February 04, 2015
Rudderless
A number of churches I’ve
visited have gone through church splits and I’m detecting a pattern. Surprisingly
it’s the church leadership, the pastors and elders, who seem to be leaving the
facilities to start a new congregation. Those who remain with the old physical
structure are small in number and trying their best to hold things together,
but it’s hard to miss their rudderless state. Paul tells us of the importance
of leaders building up the body of Christ so that we may, “…reach unity in the faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature…” (Eph 4:13 NIV). I’m
now wondering if these leaders are failing to bring the whole congregation to
maturity in Christ leaving some of them to flounder in immaturity. Paul describes what happens to those who
remain immature, “…infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here
and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in
their deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14b NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Imagine that, if by some unfortunate stroke of luck, you were born without the ability to see, hear, or feel through touch. What would you ever know about a bird, a tree, the air, or anything more conceptual like algebra, geometry, physics, or the Word of God? This wouldn’t be the worst of situations, because the greater part of your worldview would be such ideas as the flavors and smells of fried chicken, French fries, grilled T-bones, etc. But their shapes and sizes and textures and heat content and pretty much every other idea of what they are would not exist for you. You simply would not know much, because a very large part of what we know comes to us through our senses, whether it be reading, listening or observing.
-----Imagine being born in China with all your senses intact. You would know China. Or imagine being born in South America, or Scandinavia, or Australia five hundred years ago, or Sanliurfa five thousand years ago. Even being born in one family of Montrose or another facilitates some very major familial differences in ideas and attitudes and knowledge and conceptualizations of truth. The point is: this world is an immensely enormous place when measured by the scoop of experience one lifetime can gain of it, and everywhere a scoop can be taken of it is markedly different than anywhere else. So, in detail, our perceptions are all quite different and yet remain respectable.
-----Our unity of faith, love, and Spirit simply can not be had in Technicolor detail. That central core of ideas around which a fellowshipping group of people forms must be basic. The if’s, and’s, and but’s of the Lord are not for fellowship formation. They are more for taste and smell, more for admiration, appreciation, and personal joy between an individual, an immense God, and anyone else willing to appreciate them similarly (with emphasis on “willing“.) And in the same way my scoop of experience has come from 20th/21st century Western Slope Colorado, leaving virtually the entire world not experienced by me (except for copious amounts of TV,) the conceptualizations any one person can make of the details of the Lord and His promises and His actions in the world to this point are an infinitesimally small sampling of all possibilities available. Therefore our held beliefs vary a lot, though they all attach to the central core of truth about the Lord. “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Rom 14:5b.)
-----”He is the head of the body, the church.” (I Col 1:18a) The church is a beautiful bride. She’s no two-headed freak. Though we rarely hear leaders claim to be her head, we see them most everywhere trying to be her head and shape her actions and expressions. Their scoops of experience are generally more relevant to matters of the Lord, because they’ve chosen to scoop closer to the Lord’s affairs. This gives them place of influence, inspiration, direction, teaching, and encouragement in the church from God's Word, but not about any aspects of their own scooping. Rather, their teaching must remain about the core of basic truths in the Bible and the attachments to it all scoops of experience must make: love, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness, kindness, self-control, honor for one another, sincere love from the heart, etc. Imagine leaders, or anyone for that matter, leaving churches and breaking fellowship over these.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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