Is church an optional extra, a necessary evil, or something else (if so what) and why?
Our generation has two huge problems in our thinking about church, both are values we absorb from our culture; individualism and uniformity. We’re taught to be individuals from a young age, to be independent and stand on our own two feet. But we also prize uniformity, we mix most often with people who are like us in age, education, back ground, life stage, thinking, approach and so on. Why? Because it is easier, less effort, there are fewer misunderstandings and problems with communication, more shared values and assumptions, less need to forgive and to work hard to love.
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The problem is that they limit our joy in the gospel and stop us getting God’s intention for us as his church. Part of the aim of this series is to look at God’s view of what the church is, not the church universal but our local church, Grace Church. To have our eyes lifted to see what God says we’re doing as we do life together centred on the gospel. God creates the church as an essential for our good and joy in him and to declare and bring him glory.
Both individualism and uniformity pervert God’s design for church and leave us short changed. If we find ourselves frustrated and longing for more from church we need to look at our hearts and thinking first and ask if the problem is the music or the structure or the programme or if it is in us. Because individualism will ensure we keep people at arm’s length, not revealing our hearts, or asking people to speak the gospel to us either as encouragement or rebuke, not committing to community, it will leave us with a shallow experience of church as event. And a desire for uniformity will lead to us to form cliques and stage/age/outlook groups and rob us of true joy in the gospel and the growth in love that brings.
In effect that means we pervert the glory of God’s design and purpose of the church. We take what was a masterpiece and smear paint over it, like a clumsy restoration artist who tries to improve the perfect picture, but in so doing simply adds layers of paint that make it hard to see the masters true brushstrokes.
As we turn to Corinthians there is a danger in thinking that it was ok for the early church, they had the Apostles, they had it easy compared to us, the early churches were the ideal, if only we were more like them. Corinth was a church divided by individualism and the cult of uniformity. In Ch1 they’re divided over leaders, Ch10-11 over whether they can or can’t eat food sacrificed to idols, Ch11 over wealth and the Lord’s Supper, and Ch11/12 over their use of spiritual gifts. Individualism ruled in Corinth and led to a church divided, full of cliques based on have/have not, gifted/less gifted. Paul writes to correct this wrong culturally infected view of church.
It helps us see God’s wonderful vision for church, but also challenges us about how we do church.
God’s Church in God’s image
Paul uses the image of a body with his stress being on the oneness of the body in its diversity. (12)Our physical body is composed of different parts with different roles but all united and working together as one body, so it is with the church, Christ’s body. Straight away Paul lifts our eyes up from the physical and the mundane, from the chairs that need putting out, the piano, the Sunday School, the meeting to the spiritual reality and gives us God’s view of church. The church not just universal but local is Christ’s body.
But there is more, the church is united not by our decision but by the Holy Spirit(13), as we are baptised with the Holy Spirit at conversion and filled with the Holy Spirit. And that primarily defines our identity; we’re now Spirit filled members of Christ’s body not Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and you could add poor or rich, middle class or working class, deprived or privileged, southern or northern, educated or not. The Spirit unites the many different parts of the body and works to keep us united as one body.
And (18, 24)God has placed the parts in the body together. God builds his church, God unites and calls together his people who are filled with the Spirit to form Christ’s body. That gives the church tremendous dignity.
We can look at church and feel it’s insignificant, we see what it’s missing; e.g. worship group, evangelist, leaders and so on... To keep with the body image we look and think we’re missing a hand, or afoot, or an eye, or a kidney. But God has placed our local church body together. And practically that ought to cause us to hold our tongues, there’s a danger that in listing churches short comings we criticise God, unthinkingly accusing him of failing to build the church right as if we could do it better.
It is arrogant to think we know better than God. So how do we deal with it when we feel there’s something missing in church? Pray about it, firstly looking into our hearts to see if uniformity and individualism are driving our thinking, do we just want church full of people like us, or church as we’d like it? We also need to thank God for what he’s put together, and then bring him our concern and leave it with him, not keep on about it or talk the church down to others. We mustn’t let it make us devalue what God has put together.
Diverse but not Divided (15-20)
The image painted in (15-17) has a hint of Frankenstein or Monsters Inc about it, with the whole body as an eye or ear. (18-20)We see the point of that illustration, God has put the church together with all its different gifts and characters and he has made us one. God hasn’t taken a divine iron to the church and ironed out all the differences, he hasn’t made everyone the same, but in the gospel by the Spirit he has made the many diverse parts into one body. That’s the glory of the Church, as we look round and see people who are different to us we must praise God for the power and wonder of the gospel.
One of the problems in Corinth was of people feeling inferior and unnecessary, they thought of themselves as not as gifted, or able, or as up-front and therefore less necessary. The danger is that leads them to want to be something they were not, and it distorts the body and means it doesn’t function properly.
That attitude is alive and well in church today, and it can be made worse by overemphasising one gift over another, one way of serving over others. It can lead to an inferiority complex which means people not gifted one way discount their gifting and become inactive, or even feeling it isn’t the church for me and leaving.
Particularly in our platform obsessed culture I think we tend to prize more highly positions of leadership and those that put you at the front of church, to the detriment of other gifts. As a church we must fight this culture, we must value and encourage everyone to serve with their gifts, providing opportunities and equipping as we do so that God’s church is seen in all its glory, and so that the church grows as a body, diverse but not divided.
United but not Uniform(21-26)
The other threat to the church is a desire for uniformity, for everyone to be like us. It evidences itself in cliques and groups forming in church which in are really about self love – as we love those who are like us we’re really loving ourselves – which in turn greats divisions and produce superior attitudes. We mustn’t let that happen because it rips, tears and divides God’s church. That superiority is seen (21)as the head looks down and says to the feet I don’t need you. That’s impossible says Paul, it can’t do that. There is no such thing as an appendix in the church, there is nothing our church body can manage without.
The church will be composed of stronger and weaker, more visible and less visible, protected and protector, but each part needs the other. And (24)God has designed it that way on purpose, that’s part of his plan for the church, why? (25)“so that there should be no division but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.” The church as each diverse part cares for each other diverse part is not divided but united, it displays the love of our good God.
Notice that the different parts have equal concern, we see what that looks like (26)“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.” It is not the job of a few to care for the many, it is the job of all the body. It is not up to the hands to look after each other, or the toes to care for one another. Everyone in the body is to care for everyone in the body. We need to look honestly at our practical outworking of this – who in the church am I caring for, who am I not? Whose needs do I know instantly and who do I not know what to pray for, let alone how to care for them? Am I only caring for those like me or who I already know well?
One of the ways we try to help this happen is through Gospel Groups, but they can also work against this, if we only care for those people in our group, if we only talk to those people on Sunday or only look out for them during the week.
When someone in church is suffering, grieving, struggling we should all feel it with them, compassion marks out the church and leads to practical action – we pop round, take a meal, take them out for coffee, listen, send a card, invite them over, pray with and for them. When someone disappears from church we ring them, or get in contact to see how they are and ask what we can pray for.
When someone is honoured we don’t envy them or their gifting but rejoice with them because God has gifted them for our good and the glory of his church.
Independence and uniformity will destroy, dislocate and dismember the body. The church is God’s glorious creation put together by him, united in the Spirit and with Christ as its head displaying his love, mercy, goodness and grace to a watching universe.
What a privilege to be called to be part of it, with the role God has assigned us with the gifts he has assigned us! What a tragedy if we allow individualism or anything else to create an attitude of superiority or inferiority that damages the body.
Discussion:
1. How should we deal with a sense of dissatisfaction with, or longing for more from, church?
2. How
can we encourage and facilitate equal concern for one another? What barriers are there to this and how do we
overcome them?
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