February 20, 2007
Empty Nesters
I’ve often heard a mixed message from the church. On the one hand we’re expected to use our talents to serve in the church and on the other hand we’re told to go out and make a difference in the world. While my children were still at home I always felt obligated to participate and serve in the youth departments. However, becoming an Empty Nester freed me to serve elsewhere…including areas outside the church. I’ll admit I’m having an inner struggle with guilt feelings for using my volunteer hours in a service club rather than in the church. But, if my children can leave the home nest, I suppose I can leave the church nest.
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Gail;
-----Mixed messages are revealing. Almost always, where there is a mixed message there is some degree of falsehood. That falsehood could proceed from inability, carelessness, or outright deceit. One of the fallacies causing mixed messages in nearly every church is the idea that we go to church in order to serve Jesus. A reading of those new Testament passages touching upon the church presents imagery of a gathering of people who have come together to receive support and nurture from the Lord through one another. The popular concept of an organization that is ever reaching to do more and be more itself for Jesus through its members is absent. The sharper image of the church in the New Testament is that of a support group.
-----So then, what about the difference to be made in the world by the church? Instruction, encouragement, comfort, exhortation, inspiration are just a few of the functions that the New Testament presents for brothers and sisters to be doing for one another. It speaks of always being prepared to give answer for the hope in us (I Pet 3:15), to live in peace with all men and be holy (Heb 12:14), doing good to all men (Gal 6:10), setting examples for both those who know the Lord and those who do not. Go ahead and test the Word out. Wherever the Word is exhorting to do this or to do that it is exhorting the believer to do it. It calls the believer into the services of one another and unto the proper behavior towards outsiders.
-----I believe it is through careless thinking that the idea of serving the church, as if it were an entity of its own, has come to life. I know there is a certain element which desires to take advantage of that idea and puff themselves up by impressively running the church as a flourishing organization. But the church is really nothing more than us who are the Lord’s coming together in all that He is making of each one of us, and being that in close proximity. The freedoms we have in Christ that Paul acknowledges are the balance to the obedience that Heb 13:17 calls forth. The church’s efforts, therefore, are nothing more than our efforts happening sometimes more together, sometimes less. Although some desire to collect their efforts into a team approach, that in no way obligates you or anyone else to join their chosen efforts.
-----In fact Paul warns us not to be too taken by following men (I Cor 4:1-6) Yet we continue to call ourselves Calvinists, Lutherans, or Campbellites. We continue to follow men and regard their own pooled efforts as being a command of God Himself. And most leaders, taking advantage of that misperception, are all too happy to puff up giant organizations having within them more noise and activity than insight and understanding.
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