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BEYOND
SLOGANS
By
Mark Taylor
Every day you see and hear more advertising slogans than you can ever count
or remember. Estimates range from a few hundred to several thousand. Every day. Every
TV show or radio station or computer screen we turn to offers more ways to
spend our money. Every page we see, every grocery cart, every city bus asks
us to consider yet another possibility. It’s no surprise when we ignore
most of these pitches and jingles and come-ons.
Yet
some slogans arise from heartfelt conviction.
“Give
me liberty or give me death!”
“Remember
the
Alamo
!”
“The
war to end all wars!”
They
weren’t crafted by ad writers but were spoken by leaders and thinkers
summarizing the sentiment of their times and the hopes of their people.
Such
are several slogans repeated again and again by members of Christian
churches and churches of Christ:
“We
are not the only Christians, but we are Christians only.”
“Where
the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.”
“No
creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love.”
“In
essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love.”
Several
threads tie these slogans together. One is our commitment to the Bible. We
believe it is from God and should be the only authority for personal
decisions and church practice.
But
the Bible does not speak specifically to many details about 21st-century
life, and inevitably Christians see some things differently. This leads to a
second thread: freedom in Christ.
We try not to turn matters of opinion into dividing walls among
Christ-followers. Jesus himself was the Word of God walking on the earth.
We’ve found that focusing on him helps us deal with our disagreements.
The
third thread is love.
Our goal is to extend love to all who call themselves Christian; to
demonstrate it to non- Christians so they can see Christ in us; and to
experience it day by day within each local congregation.
These
are lofty ambitions, and that’s why these slogans have stood the test of
time. They are not the brainchild of some slick advertising campaign. They
are statements about life and eternity from a people trying to follow Jesus.
They give a good starting point for answers to the question on our cover,
“What kind of church
is this?”
We
are a
church
of
Christ
’s disciples who
believe his way is the only path to satisfaction and hope. And we’ve discovered
the
journey is so much easier when we join hands with others who have their eyes
on him. Together we want to be what Jesus wants, welcoming everyone who will
consider him with us. That’s the kind of church we are.
Mark
Taylor is publisher and editor of CHRISTIAN STANDARD, Standard Publishing,
Cincinnati
,
Ohio
.
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