church – Page 4

On Church, Part 5: How You Doin’?

March 11, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We’ve looked at the need for you be an active part of your local assembly. We’ve toyed with some ideas, based on your gifts and abilities. Now we could use some help in thinking of things we haven’t thought of yet, and in evaluating the thoroughness of what we’re doing.

I’ll start by passing along an observation I first came across in a book by Charles Ryrie.

Many gifts are commanded of all believers, even those who don’t have that gift. We’re not supposed to confine ourselves to our specialties. You should expand beyond the scope of your spiritual gifts.

We’re all supposed to show mercy (Eph 4.32)—even those of us—like me—who aren’t inclined that way. We’re all supposed to teach one another (Mt 28.19). We’re all supposed to have faith, and to be faithful. And on it goes. I can never say, “That’s not my gift” as an excuse for not doing something.

So run down that list of spiritual gifts again; it’s time to get really creative. For each one, ask yourself, “How can I take a tiny step in that direction, even though it’s outside of my comfort zone?”

Yeah, I know I’ve already said that we don’t know for sure what some of the gifts are. Maybe you’re not sure what “word of wisdom” is. That’s OK; we do know we’re supposed to exercise wisdom, right? What areas of your life in the body show a lack of wisdom? How can you improve in that area? You don’t know? Ask somebody in your church who knows you well. Maybe he can help.

So go down the list. I’ll wait. …

How about another measurement device? This one isn’t original—a lot of people have looked into it, and a former pastor of mine did a whole (really excellent) series on it.

One anothering.

The New Testament mentions a lot of ways that we’re supposed to interact with one another. It starts with Jesus’ “new commandment” in John 13.34 (and often elsewhere), that we “love one another,” as he has loved us. I suppose we could consider that one the umbrella commandment, the one that defines and assimilates all the others. It’s the second great commandment, that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

And how do we do that, specifically? Pull out your concordance, or fire up your Bible app, and survey the list—

Prefer one another in honor (Rom 12.10)
Receive one another (Rom 15.7)
Admonish one another (Rom 15.14; Col 3.16)
Greet one another (Rom 16.16; 1Co 16.20; 2Co 13.12; 1P 5.14)
Serve one another (Gal 5.13)
Bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6.2)
Forbear one another (Eph 4.2; Col 3.13)
Forgive one another (Eph 4.32; Col 3.13)
Teach one another (Col 3.16)
Comfort one another (1Th 4.18)
Edify one another (1Th 5.11)
Exhort one another (Heb 3.13; 10.25)
Consider one another—to provoke one another to love and good works (Heb 10.24)

And there are some prohibitions—

Don’t judge one another (Rom 14.13)
Don’t bite and devour one another (Gal 5.15)
Don’t provoke one another (Gal 5.26)
Don’t envy one another (Gal 5.26)
Don’t hate one another (Ti 3.3)

There. That should keep us busy for a day or two.

Do you see how this works? We can spend a lifetime learning how to serve one another in the church, making mistakes and learning from them, getting better at what we do, expanding our horizons, finding new skills and abilities and gifts, ever growing as a body in Christ toward the mature people we need to be—the people that the Spirit himself is patiently molding into the very image of Christ.

What a great way to spend—no, to invest—your life!

A word of caution.

This is an infinite task. You can’t do it in a day, or a week—or even your entire lifetime. Don’t exhaust yourself trying to do everything. Pick an opportunity and devote some time and effort to it. Add others as you have opportunity or as the Spirit directs you down unexpected paths. Slow and steady wins the race.

Maybe you won’t be at church every time the doors are open. Others can fill in those slots. God isn’t impressed by obsessive, detail-oriented frenzy to do everything. He loves you, and he loves your love for him. Live with joy, grow with patience, focus on the goal, do what you can.

In all things, Christ.

Part 6

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On Church, Part 4: Doing What You Can

March 7, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I’ve suggested that you ought to be part of a local church assembly, and that you ought to be active, not passive, in your membership there. So what does that look like?

I’ll tell you what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like feeling obligated to “be there every time the doors are open” and feeling guilty if you aren’t. For starters, not every church activity is your business; obviously, I don’t go to the ladies’ Bible studies or the practice sessions for the children’s choir. In my previous post I noted, almost in passing, that all of us are gifted by the Spirit with particular aptitudes that he intends for us to use for the benefit of others in the body. We can start with that, and focus on the activities of the church for which we seem suitably fitted.

But before we start, let’s be sure we’re understanding what the Bible actually teaches about the gifts, and not the mythology that seems to have accumulated around them over the last few decades. I’ve posted on that before, and I’d encourage you to read that post now, before we proceed.

OK. If you’ve read the linked post, you know that you have one or more spiritual gifts, but that you might not know for sure what they are, and that you might not even be able to know for sure what they are. You also have natural abilities, latent or obvious; and your spiritual gifts might tie in nicely with those, or they might be distinct.

So how to proceed?

I’d suggest that you ask yourself a few simple questions:

What do I like?
What am I good at?
What have other people said I’m good at?

Sure, scan down the list of spiritual gifts linked in the earlier post, but don’t limit your thinking to those terms. Lay everything out on the table.

I like people.
I don’t like people—or at least, they make me really uncomfortable.
I like to stay out of the spotlight.
I like to solve problems.
I like to hug people who are crying.
I like old people.
I like one-on-one relationships more than speaking in public.
My best subject in school was math.
I like to fix things. Physical, mechanical things.

Keep writing things down. Take inventory. Be honest with yourself.

Now, go down the list, one item at a time, and ask yourself, “How can I use this for the kingdom?” And since it’s typically easier to start small, ask, “How can I use this for the benefit of someone in my local assembly?”

You like old people? Visit the old people in your church, especially the ones whose physical health may limit them in some way. Just sit and talk. Or take them grocery shopping. Or bring them to church, if they can get out but would rather not drive and don’t want to sit alone. Ask them what they need, and pick the things you can help with.

You like to fix things? Ask the pastor, or the facilities manager, what needs fixing, and help out with something—something you can actually fix. I know a church that had several members who were good at working on cars. One Saturday they gathered at the church, and the widows brought their cars in for a free inspection and recommendations from people they could trust.

You’re good at math? Help tutor the kids in your church who are struggling with it. Ask the homeschoolers in your church if they could use some help teaching math to their middle- or high-schooler. Especially calculus.

Like babies? Work in the nursery. Please.

Not queasy? Get certified in CPR, or get EMT certification.

And beyond all these things, just interact. Talk to others. Listen to them. Share their joys, their sorrows, their struggles. Pray for them. And with them. Meet them for coffee. Be there.

You don’t have to “be there every time the doors are open” to have a really active part in the body life of your church.

And it doesn’t have to be limited to church. You can use the gifts and abilities God has given you to advance the kingdom outside the walls of your church as well.

Like radio-controlled airplanes? Join a local club, make friends, and live out grace, mercy, and peace before them. Be a friend. One of these days one of them is going to need help, and if you’ve done that, chances are he’ll come to you.

Gospel. Grace. Life.

For the Kingdom.

Next time, one more thought on how we relate in the body.

Part 5 Part 6

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On Church, Part 3: What’s the Point?

March 2, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1 Part 2

I’ve suggested in the earlier posts in this series that you ought to be part of a local church, an assembly of (admittedly broken) believers—that reasons for not doing that are invalid, and that those same reasons actually call for serious commitment, for becoming an active, registered member.

OK, now that you’re a member, what’s next? What’s the point of belonging to a church?

I’ve written on that question in a stand-alone post a couple of years ago. Go read that post; it’s The Point. When you get back, I’ll tell you a story.

Welcome back.

Let me tell you how I applied this concept in my own thinking.

I think my spiritual gift is teaching. (Might be wrong. My students, I suppose, sometimes wonder. And more on the whole spiritual gifts thing in the next post.) For most of my church life, I’ve taught in Sunday school or something similar, usually adults, with whom I’m far more comfortable than the Little Ones.

Well, several years ago the principle in the linked post (You did go read it, didn’t you? No? Well, go read it. I’ll still be here when you get back.) hit me like a ton of bricks. Church isn’t about getting blessed; it’s about giving, ministering to others by actively exercising the gifts God has given you for that purpose. There are no bleachers, and there are no spectators. Quit sittin’ around, and carry your end of the log.

So I thought about that.

I can teach. And I’m teaching Sunday school, so I guess I’m good, right? There. Pangs of conscience go away.

Wait a minute. Maybe I’m overthinking this here, but it seems to me that just showing up and teaching every week isn’t really the same thing as interacting substantively with individual fellow believers. The assembly is about interaction, not just action.

So I decided I’d see if I could step it up a notch. Look for personal interaction based on teaching.

There are lots of ways to do that—accountability partners, one-on-one Bible studies, and so on. In those days, I decided to make just a simple, incremental change: I’d talk to a lot of people between Sunday school and church, and probe a little to see whether they had any questions about the Bible. So during those few minutes I’d walk around where the people were, trying to make myself as visible as an absurdly short person can, and just greet people and look for openings.

And it worked. Pretty much every week somebody would say, “Hey, Dan! Got a question for you!”

Awesome.

One time someone asked me, “What’s a dugong?”

“What?!”

“A dugong. It’s in the Bible.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve read the Bible, and I’ve never heard of it.”

“Sure it is. Right here.” And he showed me Exodus 25.5 (he was apparently using the Revised English Bible, or a more common version that had the word in the marginal notes; I don’t recall), and there it was. Dugong hides in the tabernacle. I was carrying a KJV at the time, and mine said “badgers’ skins.”

Well, whaddaya know. I have some studying to do.

“I don’t know,” I told him, “but I’ll chase that down this afternoon. You going to be here tonight?”

“Yup.”

“OK, I’ll tell you then.”

And that afternoon I learned that a dugong is something like a manatee, and that it lives, among other places, in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, right next to the Sinai Peninsula.

Wouldn’t it make sense for God to specify a local marine mammal to provide the outer covering of the Holy Place in the Tabernacle?

And so I learned something, and my friend learned something, and I’ve never forgotten that something since.

I was hooked.

So every Sunday, I’m on a mission. Walk around, greet everybody I see, talk for as long as they want. Maybe they’ll have a question that I can answer. Maybe they’ll have one that I can’t answer, and I can get back to them. Maybe they’ll tell me something I don’t know, and I can check it out and then use it to teach other people. So many opportunities, so little time.

Oh! Is it time for lunch already? Hate to leave church so soon. So much good stuff to do.

Try it. It’ll change your church life—and probably the rest of it too.

Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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On Church, Part 2: What’s in It for You

February 28, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

We’ve noted that some people resist committing to a local church, and I think we’ve demonstrated that their reasons for doing so are short-sighted. Even in a broken world with broken institutions full of broken people, surrounding yourself with your fellow travelers—and committing to them—is not only worth it, but it’s a mark of personal and social health.

So why get involved? Several reasons.

First, social health. It really isn’t good for man—male or female—to be alone. Sure, there are introverts, and they’re not weird or antisocial or dangerous. But introversion and isolation are not the same thing, and we all need healthy relationships with other people. It broadens our outlook, it imports a wealth of experiences and wisdom, and it keeps us normal.

But there are reasons beyond that. Any old social club can broaden your outlook. What else?

Committing to a local church connects you with other believers—fellow travelers, as I called them above—and those connections are part of God’s plan for your spiritual growth. When you were converted, you didn’t just find the fire escape from hell; you began a life-long process of spiritual growth, of increasing Christ-likeness, superintended by the Spirit of God himself (2Co 3.18). He uses various instruments to keep you climbing that mountain—the Scripture (Ac 20.32), prayer (Heb 4.18), and interaction with other believers (Eph 4.29). As your fellow believers interact with you and exercise their spiritual gifts on your behalf, you’re going to be helped, even propelled, on your trek up that mountain. I could use the help; couldn’t you?

If you won’t commit to a local assembly of believers, chances are that you’re losing battles in your mind and in your home because you’re trying to fight alone, and you’re getting outflanked every day. And chances are that you’re not that serious about studying your Bible—really getting into it up to your eyeballs, and applying every day the things that you’re learning there. And chances are further that prayer isn’t that a big a deal to you—or that it doesn’t seem to be making a genuine connection.

The means of grace matter. And the assembly is one of them.

One more benefit of committing—and here I mean committing specifically by becoming an official member.

You ought to join your church because if you don’t, you can’t get kicked out.

Well, that was blunt. Perhaps I should explain.

An important part of your soul care, endorsed and even commanded by Jesus himself, is accountability to the fellow believers who know you best—your local assembly. When you’re headed for trouble, God’s plan is that you’ll be surrounded by people who know God and who love you and who are willing to invest the time necessary to see to the care of your soul. I’m not talking here about busybodies or snoops or gossips; I’m talking about people who genuinely love you and are ready to sacrifice their time, their money, their prayers, and their energy for your good. Maybe they’ll do that by helping you move, or cooking you a meal or three, or watching your kids when you have to go to the doctor. But one of the ways they’ll do that is by lovingly encouraging you to walk with them on the road to Christ-likeness. They’ll tell you, lovingly and graciously, when you’ve said or done something you shouldn’t. They’ll forgive you when you apologize; they’ll pray with you even if you’re crying and the whole thing is really awkward. And they’ll love you through it all.

Jesus said that if the church does that, and the sinning person (you, in this instance) will not repent, they slowly ratchet up the pressure until you do the right thing and have peace restored to your soul. And if you still resist, they are to remove you from the church as a way of increasing pressure on you to repent—even as they long and pray that you will repent and be restored to fellowship.

But if you’re not a member, they can’t kick you out. By not joining, you’re depriving God of one of the instruments he uses for your eternal spiritual good.

You’ve left the front door unlocked, and you’re in serious danger.

Don’t do that. Join.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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On Church, Part 1: At Arm’s Length

February 25, 2019 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

I’d like to begin a brief series on what our relationship should be with our local church. Like any culture, our culture—early 21^st-century American conservative evangelicalism—has its strengths and its weaknesses, its sore spots and its blind spots. I think there are some elements in our church culture that have greatly improved on the way things used to be done—improved in the sense of becoming more in line with biblical teaching—but I think there are also some important elements that we tend to de-emphasize.

So a few posts on some of those.

To begin with, I’d like to talk about the importance of church membership.

There are those who do emphasize it—I very much like the idea behind Josh Harris’s Stop Dating the Church, published 15 years ago now*—but I’ve noticed that a lot of believers—and they are believers—seem to want to attend church but not join. And there are others who make much of being “spiritual” but distrustful of “institutional Christianity.”

Let’s start with the obvious. People are busted, badly so, by their congenital and pervasive sinfulness (Rom 3.9-18). That means that all associations of people—governments, businesses, Facebook, and, yes, churches—are busted as well. They don’t work perfectly, or even almost perfectly, and it’s a constant struggle to keep them out of the ditches on both sides of their obsessive rush toward complete collapse.

Whatever church you associate with is going to disappoint you, for actual reasons. Busted organizations do that.

But we don’t give up on our family and friends when they disappoint us, and we shouldn’t give up on our churches when they disappoint us. There’s a reason churches exist, and those reasons don’t disappear when their fallenness shows up.

Why might some people want to hang around them but still hold them at arm’s length?

Maybe an earlier hurtful experience—a real one, not to be minimized or dismissed.
A fear of commitment, a fear that if we get involved too intimately, we’ll be asked to do stuff, some of which we might not enjoy and all of which will crowd our already busy schedules.
A fear of accountability. We don’t want people poking around in our business. We’re up to something that we like a lot, but we’re afraid that we might be found out, and who knows what would happen then? I have a family; I have a career. I have to think about these things.
I ride alone, cowboy.

So let’s think about those reasons.

Sometimes people do get hurt by others, maybe others who are really trying to help them, but are just clumsy or ignorant, or maybe others who are not trying to help them, but seek to exploit them for some personal benefit, whether money or power or sexual satisfaction or something else. Those things are wrong—deeply, ungodly wrong. But they don’t change the fact that the victim arrived looking for help, and he still needs that help. There’s still a reason to seek a church that isn’t pathological. But they’re all pathological. My experience, and the experience of hundreds of others, proves it. Oh, my friend, now you’re another kind of victim. You’ve fallen victim to the logical fallacy called “hasty generalization,” or “insufficient data sample.” There are good churches, and there are good people, in the sense of people who are redeemed and well intentioned and competent. So as brutalizing and painful and real as the hurt is, it doesn’t constitute a reason to keep all churches at a distance.
It’s true that committing to a church will call for some of your time. (More on that later in the series.) But here’s the thing. You’re going to be spending your time on something—you can’t save it up—so why not spend it on something that benefits both you and others? Why not make a difference? Why not change the world, one image of God at a time? Isn’t that more important than Netflix, or basketball, or radio-controlled airplanes? And who said you’d have to give those things up anyway?
It’s also true that a good church will add a level of accountability to your life. (More on that, too, later.) But why fear cleaning up areas of your life that are distancing you from God, family, and friends? Why fear joy? If cleaning out a physical closet can spark joy, why not clean out the closets of your heart? And why not accept help from people who love you and are committed to your eternal good?

Living in fear isn’t anybody’s goal, and it isn’t a pattern for a delightful life. Why not walk away from all that?

Next time, the benefits of getting involved.

*Yeah, Josh Harris isn’t perfect, and he’s wisely repudiated his silly book I Kissed Dating Good-bye, but he’s had a good idea or two, and I think this is one of them.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 8

August 6, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Number 7: Fellowship. You need those people who disagree with you.

Believe it or not, one year I played football. American football. I was an offensive lineman.

Pop Warner League. Seventh grade. Weight limit was 110 pounds at the top, 75 at the bottom. I was 2 pounds too light, but they let me play anyway.

We called ourselves the Patriots. (We were in a Boston suburb.) We lost every game but one.

That experience didn’t jump-start my career, but it did teach me a lot of things. Most important, it forever changed my thinking about diversity.

As with any team sport, football has different positions, and they have different requirements. The offensive lineman has pretty much one job: be a wall. Protect the quarterback. Give him 2 or 3 seconds to get the ball where it needs to go.

So what does an offensive lineman look like? He’s big. Really big. 350 pounds big. His job is to get in the way and stay there.

Out at the far end of the line is the wide receiver. What’s his job? Get down the field—sometimes waaaay down the field—and catch the ball. And then run with it. He needs to be fast. And agile, to out-maneuver the defensive secondary. And it helps if he has some vertical reach so he can catch a broader range of passes.

So what does he look like? He’s not 350 pounds, that’s for sure. He’s thinner, more like an Olympic sprinter, and he’s usually tall, with an ability to jump. And he has great hands.

Now, which of those body types is better?

Neither one, obviously. They’re both necessary for the success of the team. You put an offensive lineman out at the wide receiver’s position, and he’ll be worn out after 2 or 3 plays. You put the wide receiver in at left guard, and they’ll be carrying him—or the quarterback—off the field in short order.

You need them both, and you want them both. It’s the diversity that makes your team great.

What about church? What about life?

It’s human nature to want to be with people who are like you. They look like you, they think like you, they live like you. Other people are unwise, or icky, or nuts. Anybody who drives faster than you is a maniac; anybody who drives slower is a moron. So we go to church with people like us.

And our church is all wide receivers, or offensive linemen, and we wonder why we don’t win any games.

You need to surround yourself with people who are different from you. Sure, racially different—whatever that means—but different in the more important ways as well. Different in the way they think. Socially different. Culturally different. Politically different.

Different, in significant ways.

Why?

Because you’re not good at everything, and you need them to be good at whatever you’re not. You need their strengths, their insights, and especially their correction. You need them.

For many years I was on the elder board of my church. As we wrestled with hard cases and difficult decisions, I came to appreciate the fact that we had different kinds of people at the table.

We had men with the gift of mercy. They would bring a situation to the table: here’s someone who doesn’t have enough to eat. And they would weep, and they would say, “We need to help this family!”

But we also had men without the gift of mercy. They would listen, and they wouldn’t weep. And they’d say, “Why do they not have enough to eat? Is it because he’s foolish with his money? And if so, should we be giving him more money? How about if we buy him a bag of groceries, and then have one of the financial advisers in the church give him some pro bono help setting up a budget and learning how to stick to it?”

(I’ll let you guess which of those groups I was in.)

Now. Which of those people on the elder board is more important?

You need them both. You need the one who weeps, and you need the one who doesn’t. They both make you a better team.

Now let me place the rubber on the road.

When families are being separated at the border, you need people with the gift of mercy, and you need people without it.

You need people who get righteously angry at the suffering that’s going on. You need people who call down a system that takes 3-year-olds to court. Without their parents.

But you also need people who say, “These people are in this predicament because they broke the law. And if we subsidize their behavior, we’re going to get more of it. And that’s not good for us, and it’s most certainly not good for them. We ought to do what we can to discourage this kind of behavior.”

You don’t need to be all in at either pole—you probably shouldn’t be. But you should listen to them.

And we—we—should work together to bring about a system that works.

We can’t do it without each other.

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The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right

September 4, 2017 by Dan Olinger 15 Comments

A few posts back I mused about one of the church’s great purposes: to be a place where God’s people use their gifts to serve one another, to love their neighbors as themselves.

There’s an even greater purpose, to which that one contributes. The church is to be, as the theologians say, doxological; it is to bring glory to God, to incite praise.

How does it do this? Well, when the church gathers, we praise God in worship, and that’s certainly part of it. And as we use our gifts to nurture growth in others and help them become more like Christ, that’s part of it too. But there’s another way; it’s described in Ephesians 3.

The church is God’s creation, not ours. He is the one who envisioned and then brought into being an organization—an organism—that is not limited by bloodline or geographical boundary, like OT Israel. It consists of Jews and Gentiles (Eph 3.6), from all over the globe, who are brought together in unified worship of God.

And what is his purpose in doing that? Take a look at verse 10:

To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.

That is, that the heavenly beings (“principalities and powers”) might look at what God has done in the church and recognize the rich wisdom of the God who did it.

What does it take to impress someone who goes to work in heaven every day?

And why would the unity of God’s diverse peoples be so impressive? Because Jews and Gentiles are supposed to be enemies, not friends. If natural enemies are gathered together, united in worship to God and in loving care for one another, there’s no earthly reason for it. Only God could do that.

And now to explain this post’s title.

Since the days of Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority—and long before that—some Christians have listened to the siren song of political influence. They have chosen to position themselves publicly as the political enemies of the very people God has called them to reach, to draw into this inexplicably unified body. And for any number of reasons—fear of loss of earthly freedom or comforts, discomfort with or even disdain for people who are radically different from them, even perhaps the desire for power—they have devoted their energies to increasing the divide rather than tapping into the divine power that brings people together in one body, in Christ, despite those differences.

But those other people are so different! They’re so wrong about so many things!

Yes. Precisely. Only God could bring us together, by changing us—all of us—from the inside out. But he can and will do that. So why add to the momentum in the other direction? Why oppose his cause?

Why tweak the political opposition for the lapses in logic of their political positions, when the cause—the real cause, the eternal one—is so much greater and so much more worthy of your limited effort? Do you really think that if you zing that leftist, he’ll be inclined to come to you for guidance to the grace that is truly greater than all his sin? Or do you not care whether he does at all?

To whom have you shown such grace today? You know, the kind of grace God has shown you?

There is a woman in my church who recommitted herself to Christ late in life. She comes whenever she can, despite significant physical obstacles. She asks me questions if something I’ve taught hasn’t been clear. And when she gets home, she downloads the Sunday school and sermon notes from the church website and pores over them, line by line, with her Bible open on her lap, filling her mind and her heart with the promises and commands of God.

And she voted for Obama.

Twice.

And though I didn’t (even once!), I’m OK with that. Because she’s a reminder that the grace of God that has brought us together is greater than the forces that appear to be great enough to drive us apart—even to drive this great country to the brink of civil war.

May her tribe increase. May our churches be filled with people who disagree with me and you about really important things—politics, lifestyles, culture, food and drink, medical approaches, whatever—and who are drawn together as one body by the far more powerful grace of the God we are all determined to love more than anyone or anything else.

May people in our community who are angry, embittered, frustrated, frightened, hopeless see in our church clear evidence that there is a power that unites us that is infinitely greater than the nonsense around us—that our hope for today and tomorrow, as well as for eternity, is not in a president or a Congress or a Supreme Court, or even in violent confrontation in the streets, but in the one in whom we live and move and have our being—in the one whose will is done just as certainly on earth as it is in heaven.

When we mock political opponents, when we add to the national polarization, when we speak passionately about this world more than the next, we make the mighty grace of God look weak and even inconsequential. And then we wonder why our countrymen mock him.

God reigns. Why do so many of his people behave as though he doesn’t?

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Are We Doing Church Wrong?

July 31, 2017 by Dan Olinger 8 Comments

Why?

Why do you go to church?

Because it’s Sunday, and that’s what we do on Sundays?

Or maybe because you need something to hang onto if you’re going to make it through another week? A Bible verse, a thought from a sermon, an encouraging line in a song?

I’d like to suggest that you may be doing it wrong. Bear with me here.

Let’s get back to the beginning. God has graciously gathered his people into a body he calls the Church.

Why did he pick that name?

Church. In the language of the New Testament, it means “gathering” or “assembly.”

Think about it. Of all the things God could have named his people for—forgiven ones, holy ones, loved ones, redeemed ones, known ones—he chose to name us “the gathering ones”—“the people who get together regularly.”

Apparently it’s really important to God that we assemble. And if so, then it ought to be important to us as well. Why?

Paul gives us the answer in several places; I particularly like the one in Ephesians 4:

¹¹And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. ¹⁵Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So why do we gather? We gather so that each one of us may exercise his gifts (vv 11-12) for the benefit of everyone else, to the further benefit of the body as a whole.

Well, how about that. You’re not there to get a blessing; you’re there to be one. You’re there to give, not to get.

And when everyone gives, everyone gets. When the pastor exercises his gifts in preaching, you’ll be ministered to by the sermon. When the congregation sings praises, you’ll be ministered to by the singing. But your motivation is not to receive; it’s to minister in the way that only you can, by the gifting of the Spirit.

Let me suggest a mindset for you.

If you’re a believer, you’re gifted by the Spirit in certain ways (1 Cor 12:7, 11). By the grace of God, you can minister to those around you. Maybe your gift is teaching. Maybe it’s serving. Maybe it’s mercy: listening to others and showing them grace.

When you’re with the assembly, you’re there by God’s calling—because someone there needs what you have, and you can exercise your gift(s) in ways no one else can. If your gift is mercy, your job there is to find someone who needs mercy, and dump a truckload of it all over them.

So you don’t walk into the building, find a seat in the back, and wait to get blessed. You’re on a mission; you seek. You talk to people, asking them how they’re doing, and listening to what they say, maybe asking further questions to coax the truth out of them, demonstrating that you care and that you have time to listen. And when you find someone who needs mercy—or whatever your gift is—he’s the reason you’re here today. Give him your gift.

And you can’t go home until you’ve done that, because until then you haven’t really done church.

How different would church be If Everybody Did?