Southside Oracle Archive

Vol. 48, No 35                             SOUTHSIDE ORACLE                     November 18, 2005

The Bulletin Board

            The Senior Thanksgiving Dinner is this Saturday at noon. This is a program of the youth group directed by Daryl Miller. Laurie Giombi is in charge of the dinner that will be served by the youth. This has been an annual Southside event going back as early as 1989. It is very helpful in bonding the two generations and is much appreciated by our senior members.

            Congregational Meeting - We will have a congregational meeting on December 11^th at 1:00 p.m. It will be preceded by a sandwich lunch. The elders recently had a planning retreat and they will present some of our future hopes and plans. All are encouraged to attend. At the same meeting we will choose three trustees who will serve for two years. Trustees represent the legal entity of the church.

            On September 15th Southside sent $12,916.72 to the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort, Inc. Nashville, TN to help with recent hurricanes that had devastated the Gulf Coast. In all this organization collected $6,317,706.93. The money was spent on people affected by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma at 45 different congregations in 12 states. It has been used to purchase food, water, baby care boxes, personal care boxes, cleaning supplies, Bibles, toys, insect wipes, appliances, blankets, and furniture. A detailed summary of relief assistance is posted on the bulletin board in the church foyer.

            The Sick - Alex Clare was hit by a car last week and was taken to Children's Hospital. He came home the next day and is doing well...Latanja Mudd requests prayers for her grandmother who has been sick and for whom Latanja is the primary caregiver. She is doing better..

The Continuing Search

            Restoration is a continuing quest. There are two different attitudes that have pervaded historic restoration movements. The first, which is usually not found among the pioneers of a movement, assumes that the movement has totally achieved its restoration objective. The battles have been fought, the truth has been discovered, a consensus has been reached on difficult issues, and there is little more to be learned. The searching attitude that characterized the movement in its inception is replaced by a defensive posture in which defending the truth becomes all-important. Discussions with others are not designed to more fully learn the divine will, but to win people to the traditional views of the body. The sectarian spirit rears its head. The movement begins to inbreed and is not even aware that others may hold positions on debatable issues that are biblically defensible.

            This mentality produces a generation of disciples who have inherited their faith without reexamination. There is no encouragement to restudy issues with a view to gaining a better understanding. The result is a body of people without a real biblical grasp.

            The other attitude, usually found among those who lead the movement in its beginning, is that of honest searching for truth. Just as they recognize that they have personally discovered unlearned truths, so they realize that restoration is by its very nature a continuing process. Even as our battle against sin is never won, so our struggle to recover the mind of Christ is ever destined to be a continuing quest. Those restorationists, and hopefully succeeding generations who pursue their course, continue to plumb the depths of the Word of God. Each individual personally struggles with the scriptures rather than simply accepting at face value the conclusions of the fathers. These searchers are not castigated when they pose a question that might suggest unorthodox thinking.        They are more biblical than the first group because their understanding is rooted in the Word while the former is grounded in a body of traditional interpretations.

            Of these two approaches to an understanding of the will of God, only the latter can lead to biblical restoration. The former may adhere to many scriptural truths, but the restoration will always be lacking because it is not ongoing. The honest heart and the open mind are essential to total restoration.

            I believe the restoration process is both valid and imperative if we are truly to discover the mind of God. The real problem we face is that of determining what it is and how to recover the original when it has been so obscured by nearly two thousand years of diverse doctrinal teachings.    The task is difficult, but so is living the Christian life. Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. But then he added, "With God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). So as we go about the task of restoring the original faith, let us be sure to keep our eyes on Jesus, realizing that we are involved in a continuing quest in which we are promised that "you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).

Monroe E. Hawley, The Focus of Our Faith, pp. 152, 153

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