Body of Christ

The Surefire Way to Fix the Church’s Every Problem

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Covered with Band-AidsApparently, my solutions suck.

One of the first things you learn about tackling intractable problems: People will hate your ideas for fixes. Not merely disagree with, but full-on hate.

You would think that when we bring difficult topics into the sphere of the Christian community the hate would go away. Well, maybe a little. What you get as a replacement is this: “Your fix will never work.”

Christians can be some of the most pessimistic and nihilistic people when faced with nasty issues. Anyone who even tries to speak to a tough issue has that idea chastised. It’s one reason why so much of the American Church is adrift.

What makes me more upset than having unusual ideas shot down by perpetual naysayers is that God never set up His Kingdom to be dominated by a loose collection of wandering idea people. Yet that is the model we Americans endorse.

Wakeup call: This mentality of a Moses-like character who emerges onto the national Christian scene to lead us in the way we should go is just a big pipe dream. Sure, now and then some Christian with a great agent lands a great book deal and writes a great book we talk about for two months before we forget what the hubbub was about. That’s not the way the King expects the Kingdom to work, though. Looking to any one human being for solutions won’t work.

I know it’s hypocritical of my entire post to say this, but here’s the only answer:

Every local church needs to sit down as a whole church—leaders, non-leaders, the elderly, the teens, whoever the church deems a communing member—and present to the assembly the problems facing the church and its local area. Then the whole church works together as One Body to seek, find, and present answers.

I don’t care what the problem is. I don’t care how difficult it might seem. Each local church needs to convene as a whole church and get solutions.

Of course, within a Christian context, this means operating as the Body of Christ plugged into the Head.

God gave each of us gifts, both innate talents and spiritual gifts. The entire Church model presented in the New Testament depends on that Body model Christ left us. If we do not operate as a Body, we do not operate as intended. If we reduce the Church to nothing more than a loose affiliation of individuals, then we should not be surprised when we achieve no results or cannot deliver solutions.

If we truly believe our own teachings, then it’s about time that each local church gets its leaders focused on what the problems are that face the church and put those problems before the whole church.

I don’t believe there is a problem too hard for the Lord to fix if we Christians in our local churches meet as a body (and THE Body) to hash them out, so long as we let the Spirit guide us.

I’m fed up with excuses for why such and such never gets fixed, aren’t you?

Last week, at another site, I took the author of an article to task for thinking too small. When I proposed a solution, the naysayers came out in droves.

But you know what? I don’t care if my offering is outrageous on the surface. Many solutions that eventually work start off outrageous. No, I don’t have proof such and such will work; all I know is that no one has made the attempt.

And if my answer is outrageous and left untried, how many other believers in a local church may have equally outrageous answers to tough problems that everyone beefs about but no one ever attempts to fix?

Why are we not brainstorming outrageous answers as a local church? Why do we always look to our leaders for solutions if that leader is the “foot” part of the Body or that one is a “nose,” but we need an “eye” solution? Wouldn’t the “eye”-gifted people possibly have better insight?

And why is it that we have no confidence that the Holy Spirit can speak spiritual answers through the bohemian single mom who just became a believer a couple weeks ago? Why is it the Holy Spirit can’t speak through the shifty-looking teen guy? How is it that the people in the seats have zero ability to cast light upon a dark issue, only the “experts”?

When we discredit what might be spoken through a “nonstandard vessel,” we’re not just discrediting the vessel; we’re discrediting our Lord’s ability to use whomever He so pleases.

I believe a surefire fix exists for problems the Church keeps saying can’t be fixed. Or if not a total fix, then a good bulkhead for keeping the worst of that problem at bay. We just don’t trust the Lord to work through other believers the way He said He would.

God of the Group

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UnityA reader wrote recently to say that my previous post (No ‘I’ in ‘CHURCH’–How American Evangelicalism Gets Its Pronouns Wrong) mirrored the collectivist thinking found in error-ridden cults and the teachings of New Age gurus. While I would argue that the actual teachings of such people are, in fact, largely about self-actualization rather than group actualization, if there is any guilt here, it is by association alone (ha, ha).

Here is truth: The entire narrative of Scripture is geared to a group. The story of God working is a story of Him working among a people. If anything, the words of Scripture should disabuse us of any notion that at the heart of it is the individual. What God is doing in the world has always been a “group project,” and if anything, the individual finds his or her truest expression of fullness only within a group.

Rather than give a million verses to back up this reality of the group, I will sketch out the ideas. Anyone who wants to fill in the blanks is setting himself or herself up for a tremendous journey into the mind and heart of God, and I would fully encourage anyone reading this to use it as a basis of further study.

The greatest lie afflicting the Church today is that you or I can do life alone. As we will see, in the eyes of God alone is never a good state of being.

The positive illustrations (the group):

God is a trinity. The Trinity exists in perfect commune within itself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God has made Man in that same image.

God creates the male and says of him, “It is not good that man should be alone.” God creates a female partner for the male. God’s first charge to them is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.

When mankind sinned, God saved from destruction an extended family. Prior to that destruction, He told that family to gather together groups of fertile creatures capable of recreating their own animal families that would continue the original fruitfulness command of God in the Garden.

When God chose to express His purpose for mankind, He chose a group model. He chose Abraham, to whom His promise would be that Abraham’s descendants would be like the stars in heaven. God’s promise is that Abraham will not be just Abraham but a great nation. Abraham finds comfort in knowing that he will not be alone.

God is referred to as “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

The exodus from Egypt left no Hebrew behind but removed an entire nation from the land.

The nation of Israel is established as a collective whole among which God dwells.

The joy of  the barren Hannah is that God granted her a son, completing her family, and Samuel became a great leader of the nation.

Blessed is the man who has a “quiver full” of children.

Elijah’s mistaken belief that he is the last prophet of God left, but God said He has preserved a remnant.

Imagery of streams that bring life to an entire region, of the fruitfulness of the land that is overflowing, of the the abundance of God’s provision.

The threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Iron sharpens iron.

The Christ is revealed to a group that consists of the lowliest and the highest within society, abolishing class distinctions. Christ says He comes to establish a Kingdom and says that all are equal within the Kingdom of God.

Christ taking on a group of disciples.

Christ noting anyone who does His will is His brother, sister, or mother. His noting that there will be no hierarchies among those who believe in Him.

Followers of Christ depicted as a flock. The Good Shepherd understanding that the flock is not complete if even one sheep is missing from it.

“Where two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst of them.”

The promise that even eunuchs will be made fruitful. The holy as the wheat.

Christ speaks of the vine with many branches.

Christ establishes the Church. The Church is grafted into the vine.

The first act of the Spirit-filled Church was to gather and make sure that no disparity of needs in the group existed, but that all had needs met. The early Church met together daily. “God added to their number daily”

The Body of Christ is composed of many parts, but the Body cannot function unless the parts are in sync, and no part is worthless.

The Holy Spirit gives gifts intended for the edification of the collective Body. Some gifts do not function correctly unless others contribute to them.

The New Testament Scriptures are addressed to the collective you. “Brothers.”

The Church, collective, is a royal priesthood and the Bride. The Church is made of living stones, built together into a collective edifice in which God dwells, the New Jerusalem.

The uncountable entirety of believers.

The marriage supper of the Lamb.

The negative illustrations (the individual, alone and disconnected):

Satan coming to tempt Eve, the lone individual, apart from her plurality with Adam and God.

“Adam, where are you?”

The barren woman. The desolate land. The alien. The eunuch. The wanderer. The leper. The blind man. The cripple.

“Everyone did what he thought was right in his own eyes.”

The splitting of Israel and Judah.

The prodigal son. The lost sheep. The fig tree devoid of figs.

The agony of Christ in His taking on the collected sins of the world alone, and His “Why have you forsaken me? ” cry of disconnection from the Trinity.

Being left out of the Book of Life.

Hell as separation from God.

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If we do not understand that Christianity is the individual finding fulfillment in the collected Body of Christ and being made part of that vine, then we do not understand the Faith.

We must not care what the world or New Age gurus say. God establishes a group and He dwells in that group. There is no other reality. Everything in Scripture points to this.

No “I” in “CHURCH”–How American Evangelicalism Gets Its Pronouns Wrong

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Lonely in a crowdI listened to a message recently that told me all the things I had to do so I could be godly.

For the most part, the words went sailing past me. Perhaps I’m like the hard soil and the birds are coming to eat up the message seeds.

Or maybe I’ve just reached a saturation point for being told what I need to be doing so everything will be perfect in my Christian life.

There’s a big problem with the approach so much of American Evangelicalism uses when speaking to people: It’s all I and you (singular) pronoun use. It’s as if there is no message to the collected Body of Christ. The plural you, we, and us continue to go missing. And with them goes most of the New Testament.

You hear the singular you used a lot in sermons. Someone is preaching at me what I need to do as an individual.

But if you read the New Testament, the you in it, almost all nearly 4,000 uses, refers to a group of people—a plural you. In almost all cases outside the Gospels, that you is the Church.

How is it then that so many messages directed at us aren’t to the genuine plural us, but solely to individuals sitting in one place? We somehow avoid all sense of a collected group of believers.

One problem with this is that it automatically creates legalism and moralism. Individuals are told to do this or that, but there is no greater sense of collected purpose in those admonitions. Whatever it is that I should do is relegated to me alone. It then becomes a personal performance issue. My success as a Christian is solely because of what I do; the greater Body has no influence at all in this—nor do I truly influence that greater Body.

Which is one major reason why the Church in America isn’t advancing the way it should be. We are in a state of every man for himself.

An example of how this individual focus fails…

Take the subject of giving. From an individual perspective, you (singular) and I are told biblical principles on how to give and save money. To live below our means so as to be able to give to others. To tithe. To be cheerful givers.

But when we take this up to the level of what the Church as a collected whole is supposed to do, a vast silence emerges. What is the Church’s financial responsibility?

The Scriptures make it plain in many places that the Church should ensure that no one within the Church body is in need. Goods are to be collected and dispersed to people in the local church body to ensure no state of want.

That asks something of the Church/church though. And you just don’t hear messages and sermons on what the whole Church responsibility is in a given situation.

In short, there is no you (plural), we, or us. There is no vision for anything beyond what the individual is asked to do.

The Bible says that you have died. Your life is now hidden in Christ. And His life is expressed in this world through His Body, the Church.

To the person who has died, the law says that he or she has lost the right to own. In the Church, there is no my or mine. There is ours. Jesus abolishes all personal claims. You are not even your own. All that remains is the collected Body. I, my, mine, you (singular), yours—these are remnants of what we must leave behind when we choose to follow Jesus.

What would happen if American Evangelicals, instead of devolving into what I or you (singular) should be doing as a Christian, focused instead on how the group of believers that comprise the local church and the greater Church operates as it is intended to function—as a unified whole? What if we stopped with the relentless granularity and started thinking of Christianity not as a personal belief but as one that achieves its vitality only within full community? What if we stopped preaching individual works and started focusing on collected works? What if we believed that sanctification wasn’t solely for the individual but for the group? What if we truly believed Jesus in His admonition that the herd of sheep was no longer complete in the eyes of the shepherd if even one was missing?

What if we Christians shifted all our pronouns toward you (plural), we, ours, and us, while moving away from I, me, mine, and you (singular)?

Can we at least start to think outside of the individual? Perhaps if we did, we’d actually live out the biblical plan for the Body of Christ.

UPDATE: See also the follow-up post, God of the Group.