Encouraging Each Other to Love and Good Deeds
"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:24-25.
Our congregation’s face-to-face meetings provide one way to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Such meetings are what the Hebrew writer primarily had in mind. So, we should make concerted efforts to attend worship each Sunday (as I explained in my Alert column of September 6, 2024). But more broadly, this letter’s author also urges us to “consider how” we could encourage each other.
This month, our congregation began implementing an important new technique for mutual encouragement: the Arlington Church of Christ “app” (App) for our smartphones and other mobile devices. The App integrates many aspects of our congregation’s life (as detailed below). We have begun to use the App as our exclusive means of communicating with the entire congregation (and so will soon stop publication via text message and email of our weekly bulletins known as “Alerts.”) The App has both English- and Spanish-language versions.
If you haven’t already begun using the App, I urge you to do so right away. Here’s the link for downloading the App either for your Apple (iOS) or Android device. At the bottom of this blog is a short video showing how both to download and install for our congregation. .There are also downloadable written instructions.
After taking these two easy steps, here are some ways you can use the App:
- read the Bible
- request prayers and identify people needing prayers
- listen to sermons
- read Elders’ weekly columns
- learn congregational news
- donate money
- find congregants’ contact information
- log on via videoconference to congregational gatherings (worship or small group)
Rely on the App to feed your soul and to encourage others in our community. For example, “hope scroll" from the App (instead of “doom-scrolling” by reading large quantities of negative non-App news). See who’s listed on the App’s prayer “wall” and tell them that you are praying for them. Send a birthday or other encouraging card (perhaps from the auditorium’s rear table) to other congregants. “Consider how we may spur one another on.”
-- Lloyd