WEAR YOUR COLORS
This Sunday, we’ll continue one of the newer traditions at First Baptist Church with Wear Your Colors Sunday. Everyone is encouraged to wear your school colors — whatever combination that may be — and help create an energized environment for our college students. To add to the festivities, we’ll once again have several food trucks parked in our Duval Street lot ready to serve you lunch after Sunday Morning Bible Study (for our early worshipers) and again after the Contemporary Worship Service. You can then take your food downstairs to the Fellowship Hall and enjoy a shared meal and hopefully meet a few new folks.
A day like this reminds me of the importance of a church demonstrating unity in the midst of diversity. We may have conflicting allegiances on Friday nights and especially Saturday afternoons, but we still come together on Sunday mornings. The things that may divide us in a football stadium no longer separate us in the sanctuary.
In Galatians 3 Paul wrote, “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That’s why we can wear garnet and gold or even orange and blue to worship and still be united as church body — because we’ve all been “clothed with Christ.”
As a church, we all have different backgrounds and different abilities, yet we’re drawn together by our shared devotion to the Lord. We recognize that worldly distinctions can never divide the church because we are “all one in Christ Jesus.” That’s part of what makes us a body — everyone has a unique and valuable role to fill.
It’s especially appropriate then that we’ll also be observing the Lord’s Supper this Sunday. In addition to proclaiming the Lord’s death, Paul instructs the church in 1 Corinthians 11 that the Lord’s Supper should be free of division within the church and should instead demonstrate our mutual concern for one another.
Let this Sunday remind us all that no matter what we wear and no matter how we may appear different on the outside, we should all be clothed with Christ and united in Him.
A NOTE ON HURRICANE IRMA: At the time that this newsletter is going to print, the path and timing of Hurricane Irma are both still uncertain. Should the potential for unsafe conditions lead us to adjust our plans for Sunday, we’ll make every effort to notify the church through our website, e-mail, and social media.