December 14, 2007
It's Personal
Reading some promotional material on why someone would place their membership at my church caused me to pause. I looked up the Scripture referenced in the flyer, “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household…” (Eph. 2:19 NIV). As though the passage needed further explanation, the benefits of membership were then identified as: “1) Personal sense of belonging, 2) Personal voice and vote, 3) Personal significance, 4) Personal relationships, 5) Personal development, and 6) Personal rewards.” Sounds similar to what could be found at Weight Watchers, Anytime Fitness or the Elks Club. Too bad the writer of the promotional material didn’t cite the remainder of the Ephesians passage. “…built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Eph 2:20-22 NIV) It’s no longer about ‘me’ when we are joined together and built together.
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Gail;
-----When those men whom “God chose” to lead your church into the love of Christ spread lies about Char and I to the whole church, suggested everyone shun us, and removed our names from the membership roll, my response to Char was, “When did my name get written into their roll book? I didn’t know my name was there!” The best I can figure is that when we were married we must have joined the church. Only something as significant as getting married or making my wife happy could cloud my reasoning enough for me to make that kind of mistake. I have always considered myself as a member of Christ’s body, His temple. My name is written in His roll book, the book of life. I never wanted to be enrolled on some church’s books because of the divisive message the organized church makes of it.
-----Let’s examine the six benefits for the rest of the message they speak. If I must enroll at the church to receive a personal sense of belonging, then I either belong to nothing until I enroll, or there is something about my ability to sense that is heightened by enrolling. The first possibility is hideously divisive. What it says about the rest of the churches is basically, they don’t count. What it says about the brothers and sisters I hold dear, here and there around the country, is they don’t count, either. Your leaders’ message says I don’t belong unless I belong at their church. But I know their statement is general, and I know they do not believe these things the way they‘ve said them. And they are right about the need for a personal sense of belonging to the group you are with. But it is not the enrollment into special status with that group that gives you the sense of belonging. It is the love of Christ coming through those around you that gives you it, and the love returned from you that accepts that sense of belonging. There is no ink on paper there, only action upon thought.
-----Then if your church removed the sense of belonging from the list of benefits because they now understand this comes through love, not paperwork, we might find the next reason valid - personal voice and vote. Before I say anything about this, I remember a time in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when there was a strong voice against the move to “purpose-drive” your church. I also remember those voices being told, “If you do not like what we are doing here, there is a church down the street where you might be happier.” A great many of those voices did go elsewhere, so many that the humor at another church in town was that they had more of your church’s members there than did your church have. Now that I am at that church also, I know why. There, one belongs and has a voice because he is a member of Christ’s body, not the elder’s church. But even at that church one still must be a member to vote. I don’t like church organization And I am not going to try to think up good things to say about church and voting. It is too political for my stomach. But neither can I stomach a lot of other necessities of life. I simply have to find a way to stomach it, because I understand why it is important. So there! They have a benefit for enrollment at their church.
-----But indeed, I personally do not feel voting for the elders and other issues at your church would give me any personal significance. What gives me personal significance is behaving myself well enough, and loving you well enough that you might feel I am significant. And you, and you, and you, too. And especially my wife, and my daughters, my Dad, Mom, sister. I once lost a prospective client because I told her that I loved my clients. She must have thought I had a kinky practice! But it is just the way I am. I love my neighbors the best and as genuinely as I can. That is what makes me feel significant. And frankly, I don’t really do anything else well enough to feel significant about. So if I am feeling a bit insignificant, I just go find something to crank up some joy and happiness in someone else, and shazzam! I feel better! Well, actually, thank God! I feel better. It’s not magic, it’s spiritual physics. It is what God gave to us all. And I do not need paper and ink to receive it.
-----Personal relationships are interesting because they kind of come from doing what it takes to feel significant. I noticed that personal relationships at your church were hard to come by after the purpose-drivers had purposefully driven most of their opposition out of the church. They reminded me of the cow bird which lays its egg in another bird’s nest. It incubates there with all the other eggs, then it hatches, like all the others. No problem. Enough space is there. Then it begins to grow. It’s trick is in it’s growth. It grows so fast and pigs so much food from the other chicks that it finally has the strength and the will to push them out of the nest with not so much as a second thought for their life or death. I know this comparison, because I know many who were pushed out of that church by the selfish demands made by the purpose-drivers. Those people told me that no one ever came to see how they were doing or where they were next going to church. Once they were gone they were out of sight, out of mind. No longer significant. No longer existed. And I know the experience first hand, too. When Char and I addressed the church concerning the grievances caused by these pushers, the elders lied about us being the only ones upset and mounting a one man crusade, even while they had in hand evidence that they were lying. And when they had smeared us, struck us from their church rolls, and suggested the congregation shun us, not one of them has since so much as called to see how we are doing spiritually. There is no relationship to be had among a people whom you must alter yourself to become like, or else be ignored, or worse, cast out the back door. Personal relationship does not come from demanding your own ways. It does not come from pushing all the little chicks out of the nest until the nest belongs to only those who think as you do. Personal relationship comes from the same thing as does personal significance. It comes from serving others, not altering others. I often now wonder why I even tried to find relationships at your church once the cow chicks had come of age. Char and I now go to a church were personal relationships happen because relationships with the Lord are acknowledged for what they are and are served for what they actually need.
-----I open my Bible to begin my personal development. It is where I go for all of my answers. But its wisdom does not come to me while I am alone. It comes when I am with others. It comes a great deal from the pressures of being around others. It also comes from the joys of having others at my side. I don’t know which is the greater. I just know that is the way it is. I develop a lot when I am around Christians, but I also develop a lot when I am around non- Christians. I do my best to find something to say revealing of the Truth. Even if it is small and just a word or two. I do not need my name on a membership roll to receive personal development, “As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you.” (I John 2:27) I know John did not mean that as if I am the bright guy and won’t be taught by no one. I take it to mean that when I see a teacher being Scripturally wrong, I am not bound to follow his teaching on that particular point. I take it also to mean that if I need to know something and there is no teacher who knows the point to teach me, then the Lord has His ways and will use them to get me taught. Very often He does it through the personal relationships developed by the serving that led to personal significance. I don’t need to wait for the ink to dry on the membership roll for my personal development to begin. I wonder what kind of development it is that must await. Maybe the kind that comes from the cow bird?
-----And of course, personal rewards might follow naturally. I mean, I always thought about how grand it would feel to walk up on the stage in front of that great big, massive mega-church gathering, and with much fanfare and copious hoopla, be handed a reward for how wonderfully I did, or just am. Good grief! How nauseous. Does my reward really come from people? If it, does then it is too small for me. Sorry folks, I am that piggish when it comes to the rewards I am after. None of you can give it to me big enough. And I am not referring to merely our eternal life. Occasionally, I get a sweet, sweet feeling inside after I have made enough minor break in my major piggish skin through which I’ve done a bit right for the Lord that really put a warm spot in someone else’s heart. That is the reward I am after. I am after the reward that validates me as being His. And that ain’t no ink on no paper! Or is it? Maybe I better back up a bit. My memory has just served me notice, there is ink on paper. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us.” (I John 3:17-20.) When my heart is set at rest because my effort is invested in attempting to love in action and truth, I know that His teaching still develops me, consequently, I will not be alone and without personal relationships having grown from my effort to achieve personal significance by being beneficial to others, and therefore having a full sense of belonging where I am at.
-----It seems that after closer examination I am left with the vote as the need to enroll. And that is fitting, since both the vote and the enrollment are elements of organization. And organization is not of itself wrong. As you so pointed out briefly, and I have so laboriously, monotonously, expounded further, the personal sense of belonging, the voice, the significance, the relationships, the development and the rewards do not come from the organization of the church. They come through the nature of the church from the Spirit She’s received. They come from us all being joined together into what becomes His holy temple wherein His Spirit does not merely dwell in individual hearts, but also becomes unavoidably obvious moving around amongst them in their godly actions towards each other. Organization can not house these things, it can only jail them.
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