The last time I posted a sermon here,* I was preaching at Highland Baptist Church in Fitchburg, MA. My family ended up leaving there, and while I don't feel it's necessary to go into details here because it wasn't over anything terrible or sinful that we would need to call them out over, it is important for you to know that we landed at a church called Bethany Bible Chapel (commonly "The Chapel") in Winchendon, MA. There, I've been able to continue my education in an accredited church-based training program called Antioch School built around establishing competency and learning within the context of the life of the church. The experience there has already proven very beneficial to my growth and understanding of the function of the church and of church leadership, and I'm looking forward to completing my degree there and getting into the field. I'm actually planning on adapting some of the work I do for that program into posts for this blog.
Ortlund argues that this passage is a rare moment of Christ revealing his very heart to us in the gospels, and that if we taking it seriously, we will build our understanding of who He is and what He does as pouring from this heart. The book then goes on to address other passages that expand on this idea in some way or another.
This past Sunday the pastor was away, and I was given my first opportunity to preach at the Chapel. I was given clearance to choose my own passage and topic, though we did discuss what I'd chosen beforehand. I felt drawn to do a parallel concept to the sermon series, and as such set out to explore what the heart of Christ means for us as Christians. I built it out from Colossians 1:15-23. I preached from the ESV, but due to the legal statements I've chosen to use on this site, I quote it here from the 1995 edition of the New American Standard Bible: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach-- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister."
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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.
My wife used to make soaps and lotions and sell them at craft fairs. It was a short-lived affair but in the process she learned a lot about what goes into these things and how to make a good product. There were all kinds of things she added to these soaps for effect. Slices of dried loofah plant for scrubbing, some kind of berry-looking thing for scent, I never really understood a lot of where these things came from, but they worked. |
I guess we'll see which one gets posted first.
The thing that seems to define much of this discussion is the concept of chemical purity. See, most chemicals and elements are reactive to some degree, so keeping them pure means keeping them isolated. If you let chemicals interact, you will usually end up with a reaction that turns both substances into something that is really neither of the original parts, and neither will ever be pure again.
So much of our discussion of purity sounds like that. Purity culture means keeping oneself hidden away from anything that might possibly have some corrupting influence. Purity culture views any interaction with mess as permanently and negatively changing the person. You can never be pure again, there will always be a little bit of taint in your very being, the things you've encountered will make you something less like you and a little more like them and so we have to stay removed, isolated, untarnished. After all, so many of the most public Christian voices really are highly reactive, exploding at any exposure to that which they don't recognize as the church they've always known, so it's easy to believe that we really are just fragile little vials of goodness surrounded by a world of malicious reagent.
But I would argue that this is not the sort of purity we see in scripture. God commands the priesthood in the Old Testament to be cleansed before entering His presence, not because He is afraid of being corrupted, but because contact with the true purity of His presence would destroy them if they enter while dirty. Jesus sits down and eats with tax collectors and all sorts of sinners, and freely touches lepers. In all cases, Christ remains clean when He does so, and those He contacts go away more clean than before.
The purity of God is more like the purity of soap. Yes, there's still a chemical reaction involved, but it is one that must happen in order to make things clean. Soap is not pure because it is isolated, it is pure in such a way that it can make other things pure. This means that pumice, although just a rock, becomes both clean and a cleansing agent when put into soap. It means that soap, if left in isolation, is not made more pure; rather, it is made useless.
Christ came into the world, among other things, to make us pure. He does this by bringing us into Himself, exposing us to His presence, allowing the purity that He has to cleanse us. Like the pumice, we then become agents in His purifying work. We can trust that He has made us clean, no matter what we bring to Him with us. Some of that cleansing process may completely unravel things that we held together with gunk. Some of it may not be comfortable. But we are not pure by isolation, we are pure by interaction, and this purity is meant to be spread.
Now, there is a wisdom in considering what you add to that mix. My wife would soak lavender or other things in the oil for a while before using the oil to make soap, because it added scent to the final product. It made the end result a more desirable substance. The nature of soap is such that I could have, if I was the sort, added something nasty to some oil, like sewage or something else no one would really want. The soap would still work, it would cleanse both whatever I put in and whatever it came into contact with afterward. But no one would want to use it. It would have been a terrible decision for her business (and probably our marriage), but functionally, it would still be soap. Some of the things we choose to steep ourselves in operate the same way; they don't necessarily change the purification we're going through, but they do impact what the final result will look (and smell) like.
Where this analogy really breaks down is that God is not some blind, one-shot chemical process. He can, and will, purify anything we give over to Him. He is personal and reserves the right to fiddle with the details. He may require us to not engage with something any more, but that's handled on a personal basis. Adding something we shouldn't to the mix doesn't necessarily ensure that we will never be the result He wants, as He can cleanse even that. It is when we insist on keeping what does not match with the process He has for us, when we choose to continue pursuing our own notions rather than His plans, that we begin to stink. Even this can be cleansed if we will just stop and turn it over to Him, because the cleansing comes through interaction and not through isolation.
Christian purity culture fails because it is, fundamentally, not Christian. It does not reflect the person of Christ, it does not operate from the basis of His work in us. Listen: if you are in Christ, you are being made pure. Full stop. Your sanctification is a process, that purity is still being applied to you, and you should consider what you will do to help the final result of that process be one that is pleasing to God. But we can't sit around fretting about ruining ourselves with every little mistake. We can't allow ourselves to live as though dirty things from our past (whether done by us or to us) have irreparably corrupted us. We cannot hide away in isolation from a world that desperately needs the cleansing He can provide through us. We can trust that God will take everything, all of our experiences and issues and desires and skills, and purify them for His purposes. So instead of pushing purity culture as it now exists, let us consider pointing people to the Christ who makes all things new and trust Him to do that in and through our lives everywhere we go. Especially in the big messes we can't possibly handle on our own.
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