Category: News

Watch sermon video here:

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Hespeler, September 20, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 16:2-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

About a year ago, the Chief Executive Officer of Vineyard Incorporated decided to make a big move to boost profits. He utilized Artificial Intelligence models to automate many of the processes that kept his business running.

He put an AI agent in charge of his supply chain, managing the intricate system that made sure that everything that he needed to produce his product arrived just in time. He put AI agents in charge of answering his phones and responding to all questions and orders. He had another AI agent running the production fields, managing cultivation, fertilization and monitoring for pests and ripeness.

Generative AI was also put to work creating advertisements and a social media strategy, flooding the internet with posts.

Low Labour Costs

The CEO congratulated himself that these initiatives allowed him to lower his payroll drastically. He went down to the labour market and hired just a few people to prompt the AI and to take the blame for any mistakes that it made. He promised to pay them one denarius, which seemed far too much for what he was asking them to do, but he recognized that he needed to keep at least a skeleton crew on hand.

Now, it was the nature of Vineyard Incorporated’s business that its earnings all came at once. For most of the year, there was just the constant cost of keeping the operation running, but the crucial harvest season was when all the profits came in to cover the costs and make a big fat bonus out of the rest.

Big Savings

The CEO watched with glee throughout the year as the numbers came in. Costs were down across the board, which meant that when the profits finally came in, the bonus would be huge. He could hardly wait!

For example, the cost of the advertising they were creating was down 80% because there was no need to pay graphic artists or creative directors. What did it matter that it all looked like AI slop and there was nothing to set it apart from advertising that every other company was doing? It was so cheap that they could put it everywhere.

And so it all went until the long-anticipated earnings season came. As soon as the AI sensors indicated the grapes were ready to harvest, the CEO ordered someone to push the button to get the harvesting equipment ready.

Problems

That was when the CEO realized that his reliance on AI might have created some problems. It turned out that people weren’t engaged by advertisement that was just AI slop. The CEO realized that he would have to reduce prices in order to engage his customer base.

And then, the customer service AI hallucinated an offer for a product that didn’t exist, resulting in the need to process numerous refunds. And it turned out that the monitoring AI had also failed to properly detect an infestation of a particularly troublesome pest – something that the old, experienced hands would have picked up on right away.

That was not even the worst problem that was surfacing. The AI company that had sold him the agents in the first place realized he was utterly dependent on them for his entire operation. They jacked up their prices and threatened to walk away with all his operational data if he did not pay.

Last Minute Hiring

So it was that, at the last minute, the CEO realized that the only thing that would save his earnings season was if he went and hired a labour force that could deal with all of the problems that were coming to light. In fact, he might just end up hiring more people than he would have in an ordinary season before all of his cost-saving initiatives.

He went to the labour marketplace, but it was very difficult to find people who were willing to work for him and clean up the big mess. The only workers he could find were temporary foreign workers who had been brought in for the season.

The good news was that these workers worked very hard for low pay. The bad news was that the temporary agency that managed and obtained them charged fees that were so high that it cost as much for one of them to work for the season as it would have cost to hire an ordinary worker for the whole year.

He Thinks He Did a Good Job

In the end, the CEO had to explain the whole debacle to his board. And so, he went in and told them what a good manager he was. He explained that he had made bold moves by cutting the cost of labour and that, even though profits were down over the whole season, his discipline of the workforce would surely bear long-term fruit. The entire board laughed at his very bad pun.

After that, they decided to use the money that they had received from the recent government tariff refunds to fund a huge stock buyback to boost their stock price. They ended the quarter with big bonuses all around.

Meanwhile, back in the vineyard, the few workers who remained after all the temporary workers had left looked around at the ragged vines. Expert hands were needed to prune and prepare them for the next season, and they knew that they had lost such expertise. It looked like next year’s harvest would be even more dismal.

Traditional Interpretation

The traditional interpretation of Jesus’ Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, as you may know, is to see it as an allegory.

The owner of the vineyard is seen as God. The workers who start at the beginning of the day are seen as the Jews, who have a long-term relationship with God through the Law. The workers who come later in the day are the Gentiles who come to faith in God through Jesus later.

This is, to be clear, a perfectly valid way to read the parable. I do not doubt that the early church read it that way. They used this parable to work through the issues they had regarding feelings of resentment between Jews and Gentiles within the church regarding the keeping of the law. That may even be the main reason why Matthew included this parable in his Gospel.

More Than One Interpretation

But the powerful thing about the parables of Jesus is that they are never meant to be read just one way. And the people who heard Jesus tell it the first time wouldn’t have been thinking about the tensions between Jews and Gentiles that wouldn’t surface for several decades.

Instead, they would have heard a story that would have sounded pretty familiar to them – a story about labourers and the people who employed them. In fact, many of them would have been such labourers who had come straight from working in the fields to listen to Jesus tell this story. They had only just been paid the usual rate of one denarius a day for their work.

Because of that other, commonly accepted allegorical interpretation of this parable, there are people who would say that this parable is not allowed to be a commentary on capitalism or on the relationship between workers and owners. But I say that, if you are telling the Bible what it is and is not allowed to mean, you are probably interpreting it wrong.

So, I have always been willing to see this parable as having something to say about economic issues and how they affect our lives here and now, and not just about what happens after we die.

Shifts in Attitude

Our world has shifted enormously over the last few decades. Back in the 50s and 60s, it was taken for granted by most that workers, those who did the labour and contributed their time, energy and talents to production, made a worthwhile contribution to what was produced and should be compensated accordingly.

But since then, we have been steadily fed the message that actually those who contribute capital and investment or have ownership are the most important part of production and that they should realize the greater part of the profits.

Now, of course, it is not one or the other. Many enterprises could not exist or grow without investors. They should expect a return. But it is a question of balance, and we have seen that balance shift away from labour and toward capital in terms of who deserves to get more.

Questions We Need to Consider

With all that going on, Jesus’ parable seems to raise the kinds of questions we need to be thinking about today. How much is labour worth? How much should the vineyard owner be able to profit from the labour of the workers?

And Jesus throws an interesting twist into the story. The workers do everything right. As often happens, the people on the shop floor are the ones who have a real sense of how the work needs to get done.

It is the owner who makes a huge mistake in Jesus’ parable. He wants to save money and doesn’t hire enough people to get the work done before the grapes go bad. He has to race desperately back to the market several times to hire more workers and ends up paying more workers for the full day than he should have had to.

He Thinks He’s Good

And the owner in Jesus’ parable also doesn’t even see what a bad manager he is. This is often masked in our translations. When the owner tries to explain why he had to spend so much on his workers, he says (in our translations), “Or are you envious because I am generous?”

But that is not what it says in the original Greek. It actually says, “is your eye evil because I am good?” That is right; he is actually boasting that he is so good at his job that everyone is jealous of him.

That makes no sense when you realize that he has actually completely botched the entire harvest operation, and so perhaps that is why translators offer the other translation.

But though it doesn’t make any sense, doesn’t what he says remind you of so many executives who totally destroy the profitability of the companies that they are running? They run the place into the ground, everyone gets laid off and yet somehow, they end up getting a nice big bonus, a golden parachute and are soon put in charge of another company. No wonder they think they are so good at their jobs! The boast, “is your eye evil because I am good?” really does seem like the kind of thing that they would say.

Continually Fresh Interpretations

So, the parable can and absolutely should be applied to the various struggles we deal with in our society around labour, profit and enterprise. I have preached on this parable myself many times before and made that very point.

Every time I come back to it, I see something new – not because the parable has changed but because our society has changed. These days it is the coming of Artificial Intelligence that is eroding the power of the workers and emboldening the wealthiest, but that is just another weapon in a war that has been raging for a long time.

Your Application

This is the point in the sermon where I usually tell you what to do with all of this. I like, whenever possible, to give you a nice and well-defined action that you can take with you and live out the Gospel in the coming week.

But Jesus didn’t usually tell parables to get people to take specific actions. He told them to challenge people to change the way that they thought. He wanted to give people new perspectives on God and on the world.

Let the Story Challenge Your Perspective

So, I'm not going to give you a specific action or even a specific interpretation of this passage today. What I want you to do with it is what I think Jesus intended you to do. Take the story with you. Chew on it over this coming week.

Put yourself in the position of the worker. You are forced to sit in the marketplace and hope that someone might hire you for the day and even pay you enough to live. But you know that you are ultimately at the owner’s mercy.

Put yourself in the position of the owner who discovered late in the day that he actually did need the labour of the workers more than he thought and that they were actually worth their pay.

But most of all, let this story of Jesus challenge the comfortable assumptions you make every day about who really contributes to society and who doesn’t, who takes and who gives, who deserves a return for what they have put in and who doesn’t.

Jesus told these parables for exactly that reason. When people listened to these stories and let them challenge the assumptions that they carried with them, that was when they discovered the true nature of the kingdom of God.

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Hespeler, September 13, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 14:19-31, Exodus 15:1b-11, Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35

Pharaoh was enraged. Here he was, the greatest ruler on the face of the earth. He was everybody’s favourite Pharaoh – his advisors told him that all the time.

And yes, it was true that the media were putting out polls that said that regular Egyptians were turning against him, that he was the least popular Pharaoh in history, but that was all obviously all fake news.

People were just upset by all of the recent plagues. Frogs and locusts, boils and hail have a way of souring everybody’s mood. But nobody should blame Pharaoh for any of that. As he had told them, all of that was the fault of his predecessors who had neglected the monuments of Egypt for so long, or something like that.

Troublesome Hebrews

Besides, he had been busy with the foolish demands of the Hebrews who were asking for permission to travel into the desert for three days to have some festival for their God.

He kept reminding the slaves that they were being ungrateful. After all, they had been treating Egypt so unfairly for generations – sitting by pots of meat and eating their fill of bread without even paying for any of it!

So, after one of the latest plagues, he told them he had had enough and he was cutting them off. He didn’t need anything that they produced, and Egypt would be better off without them.

Negotiation Tactic

It was, of course, a negotiating tactic – the art of the deal. He expected them to cave and offer to do even more labour for smaller rations of bread and meat.

But then they went and walked away from the negotiating table. Actually, they walked away from the country altogether! They went into the desert and, over three days later, there was no sign of them returning.

It was quickly becoming clear to everybody that Egypt did need them. In fact, the slaves were vital to Egypt’s ongoing prosperity. They supplied everything from energy to food.

So Pharaoh summoned his chariots, the most advanced fighting force on the face of the earth, and headed out after them. The army easily found their trail and followed it to the shores of the Red Sea.

That was a sore point too. Hadn’t Pharaoh himself decreed just the other week that the body of water should henceforth be called the Sea of Egypt! And yet people defiantly continued to call it what it had been called for centuries.

The Night Before

And there, by the shores of the Sea of Reeds – I mean, the Sea of Egypt – they finally caught up with them. The Hebrews looked so pathetic, huddled up against the shores of the sea. It was late in the day when they found them, and the weather was odd. An unusual wind was blowing strongly and steadily out of the East and between the Egyptian chariots and the fleeing Hebrews was a strange and disorienting cloud. So Pharaoh decided to stand down his troops and let them rest until morning.

Attack!

As the morning sun rose behind the wind that still blew out of the East, the cloud finally dissipated. Pharaoh looked up and saw that the Hebrews were actually trying to flee across the seabed where the waters had retreated before the wind. What fools! The soggy ground would only slow them down. His charioteers would sweep them away.

Pharaoh shouted for the cavalry to attack. He laughed aloud as his team took off at a gallop. This was going to be so easy; it would almost be fun. But, just as he thought that, he noticed that there was something wrong with his chariot. The muck of the sea bottom was clogging the wheels so that they turned with difficulty.

Egypt as Symbol of Empire

Throughout the Bible, Egypt and its various rulers seem to stand in for the worst examples of empire. Even when the biblical authors are actually concerned with the evils of empires such as Babylon, Persia or Alexander of Macedon, they tell stories of Egypt and how bad Pharaoh was. These stories help them to understand the actions and motivations of these other powerful empires.

And it seems to me that we might need to draw on some of that wisdom today. Like it or not, we seem to be living in a moment in time that is all about authoritarian leaders trying to build empires.

Rise of Authoritarians

I am not picking on any particular authoritarian here. Everywhere you look these days, you seem to see strongmen who are trying to seize land to build up their empires.

It could be President Xi in China putting down protests in Tibet while planning an invasion of Taiwan. It could be Vladimir Putin seeking to rebuild the old Russian Empire by invading Ukraine or Benjamin Netanyahu bombing and seeking to seize territory in Lebanon and Gaza.

And of course, there is another guy who has already taken control of the country of Venezuela and has set his sights on such far-flung bits of geography as Cuba, Greenland and the Strait of Hormuz. He also won’t stop talking about making Alberta or perhaps the whole of Canada into his 51^st state.

The Lure of Empire

And I realize that your automatic response to some or all of these empire builders is to reject them, maybe even hate them. But let’s stop for a moment and try to understand why we are seeing so much of this kind of activity today.

We are living in uncertain times. Things are changing at a disorienting pace and in some disturbing directions. Artificial Intelligence is upsetting, maybe even destroying, the labour market. Huge technology companies are taking control of every aspect of our lives and all of our information. Debts have grown to previously unthinkable levels.

Understandable

In many ways, it is not surprising that people are latching onto various authoritarian leaders in these times. They are promising a return to normalcy through strength. And, when it turns out that they cannot actually bring about a return to normalcy, these authoritarian leaders naturally turn to conquest as a way of protecting their power.

It has always worked like that – a tale as old as time. It is how the Pharaoh came to power in Egypt and how it has worked ever since.

So let us not be angry at those who, in uncertain times, turn to such leaders. Our anger at them won’t change anything. But the question we need to ask as believers is: where is God? What is God doing to bring justice to the world in such times?

A Story for Trying Times

When the people of Israel despaired throughout their history as they suffered at the hands of various empires, they kept coming back to this story. The story of the battle of the Red Sea was what convinced them that their God would save them. It gave them hope in the face of trying times. That’s why they kept telling it.

The battle of the Red Sea was not a battle that the Hebrews won by superior weaponry or tactics. They were at a tactical disadvantage in every way you can imagine. They were just running away and doing it on foot. The Egyptian chariotry was the most advanced military force that the world had ever seen and would ever see for many centuries. It should have annihilated them. But the Hebrews won.

A Strange Kind of Victory

And sure, you can say that God won the battle for them. But God didn’t do that by making them stronger or better fighters. God didn’t allow them to defeat the Egyptians on Egyptian terms. Instead, what did God do? God clogged the chariot wheels. God turned the Egyptian advantage into their downfall.

And I believe that that is God’s favourite approach. God loves to use the very things that the powerful put their trust in, the very things that they think make them invincible, to bring about their defeat.

Ukraine

We are seeing that very thing playing out in our world right now. When, for example, Russia invaded Ukraine over four years ago, the consensus everywhere was that Ukraine could not resist them. Russia had all the advantages with their conventional military resources, equipment and population. But things didn’t quite work out that way.

The chariot wheels got clogged. That happened literally when whole convoys were unable to advance through the Ukrainian mud in the initial assault. But it happened even more so as Ukraine transformed warfare itself by developing drone technology that was relatively cheap to fly but crushingly expensive to defend against. Russia’s strength became its weakness as its resource base and economy have been targeted.

Iran

The shorter-term Iran war has played out in similar terms. Iran is outmatched in almost every way. It doesn’t have the military or equipment to defend itself against the largest and best-funded military force that the world has ever seen. And yet, it hasn’t been crushed. Using relatively inexpensive drones and other weapons, it is holding its own and requiring the Americans to spend many resources with little to show for it.

Nothing Good

And of course, none of this is good. It is terrible to see so many lives being sacrificed and so much destruction playing out. I take no pleasure in it; neither does God. I recognize that the Russian soldiers who are dying in Ukraine are victims of empire just as much as the Ukrainians are.

But the principle at work is this: If you are going to build empires with chariots, God is going to clog those chariot wheels. If you think you are going to make yourself safe by funding enormous militaries, by invading and bombing girls’ schools and civilian infrastructure, God will turn your strength and your callous disregard for life against you.

And sure, we might wish for God to act differently. We’d prefer it if God just took Pharaoh out before he decided to enslave the world. But, for whatever reason, the world doesn’t work like that. Maybe God has something for us to learn from seeing how those chariot wheels get clogged.

Personal Application

There is a lesson in this for you in your personal life. How many of us try to build a sense of safety and security for ourselves through dominance? You think that if you control everything around you and make people behave as you like, you will have a good life.

To the extent that you do that, you are deploying your chariots. If you do that, sooner or later something will come along to clog the wheels. And when that happens, you will have a choice. You might choose to double down and assert more control. That will put you into a downward spiral of more loss of control, more clogged wheels. You will be dealing with anger and resistance.

Or, when the chariot wheels of your life are getting clogged, you can make another choice. You can choose to let go of control, embrace the stories that other people in your life are living through and give them the freedom to be their own people on the other side of the Red Sea. None of that may sound easy, but it might be exactly the new thing that God is calling you to do.

Finding Hope in Difficult Times

So, apply this in your personal life. Watch for where in your life the chariot wheels are getting clogged. Be ready to ask why and to find other ways to move forward in your life than by blowing people away with your chariotry.

And, if you ever become discouraged when you see the powerful of this world deploying their chariots, if you see empires on the move, sweeping all away before them, and the tech lords and oligarchs of this world are seeking to take control of all of our data and our political systems, and people start renaming lakes on a whim just because they can, watch out for the mud that will absolutely start clogging the chariot wheels of those who build empires. God just loves to clog those wheels.

Think fall, think Christmas!

https://youtu.be/onGp5Viuio0

Hespeler, September 6, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ezekiel 33:7-11, Psalm 119:33-40, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

Some people might be troubled with the passage that we read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. It begins with one little word that strikes fear into the heart of church leaders everywhere. It starts with the word if: “If your brother or sister sins against you.”

Why does that one little word scare us so? Because it means that something could happen. And what might happen is an argument, a fight or a conflict. It is saying that, in the church, people could do things to harm, frighten, insult or disrespect one another.

We Are Family

I mean, that shouldn’t be possible, right? In the church, we are supposed to be a family. The words “brother or sister” are right there in the verse. And families are supposed to always love one another, not fight with one another.

Yeah, even as I say that, I realize how naïve that sounds. Families can actually be the very worst when it comes to arguing, fighting and disagreeing. They are particularly good at it because they know each other so well. They know exactly how to get under each other’s skins, the words and responses that hurt most.

Families fight precisely because they care about each other. You might not bother to respond at all if some stranger does something foolish because you don’t really care about them. But when it is someone in your family, you might not be able to stop yourself from fighting with them about their foolishness.

Yet even though we love to use that family language in the life of the church, we seem to expect that conflicts and disagreements should not arise in the life of the church. Leaders like me often seek to avoid it and prevent it as much as possible.

Conflict Is Part of Life

But, as the opening word in this passage should remind us, conflict is a part of the life of the church. In fact, if conflict is completely absent from the life of your church, it might be a sign that your church is not very healthy. It might mean that you don’t care enough about each other or that you don’t care much about the mission of the church to disagree.

And so, in our reading this morning, Jesus reminds us that conflict not only might arise in the life of the church, but is also likely an inevitable part of life in the church. Conflict, you see, is not in itself a bad thing. It will sometimes feel bad, but that does not mean that it is bad.

Handling Conflict Well

Now, when we manage conflict badly, there is no question that it can be very destructive. We have all heard horror stories of churches that tore themselves apart over some disagreement or other, maybe even over some issue that didn’t really matter. But that is precisely why this passage that we read this morning from the Gospel of Matthew is there.

If you want to learn how to make your way through conflict as well as possible, you will not easily find better advice than we have right here in this passage. And it is not just good advice for life in the church. The principles you find right here can apply to any area in your life where conflict might arise – in your family, among your friends or in your workplace. Jesus gives us useful advice on working through conflict wherever it might arise.

One to One

For example, the first piece of advice that Jesus gives is crucial. “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” The damage that comes from ignoring this simple piece of advice can be enormous, and yet we are constantly tempted to do so.

I mean, put yourself in that situation. Someone has hurt you. They have acted in a way that you feel is insulting or disrespectful. Or maybe you just know from experience that their actions will lead to real problems down the road.

And so, you feel as if something needs to be said or done about the situation. But most of us don’t relish the idea of being the one to do something. Most of us don’t like dealing with conflict. And so what we often try to do is get somebody else to deal with it.

Dragging in Someone Else

In the church, that often means that you go to the minister or to some other leader and you tell them that they need to straighten this other person out.

But Jesus here says that, if the matter is between you and somebody else, you are the one who needs to try to deal with it first. When you drag somebody else into the matter, it might feel like you are doing the right thing, but it often leads to greater problems.

First of all, when you go to someone else first, you can easily make the whole situation worse. You have just aired somebody else’s dirty laundry in front of a third party. And, even if you are completely righteous in the concerns that you raise, that can cause embarrassment and shame.

And sure, you might say that it is fine for them to feel like that, after all, they really did do something wrong. But embarrassment and shame are not emotions that generally help people to become better. In fact, they often provoke worse behaviour in some people. So, if you really want to help people to be better, you will find ways to engage them first in a more private way.

Exceptions

Now, there is an exception. In cases of abuse, harassment or even sexual abuse, going directly and privately to confront the offender is not the right course. If you do that, you are only putting yourself in a position where they can hurt you again and worse. In such cases, you need to go to the community first and the community needs to be courageous in dealing with the problem.

But in a healthy conflict where people are not at risk, conflict is a natural part of human relationship; you need to think carefully before you try to bring in a third party. You need to ask yourself if you are doing it as a power move, trying to leverage somebody’s authority or position to hurt the other person. Turning immediately to power or authority may get you a short-term fix, but I have found that it often creates long-term tensions and problems.

New Possibilities

When you go yourself first to attempt to resolve the issues, it opens up worlds of possibilities. You may leave that conversation with a better understanding and appreciation for each other. If you put in the work to understand why they behaved the way they did, you might help them find ways to express their worries, fears or concerns more constructively. If you skip the step of going to them one-to-one, that opportunity may be lost forever.

So, I believe that it is very important for us to learn from this teaching of Jesus and, as hard as it may be, to go and confront the person ourselves. I know that I myself have sometimes failed to do this. I know we all will fail sometimes. And I have always regretted it in the long term.

But we may face another danger as we deal with conflict. Jesus said that we need to start by dealing with a person directly whenever possible, but he also acknowledged that such intervention will not always be sufficient. And so, he reminded us that we are part of a community.

Neglecting the Community Role

There are people who tend to go too quickly to some third party and can make the situation worse. But there are also people on the other end of the spectrum. They think that it is up to them to fix everybody else’s behaviour.

I think that we have a great example of that sort of person in our reading from Ezekiel this morning. In that passage we discover that Ezekiel has taken an enormous burden upon himself.

Ezekiel reports that God said this to him: “You, mortal, I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, “O wicked ones, you shall surely die,” and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand.”

So, Ezekiel believed that God had appointed him to tell everybody else what they were doing wrong. And, if he failed to tell anybody, he would be held responsible for what they did. Now, I do not doubt that Ezekiel was receiving messages from God and that God was quite upset by what people were doing in his community.

Unhealthy Approach

But Ezekiel’s approach of taking all of that on himself was not very healthy. If you read the book of Ezekiel, you will see that everybody hated Ezekiel and his constant criticisms did nothing to reform people’s behaviour. Even worse, the constant burden that Ezekiel carried caused mental health problems for him. He suffered from constant depression and acted in compulsive and obsessive ways, like, for example, the time when he laid silently on his side in public for over a year!

I know Ezekiel was trying to do his best with the message he had received from God, and perhaps God had reasons for allowing him to carry that burden, but the point is that there are better ways and Jesus teaches us those better ways in the Gospel.

Sharing the Burden

So, while it is indeed best to start dealing with conflict directly by dealing with the offender yourself, that is not where it ends. When that fails – and it will sometimes fail because Jesus once again uses that ominous word if: “if you are not listened to.” – you do not need to carry the burden of your sibling in Christ’s failure as Ezekiel did.

Jesus goes on to talk about how to involve the community in careful steps, first calling on “one or two others” and then, as a final recourse, the whole church.

This releases you from the burden of dealing with someone else’s fault. But it also does more than that.

Not About Punishment

The point of it is not what we often assume. It is not about leveraging the community’s punitive power. That is how it has often been practiced through the centuries. Churches have punished people by shunning them, excommunicating them or making their lives miserable in some other way.

Excluding somebody might sometimes be necessary to protect the community, but punishment is never the goal. Punishment itself is one of the least effective ways of helping someone to reform their behaviour.

Healing Power

No, the most helpful way for the community to operate in times of conflict is in its extraordinary healing power. This is the secret power of any community, and it is especially the secret power of the church. Somehow, when the community comes together, it discovers powers of love, forgiveness and reconciliation that transcend the abilities of any individual member.

That is the truth that Jesus was pointing to when he said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” The context of that verse makes it clear that the presence of Jesus is primarily a healing and reconciling presence in the church.

Part of Healthy Life

Conflict is a part of life. If you in your personal life or we in our congregational life never experience conflict, it may not be because there is no conflict. We may just be avoiding necessary conflict. That is not a good strategy either.

I understand why we may want to avoid it, of course, but we do ourselves no good when we do. Learning to deal with conflict constructively is going to lead us to better outcomes both as individuals and as a congregation.

So, do your best in your dealings with the people in your life who sometimes cause you trouble. Talk with them directly when you can and come into that conversation with an open and listening heart. At the same time, never forget the power in your community to heal and bring reconciliation. Let us leverage the incredible power that Jesus has given us to build a stronger, better community to face the challenges before us.

Please note

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Here are the story schedules for the 2026 - 2027 season.

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