Walk Series Week 4

Motion Church | Walk, Week 4: "Meet in the Middle"

Can you accept someone without approving of everything they do? This week's message — introduced through a "Name That Tune" country music bit — takes its title from an old 90s country song: "We meet in the middle of that old Georgia line... If we give a little, there's no road too long."

The subtitle for today's message says it all: "understanding the difference between acceptance and approval." It's a two-layer conversation — how we, the church, interact with the world outside, and how we treat each other inside the body of Christ.

On reaching outside: the Pharisees treated people as clean or unclean, but "their hands were clean, but their hearts were filthy." Jesus modeled something completely different — he called Matthew the tax collector and immediately "Jesus is hanging out at Matthew's house," reclining at the table with "tax collectors and sinners," before Matthew had cleaned up his life at all. With Zacchaeus, Jesus didn't wait for him to get it together either — "hurry and come down for today... not tomorrow after you get everything cleaned up." The takeaway: "we accept them, even if we don't approve of the way that they live." As one pastor put it, "people want to belong before they believe."

On unity inside the church: "What it does not look like for a church to be in unity is to have all of the exact same thoughts, beliefs, ideas — that's not unity, that's robotic." Drawing from Ephesians 4 and Psalm 133, the call is to walk "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love." Too often, "we major on minors and minor on majors" — fighting over things like baptism methods while agreeing on everything that actually matters eternally. The challenge: "swallow our pride and strive for unity over spiritual superiority."

The message lands on Jesus' prayer in John 17 — "that they may all be one... so that the world may believe that you have sent me." When the church chooses unity, it becomes the kind of place people actually want to be part of — instead of "a lateral move" that looks just like the dysfunction they're trying to leave behind.

Walk outside with acceptance. Walk inside with unity. Meet in the middle.