167. Called to Each Other, with Claude Alexander, author of Becoming the Church

Spiritual Life and Leadership

Claude Alexander is senior pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and the author of Becoming the Church: God’s People in Purpose and Power.

The church has never been perfect.
It has always been filled broken people, sinful people, silly people, selfish people, violent people, manipulative people, mistaken people, intrusive people, rough-around-the edges people.
All kinds of people. Including good people, kind people, compassionate people, people of justice.
The church, we might say, is made of a “becoming” people.
That’s what Bishop Claude Alexander and Markus Watson discuss in this episode, focusing on what it means to be a people who, not only are the church, but who are continuing to become the church in all the fullness of who the church is meant to be.
THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Bishop Claude Alexander is senior pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and the author of Becoming the Church: God’s People in Purpose and Power.
• Claude Alexander suggests there is a tendency to separate Jesus from the church. But you can’t separate them.
• We need to temper our expectation that the church is a perfect product.
• The Church is essentially a people in the process of becoming.
• Claude Alexander describes Peter and Thomas as being “dechurched” after the death of Jesus.
• Churches need to do a better job of discipling people before they become dechurched.
• Many churches feel marginalized and decentered in Western society today. But that is not a new experience for churches composed of racial and ethnic minorities.
• Our call in Christ, according to Claude Alexander, calls us to each other in the complexity of our diversity.
• Claude Alexander discusses the ways the apostles had to adapt in the early church, focusing especially on Acts 6.
• It was because of their obedience to what they knew that the apostles were able to seize later opportunities that God had for them.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Claude Alexander:
  • www.claudealexanderministries.org
  • www.theparkministries.org
  • Twitter - @bishopcrajr
• Books mentioned:
  • Becoming the Church: God’s People in Purpose and Power, by Claude Alexander
  • Anonymous: Jesus’ Hidden Years…and Yours, by Alicia Britt Chole

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