So then, be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your hearts to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father; and subject yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ. |
Consider the language we use when we talk about putting Christ at the center of our lives, or about how we can be a blessing to the body. Even when we talk about communal elements of the Christian life, we talk about them from an individualistic perspective. It's all about our personal prayer time, our personal time in the word, Me & Jesus time. But the context in which the New Testament talks about the church, and even about our growth as Christians, is almost never talking about one individual doing much of anything. Paul is never instructing people to engage with the body out of the overflow of the great benefits they, personally, have received. It is always about growing and operating as a body. And we should hardly be surprised at this, given that the first church shared all they had with one another. |
Note the passage that opened this article. It's part of a larger discussion on living lives that honor God, but note the communal nature of it. Throughout Ephesians chapters 4 & 5, Paul constantly ties the things he's saying to a group context. He talks about "bearing one another in love" (4:2), "equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ" (4:12); tells us to "SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE OF YOU WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, because we are parts of one another" (4:25), "be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you" (4:32), "walk in love" (5:2). Why? So that we, "being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love" (4:16).
See, the thing is, it's easy for us to think about our involvement in the body in terms that focus on us as individuals. We so often talk about the Christian life as though we are solitary cups that need to sit alone to be refilled, and then we can bless others with the excess that pours out of us. Or as batteries, that get plugged into the body to give it what energy we have, but then have to be unplugged and sent to recharge so we have something to bring when we return. And there is a certain sense in which this is true; we all have our own lives and we bring to the body that which is unique about us. We do not, however, primarily grow in isolation. When the New Testament addresses the Christian life, it addresses bodies of believers. It addresses churches, and expects them not only to grow together, but to grow because they are together. We do not grow in isolation any more than a finger can grow when separated from the body. Our priority, if we are to be the body we have been called to be, must be other-focused.
And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again, the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."
1 Corinthians 12:21 (NASB)
The image that came to my mind as we discussed it last night was one of a circuit board. See, the parts of the circuit work specifically because they're connected. They all do different things and they serve the whole in different ways and maybe even at different times, but they are all part of the same circuit. And being part of the same circuit is not only preferred, it is required. The thing about body analogies (which, admittedly, was probably the best image available to Paul at the time) is that it's easy to note that the eye can continue to work as designed even if the hand has been cut off; but this isn't true of the church, and it isn't true of a circuit. In the case of the hand, the hand suffers complete loss by being separated from the body, and the body suffers the loss of a single function but continues on working in general. In the case of a circuit, breaking the circuit at any point shuts the whole operation down. The pieces are interdependent. It doesn't matter how close an LED is to the power source, if the circuit is broken at a missing transistor twenty connections away, the circuit is broken, and the light will not shine.
The church is not a collection of individuals, each empowered by the Holy Spirit and thus made greater than the sum of its parts when brought together. The church is a circuit, with each part energized by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is energizing the whole. He does live in us individually, and unlike a circuit component we can learn some in private reading and prayer, but the design for us as Christians and the way we are expected to function is as a community, working together and supporting one another in all that we do. We must prioritize the ways we connect and help keep the circuit working over our private edification if we're ever going to be effective at the mission. My phone will not work properly, will not have any ability to serve its purpose well, if I started taking pieces out of the motherboard. If I expected the components to do their work apart from the whole.
In what ways are we prioritizing ourselves over our communities? In what way can we put the health and mission of the church as higher than our own personal calling, and align our lives to serve in the way we're designed? Are we taking seriously that we are a part of a whole, and have we considered what that means for the way we spend our time, the way we exercise our gifts, the way we relate to one another?
This was actually a big part of why we got both of them. We would have been very happy with either alone, each for their own reasons, but we specifically wanted both of them. The logic was that having an older cat who knows how to interact with the world and with people, and has a grasp on general cat behaviors, would help Cassie adjust; while having a younger cat to look after and play with would help Cullen stay active and healthy.
Some of the things Cass needed to learn from him were just social cues, but over the time Cullen was with us, he also seems to have taught her necessities like how to hunt. She didn't learn everything exactly the way he does it, but she clearly picked things up from him. Like how Cullen was very fond of headbutting me and rubbing our foreheads together as a form of social connection; she has not acquired that specific behavior and I doubt she will now, but after watching him do that she has taken a habit of leaning her face close to mine so we can sniff at each other for an apparently similar end.
The fact is, no one in our house was ever going to be able to teach Cass some of these behaviors ourselves. She would have, I'm sure, found some way to engage with us that worked for everyone involved, but it would have been alien to us as previous cat owners and stressful for her to figure it out on her own. And there's no guarantee she would have picked up everything. Maybe she would have taken an interest in hunting mice all on her own (a very valuable skill for our old house in the forest), but we certainly would not have ever been able to help her do that, let alone do it well. There are probably countless little daily behaviors that she picked up from Cullen, some necessary to her well-being but completely unnoticed by us, that we would have never known how to handle or been in a position to teach if we had.
I called myself a Christian for most of my life, but never really knew what that meant until a pastor in Boston started actively investing in me. He asked me tough questions about my life and faith, met with me to discuss application, gave me resources that I needed, and treated me as more of a son than a random face he saw every week. It was in his church that I began actually feeling the gravity of the teachings I had believed, and for the first time in my life I spent time actually fighting against this body of sin; it was shortly after moving away from that church, at my lowest point, that I finally fully submitted to Christ. This was a step I was not ready to take until someone realized how lost I still was and made a point of showing me the way.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes [only] of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
Hebrews 5:12-14 (NASB)
One thing this current pandemic has made clear to me is that we, as the church in America, do not have a rich understanding of what discipleship looks like, and this is because we do not give it the importance it deserves. This is, as I mentioned above, not a new concern, but consider how the pandemic has made it more glaring. We were forced into a situation where we had to decide what was most important about our functions as a church. The things we put the most effort into continuing to do in the current environment show not only what we think church is for, but what defines the Christian life. And what have those things, by and large, been? Sure, there is some variety church-to-church, but I'm talking about the large-scale trends. In what basket have we put all our eggs?
The Sunday morning sermon.
This has been the one constant, and make no mistake, it is an important thing. Of the things we do on the average Sunday morning, I would argue it should take precedent. If we are only able to do one thing from our normal Sunday morning services, it should be the preaching. But if we are only going to do one thing total? If we are going to push against government orders and demand that we be free to exercise the function of the church as declared by God? That should be personal discipleship.* After all, in the Great Commission which guides the function and purposes of churches and Christians in the world, teaching was presented as one aspect of making disciples rather than a distinct and superior task. Even those parts of scripture that seem to elevate the role of teachers do so in the context of their service to the body.
And He gave some [as] apostles, and some [as] prophets, and some [as] evangelists, and some [as] pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-13 (NASB)
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Why was the church given teachers? To equip, serve, and build up the body. We are not called to gather to watch someone preach. We do not have, as our core goal, the act of spectating a sermon. When we reduce church to this, when we make it our focus, when we make it the only thing we're willing to fight for, we lose sight of the true function of the church and give in to an elevated view of the pastor as the central focus of our work, even if we refuse to call it that.
Consider the comments sections of nearly any news reports about Grace Community Church right now. Those speaking in defense of MacArthur's actions universally do so on the grounds that the central command of Christians is gathering in one place on a regular basis (which we are never commanded to do),** and that inhibiting this specific action is condemning the full work of the church. Which simply is not true, unless one believes that the full work of the church is to focus our attention on listening to one person teach. But we know from scripture that those positions we are inclined to hold in highest esteem are never to be given the focus of our work. |
On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those [members] of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need [of it.] But God has [so] composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that [member] which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but [that] the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if [one] member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
1 Corinthians 12:22-26 (NASB)
Did Jesus stand before large crowds and explain the scriptures for them? Yes. Is this how He built His church? No. That was through personal relationships in which He walked with people for years, showing them what life He was calling them to, explaining things they were ready to understand, calling them to active participation in His ministry. We have letters to Timothy, but is that method of teaching how he became Paul's spiritual child? No, that was through Timothy's time spent traveling with Paul, watching how he worked and lived, actively taking part in the mission. Were His final and ultimate orders to His disciples to "call all the world into your sanctuaries and have them sit quietly as you explain the Word to them," or were they to "go therefore and make disciples of all the nations" (Matthew 28:19a, NASB)?
Our job is discipleship. To both teach and learn from personal experience, close relationships, and active participation in the life of the church. May we learn to put discipleship of one another higher than our pastoral hero worship as we continue to navigate this Christian life.
**- Yes, I know the verse that tells us not to forsake gathering. However, there is a great deal of flexibility in terms of how many of us gather in one place at one time, how we gather, and how frequently we gather. The Sunday Morning All-Church In-Person Service expression of worship is not here, or anywhere, commanded.
What I mean by that statement is this: if God has called a person to a specific work, and called a person to a specific church body, then the person is also called to contribute to the specific mission that church is tasked with, and certainly not to hinder it. Likewise, the church is called to contribute to the specific mission the person is called to, and certainly not to hinder it. The Biblical statements about every member of the church needing every other member and every part of the body having a necessary function attest to this. If that is true, then it must also be true that a person who feels called to a mission that hinders, or is hindered by, the mission of their church is either on the wrong mission or at the wrong church or, in some hopefully more rare occasions, the church has the wrong mission; and it is vitally important that they find out which it is and correct it. The question is how to do that.
The first step is always going to be prayer and scripture, by the way. Going to God for wisdom and clarity, digging into the Bible for anything that may grant that wisdom and clarity, and earnestly listening for Him to speak will be necessary if you want an honest, usable answer. Every piece of advice that follows assumes you are only implementing it after spending some time in prayer and the scriptures. Also remember that this is only advice; the Bible does not give us a check list for this, and I can only share as much wisdom as I have so far.
Questioning Personal Calling |
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- Your spiritual gifts can give you some clue as to your mission, because your mission will be something God has equipped you to do;
- Your trained skills can give you some clue as to your mission, because your mission will be something you have been prepared to do;
- Your interests can give you some clue as to your mission, because your mission will likely be something you can recognize and be drawn to;
- Your context, including where you are physically and where you are on your specific life journey, can give you some clues as to your mission, because God has been molding and placing you to perform it;
- Your limitations can give you some clue as to your mission, because it will not be something you will be capable of or comfortable doing without leaning on God's power and guidance.
Consider Moses. His gifting and skills enabled him to lead a large body of people, to judge fairly and honorably, to write the texts they would need going forward, and to face great trials. His interest in protecting his fellow children of Jacob enabled him to see their need and desire to find some freedom for them. His life experiences gave him access to Pharaoh, knowledge of the Midian desert, the skills he used leading Israel, and an unshakable faith that God would do exactly what He said He would do. His difficulty at speech meant he needed always to lean on God for his words and on his brother to deliver them, and his willingness to run when things got hairy meant he had to rely on God to be the example of strong leadership Israel needed.
Questioning Church Membership |
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Some initial questions:
- Have I submitted to the church leadership?
- Do I understand the church's mission?
- Do I understand my calling?
- Am I actually performing my calling, or at least seeking opportunities to do so?
- Have I invested in this church? Do I care about the people here and the work they do?
- Am I bitter about something and finding it difficult to work with the church because of that?
If none of these resolve the issue (and sometimes even if they do), you need to talk to the church leadership. The exact person will vary based on your church's leadership structure and your relationships to them, but identify someone in a position to handle your questions and who you feel comfortable receiving honest answers from. Ideally, you will have been already talking to this person while analyzing your calling.
Personal mission and church mission do not have to be identical to be compatible. Our church hosts a growing food pantry which some members feel strongly called to lead or participate in; the mission statement of the church does not include that, but it does serve the church's mission goal of serving the community in a Christ-centered way that enables opportunities for us to share the gospel. Take the time to find out whether or not your calling and the church mission are actually incompatible. It is entirely possible that the church leadership will know about directions the church is going, ministry opportunities, or just detail about the mission that you don't know for one reason or another, and they can point you to a way to do what you are called to do under the umbrella of the church's mission. It is, in fact, entirely possible that what you are called to do is something that doesn't exist at the church yet because they are waiting for someone called to do it.
Seek ways to serve. Use your spiritual gifts under the guidance of the church and for the building up of the body. As much as possible, seek ways to be an active, contributing part of what your church is doing. But if all of this is not working, and it becomes apparent that you are simply not built for what the church is doing, then it may be time to prayerfully look into places where you can be active and invested.
Questioning Church Mission |
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That being said, when the leadership revisits the church mission, it will generally follow pretty similar steps to those for analyzing personal calling, with the additional understanding that church missions are generally paired with church visions; the latter being where the church is going, and the former being how it will get there. Wise church leaders will look at how the people God has called to that body can do a work that uses the available gifts, skills, and interests to engage with the church's context to participate in a work that only God can bring to fruit.
To this end, I have watched for a couple decades as white churches have made strides toward integration. These were mostly had through visible invitation to community; singing the occasional worship song in Spanish or Afrikaans to show unity with Christians abroad, making a point of inviting people from other ethnic backgrounds to become members, having major denominations make apologies for former racist practices and beliefs and expressing interest in moving forward together. Some of it was just different styles of church that non-whites were interested in trying out. It seemed to be working. Formerly all-white churches across the country had more ethnic diversity in their seats, and that was that.
Then, a few years ago, it fell apart.
Social Justice in the Church | |
So they left. Because what had become apparent was that they were never anything more than guests. What so many white evangelical churches had done was welcome people in who didn't look like them, but then kind of expected those people to start looking like them. White churches continued to have white leadership that talked about the desire for reconciliation but did not ask what it was that had kept people away to begin with. There were no changes to the culture of those churches, no involvement of new ideas about practical issues secondary to the gospel. Sermons would look at abortion debates and rail on and on about the value of life and the need to protect it at all costs and then turn away any discussion on black youth laying dead in the street because they felt racial discussion was divisive; or worse, they would condemn the dead and pray for protection of the shooter from the trials they faced for killing someone. I've known some who have left the faith, or at least the church, entirely; but many simply walked away from a place they came to understand they never really belonged anyway and went looking for the places that had always looked like them.
Controversy | |
Recently, a group called Founders Ministries released the trailer to a new documentary called By What Standard? which boasted input from a wealth of Southern Baptist leaders and theologians. The description the documentary offers for itself is that it is attempting to reveal and counter views seeping into the church that threaten to water down the gospel. While the documentary has not been released, so no one outside of the production team really know what it will say, the trailer focuses on those who have criticized how the church has handled issues like racial turmoil and sexual assault. |
There are two things about which everyone involved, even the leaders being presented as attacking the church, seem to agree on. One is that the existing attempts at racial integration have not worked and probably can never work; the debate is about why it didn't work and what to do about it. The second is that there is nothing that should be allowed to take the place of the gospel at the heart of the church; the difference is whether or not other things have any place in the church.
You see, when someone comes along and says that we need to seek input from the people who feel hurt by the church, to find out how the church hurt them and if it can do anything to fix that, they are not necessarily saying that the church should then use that input as the fundamental basis for their activities. They can, of course, there are cases of that happening; but most often what is actually being suggested is that we learn how to apply the gospel in a way that more accurately shows the love of Christ and our unity in Him to the people around us. It is not a compromise of the gospel to ask how different people are hearing the gospel and what we can do to help them better understand it in their own lives.
It is true that we should not allow anything into our churches that contradicts the Bible. I would argue it is just as true that we should not allow ourselves to reject things that work alongside the Bible simply because they weren't born in the church. Social justice is not evil; it can become an idol, but so can everything else. I daresay our idea of a perfect church can be just as much of an idol. The desire to preserve the culture of the church, a culture that so often looks far more American than Christian, is not less of an incursion than allowing work to be done about real issues people in the community are facing.
And this is why racial integration didn't work. It's also why so many victims of abuse have left. It wasn't because the black people or the assault victims in the congregation demanded too much, it was because none of their requests or desires were considered important enough to try. We had decided that the culture of the church needed to look how we had designed it and then called any concern or idea that came from outside the white male experience as being a distraction. And any distraction was labeled an attempt to subvert the good work of the church, a "godless ideology." The white church was white to the core and made the mistake of thinking that anything black came from outside the church and had to be guarded against. We sought to bring them in so we could see they were there but never gave them the means to make it their home as well. The abused cried out for us to help them, to show the compassion of Christ on them and condemn the work of their abusers for their violence, and we told them they mattered and were important but refused to behave in any way that would show this to be true.
And now that they're leaving, we're bickering over whether or not it would be Christian of us to set our ideal experience aside and allow the changes that would make us look like the first century church we were trying to emulate in the first place. We told them their presence mattered but never allowed them to feel as though they mattered as people, let alone as siblings in Christ, as equal participants in a church that can cross cultural divides. We opened windows in our cultural walls and then cried foul when people on the other side pointed out that the wall was still there. We silenced people who had something uncomfortable to say and then condemned them for feeling invisible and unwanted around us.
It is true that we must not let the gospel, or the Bible that delivers that gospel, to be dethroned from the core of who we are. It is also true that in our treatment of people who have come to us asking for action regarding pain in their lives, we have been wrong. And we have people now standing up and calling us to repentance for our arrogance and dismissal of people who we invited in and then hurt. And if we will not at least be humble enough to ask if we were anything less than perfect, to even briefly consider the possibility that we are failing to live out the call God has placed on us, then we cannot expect God to have much patience with us.
At the core of this issue is the question of what the church is. If the church is basically a regional expression, a sort of divine government over a parcel of land, then it should make sense that people be incorporated into it based on their place of birth, as citizens of both a physical and a spiritual nation. However, there is no trace of this idea in scripture. If Paul could say to the church in Corinth, “now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it,” then the church must be defined by its relationship to Christ (1 Cor 12:27 NASB). That is, in order for the church to be Christ’s body, the church must be in Christ - and no one is in Christ who has not been redeemed by him. If the church are specifically those who have become “dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” then there can be no one in the church who are not yet dead to sin, and only those who have been made alive in Christ can be members of it (Rom 6:11 NASB).
So the Baptist holds that the defining trait of the church is that it is the body of Christ, or more specifically, the gathering of those who are in Christ into one body. This doctrine naturally flows into all others by which the Baptist can be recognized. If the body of those in Christ gathered is the body of Christ, then the local church is able to stand as the body of Christ. The local church is independent, not reliant on a larger body whether religious or secular for authority to operate as Christ’s body, and has for itself Christ as its head (cf. Col 1:18). This frees the local church not only from the structures of a larger religious body but also from the dictates of any mortal government. The local church is an expression of the fullness of the body of Christ just as Christ, though finite in His body, was able to express the fullness of the infinite God while walking the Earth. This enables the local church to carry out the full mission of Christ’s body in the world without borrowing authority from a larger structure, including ordaining, releasing, and holding accountable their own leadership; while leaving the local church free to partner with other local churches as equals.
If the church is composed of those who are in Christ, then the mark of entry into the body must be given only to those who are in Christ. The idea that baptism is the mark of entrance into the church is not specific to Baptists - most, if not all, denominations would agree with that claim. The different ideas on when baptism should be applied are based not on the function of baptism, but are fundamentally built on differing ideas of what the church is and therefore who receives entry. As stated above, a view of the church that equates entry with physical citizenship must baptize immediately, as the child is understood to be in the church at the time of birth. A belief that the church is the gathering of those in Christ’s body, however, demands that baptism be withheld until a person is actually in Christ’s body.
This also informs the difference between those bodies who believe that baptism has any ability to save or impute grace onto the baptized, and the Baptist who believes it to be only a sign. If baptism is applied after one is already in Christ, then the baptism itself cannot hold any power to place one into the body. It cannot change one’s nature into that which it already is. In fact, all ordinances of the church must be symbolic. If a person can only be in the church by already being in Christ and redeemed by Him, then no practice of those already in the church will have the power to bring people into it. Baptism cannot redeem because it is applied to the already redeemed, and the same goes for the taking of bread and wine in communion. The body and blood of Christ have no need to be physically present in the bread and wine because the body gathered is the physical manifestation of the body of Christ already. Christ is present in a special way whenever and wherever His people are gathered, they do not need to invoke Him into presence through another medium (cf. Matt 18:20).
When one is asked to define the distinction Baptists and Baptist-like bodies have with all other groups of Christians, the answer must begin with the doctrine of the believer’s church. All other things that define the Baptists as a specific and unique movement are born from this doctrine. However, the need to grasp this distinction goes beyond simply defining Baptists to those who are not Baptists. Keeping this understanding in mind also enables the local church to hold itself, its members, and its leadership accountable to its effects. The local church, as the body of Christ, must be working on the mission Christ has given it. The church must be vigilant that it recognizes those who are in Christ and refrains from giving undue authority to those who are not, whether they are attending church services or sitting in positions of political power. In order to faithfully carry out the identity Baptists have, the individual Baptist must know what that identity is- and it begins by grasping the doctrine of the believer’s church.
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