For Others

[QUICK REVIEW: a week ago in this space:

Thom Rainer is a highly-respected church consultant with sometimes painfully penetrating insight. For example —-
When a church is driven by member preference, it is headed for decline, then death.
The decline may be protracted and the death may be delayed, but it is inevitable.
A church cannot survive long-term where members are focused on their own preferences.]

— Picking up right there, I’d like to add  something from the 20th century about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He was a pastor and professor who wrote and spoke of  “a man for others.”

He found that concept in Christ and in Scripture.

He lived as “a man for others” and died as “a man for others,” hanged in a Nazi prison.

Let me ask a serious question of both you and me: What would it look like if we were “a church for others” and not just ourselves?