Dying to Self

Being the Body: How to Forge Real Community, Part 3

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In this fourth installment of the series “Being the Body,” we’ll look at the major conceit of most of us in the Western Church. I believe this fallacy prevents us from becoming the real community of Jesus Christ on Earth. If we can get over this lie we’ve believed, great things will happen in our midst.

The Scriptures say this:

The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein….
—Psalms 24:1 ESV

[King David praising God before the assembly of Israel:] “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you….”
—1 Chronicles 29:14 ESV

“The silver is mine, and the gold is mine,” declares the LORD of hosts.
—Haggai 2:8 ESV

“Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine….”
—Ezekiel 18:4a ESV

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
—Romans 14:7-8 ESV

“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price…..”
—1 Corinthians 6:19b-20a ESV

Here’s the short summation: you and I own nothing. We don’t even own ourselves. It’s all the Lord’s.

But do we Evangelicals, so enamored of our supposed political and economic power, truly believe that? The way we live would suggest otherwise. Yet for us to embody the fullness of Christ as His Body, we need to realize an important truth:

#6 – Real community can only come about when we understand that everything God has given us must be in play for others at all times, especially for those within the community of faith.

If we truly believe the Scriptures above are true, then we have no right to ever withhold needful things from others. Sort of explodes our fallacious notion of “mine,” doesn’t it?

If our current church culture is any indication, no lie from hell can outdo our allegiance to “mine.” We may talk about original sin and point to the lies children tell as proof, but a sixteen-month-old child whose first words consist of “mine” is just as convincing a proof of original sin as lying. Unfortunately, though we discourage the lying, we smirk at the grab for what’s mine. “Isn’t that cute, hon? He’s destined to be a corporate raider some day!”

As we know, “mine” knows no boundaries. It doesn’t stop at the expensive items like cars or houses. Our love for what we convince ourselves is ours extends down to the most insignificant things.

The Bible says this:

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.
—Ecclesiastes 5:10-12 ESV

We can’t stop accumulating wealth can we? Fifteen years ago, everything I owned in the world could fit into the back of a Honda Civic Hatchback. If it all got stolen, I wouldn’t miss it.

A self-examination: If you’re reading this and are married, isn’t it amazing how much more stuff you’ve picked up since saying, “I do”? It costs money to insure all that accumulation, too, because we all worry what might happen to it. Not so much that we would lose it, but that once it was all gone, people would treat us differently. We wouldn’t be as affluent. People might actually think we were—God forbid—poor!

How many of us reading this sleep a little less comfortably at night than we did when we owned nothing? That sleep largely suffers for one enormous reason. Few of us, deep down inside, can rest assured that our church communities would draw alongside us should we suffer financial ruin. We fear that our churches are not convinced of the following:

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.”
—Leviticus 25:35-37 ESV

God did NOT say that He Himself would rain down food, shelter, or clothing, but that this help should come from the community of faith! The act of true fear of God within a believing community is that we cover the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Just this weekend I heard from yet another brother in dire financial straits. (We’ve never met face-to-face, but I know him from his online writings.) Helping handThe broken-record response from his church? “Sorry, we won’t help you.” They have the financial resources, so they could help; they just won’t. They love money more than they love this brother or their own community.

I have one word for that: sickening. Are there any churches left that fear the Lord?

We watch faithful brothers and sisters in Christ go through bankruptcies and other financial disasters without lifting a finger to help, then we excoriate them for it. There’s not a person reading this right now who doesn’t have a decent, hard-working family in his or her church enduring financial hell. What are we doing for them? Anything? Or are we blaming them instead, trying to find a reason for their ruin much the same way the Pharisees sought to find a reason for the original blindness of the man Jesus healed?

Do we know that it’s for the glory of God that we help our brothers and sisters in their time of need?

Folks, if the rest of the world around us still wants to cling to “mine,” it means that those of us who understand that it’s all the Lord’s are even harder pressed to pick up their slack. We have to decide that we value Christ more—and subsequently the ones He died to save—than we value material wealth. We must desire to live like this:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
—Acts 2:42-47 ESV

If it means we do without a 60″ plasma TV so we have funds to help a family who can’t pay their electric bill, then we do without.

If it means we don’t go out of town on a vacation this year so we can pay the rent of a family hit by unemployment, then we don’t go. (And our children learn a valuable lesson about what is important in God’s eyes.)

If it means that we eat canned soup the rest of the week so we can make a weekly feast for all those in our church who can’t even afford canned soup, then we eat canned soup the rest of the week.

If it means that we have to sell something of “ours” so that a family in our church can keep a roof over their heads, then we sell it.

Because we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Because we believe that He died and rose again to forge a community of saints who will live forever in Paradise.

Because our reward is in Heaven, not in this life.

Because we know that unless we start living that way, we will never see revival in our churches or the kind of Christian community that brings healing, peace, unity, love, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. The kind of community that has the lost taking notice.

Putting what God has given us into play means more than handouts, too. It means we open our homes to others because those houses are God’s. It means we give our time and effort to help others, because we don’t own time and effort, either. It means we don’t hold exclusive rights to our family members, making other families our family, too. When we finally realize that we own nothing, what we can give to others is magnified a thousandfold. And community is built.

We’ve believed the lie of “mine.” But there is no “mine.” It’s all God’s. And His command to us is that we give what He’s given us to those in need, especially those in the community of faith. Because that’s what the Body does, it looks after itself. If the heart is sick, the whole body is sick. All suffer together.

And when we look after each other, all rejoice together, too.

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Being the Body: How to Forge Real Community, Part 2

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As we’ve seen, the Lord views real community among us believers as critical to our spiritual health and of those yet to enter our community. Despite wanting vital interaction with others, we stumble when it comes to execution. How do our churches forge real community?

Today, I want to discuss a simple way we can build a better community of faith. I’ll focus on one common item already found in most churches.

#5 – Leverage your church directory.

    Even now I can hear the faint mouse clicks as hundreds flee this site for greener Web pastures. Stick with me, though.

I believe our church directories are one of the most underutilized resources we have for building community.  While nothing beats face to face interaction, Searching the listings...our church directories are a database for community growth and blessing if done correctly. I acknowledge up front that it would be better for us to learn about other people in our church through sharing meals with them in our homes, but we need a babystep back toward that reality. Expanding our vision for what a church directory affords us can get us to that better place. Then when we’re doing our community life better we can use the directory as a fallback in the future, not a primary means of accomplishing community.

Before we begin exploring this more, I’d like to share a few verses. Much of what follows depends on our understanding a painful truth about dying to self and being raised into a community of faith:

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
—1 Corinthians 6:19b-20a ESV

For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ.
—1 Corinthians 7:22 ESV

If I am not my own, if I am a slave of Christ, then what rights do I have as a Christian? None that have anything to do with personal privacy.

A dead man doesn’t have any privacy. We saw our right to privacy die at the foot of the cross. If we were free before, we’re slaves to Christ now. We don’t get to call the shots, Jesus does. And as part of being born into Him and the Church He died to create, we don’t get a say about our own privacy. Just as the clay can’t talk back to the potter, we can’t tell God we don’t want to be a part of community. Nor can we tell Him we’re not happy about losing our so-called right to privacy.

The Christian isn’t a private creature. The Christian lives and dies to a Lord who lived and died for others. Again, our focus is outside ourselves. For that reason, a true Christian gives up any pretenses to privacy.

Now this doesn’t mean a Christian can’t rent a cabin in the deep woods for a week and get away for an occasional  break. What it does mean is that our lives are now lived openly, with a servant heart toward others, even if those others infringe on our privacy from time to time.

You won’t hear that message from too many pulpits because if we truly believed that (as opposed to believing the American civil religion we tend to bow to), our lives would be drastically altered by living it out. Radically counterculture, eh?

A church directory is not a private thing. I’ve heard anecdotal reports that more and more Christians are opting out of having their personal info included in their church directories because of privacy issues. I know for a fact that fewer churches are attempting church directories in the first place, either because they’re megachurch-sized (I’ll speak to this issue in a future post in this series) or they’re getting a big ho-hum from their congregation.

Tough. A church directory is essential. Trust me on this one. My first explanation says it all:

a. We’re praying through our church directories, right?

    If we want one reason why our churches are ineffective, it starts here. The people who make up our churches are not praying for each other. If we truly believe that prayer matters, how can we not being praying over every person in our church? Good grief, whenever I hear someone like John Eldredge spouting off about how men in our churches are bored, I’ve got to ask if those men are praying over every person who walks through the doors of their church! Who has time to be bored when we’ve got such an enormous task ahead of us covering each other in prayer? I’d go so far as to say that we should have praying over the church directory inserted into the everyday service we perform when we become members of a church. A-1 priority. Church leaders, I implore you to consider this if you’re not already doing it at your church.

Here’s a way to start. Break up the alphabet into sections, A-E, F-J, K-N, O-S, T-Z. If a family’s last name is Edelen, the Edelen family would pray for other families in the section that corresponds to their last name, in this case A-E. Do that for a set period of time, then have the families move onto the next section. Edelens would then pray for those in F-J. Every day, pray for three families in that section, praying for each individual within each family.

That kind of covering prayer can be tweaked, so a million options exist. But church leaders should let their congregants know that praying through the church directory is one of the ways the church functions, and therefore it’s expected of everyone.

Praying through the church directory opens up myriad possibilities for community growth and bonding. I know that I would want to know more about the people I’m praying for, wouldn’t you? I might even pick up the phone and call those families to find our how I can pray more specifically. I’d also like to know how those prayers I’m praying with others are coming out. What a blessing it is to hear of prayers answered. But if you’re like me, you hear about answered prayer far too infrequently for it to have any impact on your own faith for big requests. Think how blessed we would be if our entire church were soliciting prayer requests, praying for those requests, then actually hearing those prayers answered!

It can start with praying through the church directory.

b. Faces matter. So do names.

    We humans are visual. Any anxiety we have about interacting with others is dramatically reduced when we can routinely match a name in a church directory with a face. For that reason, spend whatever it costs to get pictures in your church directory. Pictures make praying through the church directory even more effective.

When you go for a visual directory, make certain that the names of individuals within families are correctly noted in captions below the pictures. If a family has five teenage sons (God have mercy on them!), we should know which teen face matches which teen name. While Dale Carnegie isn’t a spiritual mentor in the slightest, he was right about one thing: a person loves to hear his own name. Our names matter in community. We need to get them right as practical proof that we care about the people in our church.

c. Tell us everything.

    Here’s where the privacy pushback comes in.

In order to have a community that seeks the best for every person within that community, we need to be open. We can’t hold back information that can be helpful to other members of the community.

Long ago, we used to know what others did for a living. Chances were that Millers operated the town mill, Smiths manned the blacksmithing duties, while the Taylors made the clothes.

Today, our work lives are far more complex than they once were, nor do they align with the rest of our life experiences, even our college majors. But as believers in community, our work matters not only to our employers, but to each other. Community necessitates that I know what your job is at your company. That helps me to give you business; your financial health matters to me because you’re part of our community.

It extends beyond work, too. Knowing your hobbies and talents can better allow me to join in those hobbies with you or leverage those talents to the betterment of not only myself, but the entire community.

We need to go beyond a name, address, and phone number. Knowing what teens have completed childcare courses can better help me choose a babysitter. Knowing who in the church speaks Spanish can help my child when he or she’s learning the language. Knowing who lived in Silicon Valley for ten years can help me should I need to move there.

Options abound. Put the directory on the Web and give church members a special login to access the info. Given that most people have computer access, a church can keep the info up to date with an online list of the talented people within the church.

Only your church community can decide how much info is too much. Personally, I think a church directory should move beyond a name, address, and telephone number to encompass full biographies of the people who attend our churches. If we want to better unite our people in community, that kind of information is priceless.

Communities of long ago knew this kind of detailed information, but today we barely know the names of people in our churches. We need to attempt this kind of transparency. God intended us to network with each other and those outside the church proper, yet when I look around, too many of us know hardly anything about the person sitting next to us in the pew. A more robust church directory would go a long way to fixing that problem.

Can we consider doing more with our church directories? If the world is hard to navigate as a community, how much harder is it to handle as individuals cut off from each other? Yet that kind of disconnection typifies our lives in America 2006. We don’t know anyone beyond a handful of people, and what we know is so shallow as to not help us or others when times are tough.

More community-building ideas to come…

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Being the Body: How to Forge Real Community, Part 1

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Unbroken circleIn the first entry in this series, we looked at the Biblical foundation for asserting that the Lord is powerfully for community. His model for how we’re supposed to live and minister are based in community, not the rugged individualism we find so prevalent in the American mindset.

Regular readers will know that posts on community turn up frequently at Cerulean Sanctum. (Search on the Community category in the sidebar.) As I mentioned yesterday, I believe that many of the problems facing the American Church today are based in flawed or non-existent community. Clean up how we do community, and many  of these problems will fade away, leaving us to better serve the Lord and each other.

Many people talk about community, but achieving vital community within our churches is another issue altogether. I think the Lord is sick of talk; He wants to see us start living what we’re talking about.

So how do we start developing community?

Today, we’ll look at basic ways to turn talk about community into the kind of fellowship that dwells in one accord.

#1 – Every hour of every day, say, “It’s not about me.”

    Christianity, at its core, is others-centered. Love the Lord. Lord your neighbor. The heart of the Christian is inclined to Christ, and as Christ gave Himself away, we should give ourselves away. Freely we have received, freely we give.

Aren’t we always quickened by missionary stories that tell of extraordinary sacrifice? David Brainerd gave to the lost Indians he encountered till his tuberculosis-racked body gave out. Jim Elliot took a spear to the back so a primitive tribe others forgot might escape eternal torment. Hudson Taylor buried most of his family in China, yet because of his selflessness, the Chinese Church not only thrives today, but shames us with their faithfulness amid persecution.

The great Christians are so because they gave themselves away, sometimes even to martyrdom.

It’s about Christ. It’s about others. However unpopular that may be with us “King of the Hill” Christians in America, the truth remains. Community starts with understanding that you and I are tiny (albeit essential) bits of the Body of Christ. If we’ve truly died to the world, then being a tiny bit consecrated to a greater purpose is pure joy.

If we’re still holding onto our selves, then “it’s not about me” will grate on us. We’ll find any avenue we can to pave over that truth. And when it’s finally buried, we’ll paint a happy face over the top and go on serving ourselves.

But don’t call that Christian discipleship.

#2 – When a person shares a need with us, we should instinctively ask, “How can I help meet your need?”

    Nothing angers me more than the hands-off approach some Christians take with the needy. Those quasi-disciples have this bizarre notion that aiding the hurting, shattered, and destitute will somehow stymie whatever God is trying to do in that person’s life. It’s as if we believe that God is going out of His way to punish the hurting, shattered, and destitute, and any comfort or assistance we give that poor person will throw a monkey wrench into God’s rack of discipline.

Nonsense. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover enough times to know that such thinking is nothing more than an excuse to do nothing.

On the other hand, the Bible is loaded with hundreds of verses commanding us to look after the less fortunate. For those who hold to the less is more concept of helping others, here’s a favorite of mine:

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.
—Proverbs 21:13 ESV

Ye-ouch.

No, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to imitate our Master. He did not rebuke the needy, but met their need. Notice His response in this passage:

As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.
—Luke 18:35-43 ESV

Jesus did not attempt to blame the man for anything. He did not try to explain to the man that God was disciplining him through his blindness. No, Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?”

A servant asks that question. Because our Lord came as a servant, we are to ask the same question if we are to be like Him.

Don’t unload a needy person’s request on someone else, even if that someone else is God. If you wish to bring others into the situation to help, by all means do so, especially God. But take responsibility by asking, “How can I help meet your need?” Then meet the need with every resource God has given you.

Some of you may wonder how this makes for vital community. The answer is simple: If we’re collectively meeting the needs of others, when it comes our time to be needy (and our time WILL come), our needs will be met. I don’t have to spend all my time watching my own back because the brethren are doing it for me, just as I am for them.

But it has to start with us. We may even run a deficit on returns, yet we do it nonetheless. Maybe if enough of us do it within our churches, being true servants will catch on. And so will true community.

#3 –  The Holy Spirit created Christian community ex-nihilo, so we better be Spirit-filled.

    No sooner had the Holy Spirit fallen at Pentecost than we see this at the close of Acts 2:

 

And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
—Acts 2:44-47 ESV

The echoes of Peter’s Pentecost sermon still reverberated among the palisades of Jerusalem, yet already the Lord was forging a vital community. A Spirit-filled church will naturally pursue community. One of the hallmarks of being filled with the Lord is a godly inclination toward others. It’s inescapable.

If there’s no real community at your church, then the Holy Spirit’s not there. Pure and simple. If your church is a tenuous affiliation of individuals, then I don’t care how powerful you may think the preaching, teaching, and worship are, your church is stone cold dead. We’ve got to stop lying to ourselves. The proof of the Holy Spirit’s absence is right there in the lack of community within our churches.

If that’s your church, you don’t have to go down without a fight. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.

Find at least a couple other people dying for community, then pick a night when you can go to your church and throw yourselves face down before God, praying until the Spirit shows up. Fast and pray till heaven opens. Do it long enough and others might notice. Maybe they’ll join, too.

Are we serious enough about community to take whatever steps we must to have the kind of community we prattle on about? I know I’m deadly serious about this issue because I think it means life or death for the American Church. Yes, the devil can no sooner wipe out the worldwide church than you or I can blow out the sun, but that doesn’t guarantee the American Church won’t be reduced to a handful of embers. God’s going to send His Spirit where people are serious about the cost of discipleship.  And part of that cost is putting down our self-centered lives to pursue a life of real community.

#4 – Judgment may begin with the house of God, but so does charity.

    Take another look at the Acts 2 passage above. What needy people were the first recipients of the Church’s charity? People in the Church!

We can’t serve people outside our churches if we can’t serve people inside them. And too often, that’s exactly the case. We think that once a person becomes a Christian, they don’t need help from the brethren. We wrongly toss needy fellow believers back into God’s hands and go out to help those outside.

What witness to the world is that, though? Why would anyone want to be a part of a community that’s willing to help people UNTIL they become part of the community? Look at enough cults and you’ll be surprised how many act just that way.

Sadly, I’ve known Christian churches that do that. Time and again they fail because they forgot that charity begins at home. We minister to the believers first, then to those outside the community.

Does this run the risk of being too inwardly focused? Sure. But if a community of folks dead to the world makes up your church, they’ll need less and less inner support as time goes on. Soon, most of the community will require only a minimum of support at the most critical times, and more time can be spent ministering to the needs of those outside the community of faith.

Some would go so far as to say that there is no distinction between inside and outside. David Fitch’s The Great Giveaway cranks the amp to eleven by stating that all charity should be within the church community: Definitely offer help to the needy outside our churches, but with the stipulation that they become part of the church first. That’s some serious tough love, but I can see the wisdom in it. Think of the wide-eyes among nonbelievers when encountering the early Christians looking after each other the way they did. I’m sure many of those pagans were dying to have some of what the Christians had.

How many lost people today are dying to have what we have? Are they beating down the doors of our churches to get in?

If we start thinking along the lines of the four points raised in this post, we’ll make progress toward true community in our churches. In the days ahead, we’ll discuss other ways that we can work toward the kind of Christian community that will change the world for Christ.

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