no man can “take” a woman. Men and women are to be one flesh brought together by God for His glory and the betterment of the human race. We’ve forgotten that God has gifted us with each other.   Things go wrong when we forget the giver of the gift. Saul forgot that before Samuel came to tell him that God had chosen him to be king, he was just a handsome man from the tribe of Benjamin. God made Saul kin...

A lot of the attention and/or pressure that the church receives from the state or secular culture, today, comes from the history of an inseparable church and state. Even though we have come a long way since when the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church were one, we are still paying the price for all the damage done. This is one of the reasons why we have activists, representing various groups, working hard to change church doctrine and practices.  The church, as an institution, has failed to address human rights issues in the past, due to fear and political affiliations, and this has led to people believing that doctrine was the issue. The scripture is filled with love and the right kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We can have different backgrounds, possess different gifts, fall short in different ways, but be united and equal under God through Christ. We are one body of Christ instructed to show we are His disciples by our love. The church needs to interact with the secul...

If church is the people and not the building, then what makes church, church? The answer must be fellowship or gathering together. When those who have faith in God through Christ meet together or gather, that is when church happens. God’s Spirit living in each person makes the gathering of those people a church, not their place of meeting. There are more instances in the Bible about God’s Spirit coming upon or filling someone than instances of His Spirit inhabiting a place. He inhabits the praises of His people and is present when two or three gather in His name. Even unclean spirits seemed to prefer taking up residence in living creatures. Jesus always cast out demons or unclean spirits from people and never from a place or locale.   So why do most believers think that the church is the building or even worse, the organization hosting them? This is likely a vestigial holdover from when the Israelites needed to visit the temple or carry the Holy Tabernacle. The early church - ...