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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 36 Functional
Relationships So far I’ve pointed out
two fundamental aspects of church that are not evolutionary in nature.
They are: the church is the physical body for the Spirit of
Christ to live in, and, Jesus is the Head of this body.
Let’s now look at the rest of the body.
If each individual
Christian is a specific part of Jesus’ body, then like our own
physical body parts, we are not all the same part, even though we have
the same DNA. Paul concurs
with this in 1 Corinthians 12:14. You
might be an ear. Someone
else might be a tongue. Then
there’s me, an armpit. Well,
someone needs to be an armpit. It
might as well be me instead of you.
Some people struggle with being in close proximity to an armpit,
but Paul says that such body parts should receive special honour. (1
Corinthians 12:23). So to personalize this, I
shouldn’t expect everyone to be like me.
I heard that sigh of relief.
You are inherently different from me, and I’m clearly
inherently different from you. I’m
sure you’ve figured that out by now.
Therefore, your job in the body is different than mine, and no
job is less important than another.
Because of this, we should have mutual respect for one another,
assuming we are actually doing our job in the way Jesus expects.
So to warn you, if I work hard at being an armpit, I’ll
probably get a bit sweaty at times. Here’s another point.
As parts of Christ’s body, we’re not all personally joined to
every other body part in the body. Your
big toe on your left foot is not joined to your mouth, even though some
of us put our feet in our mouth on occasion.
It’s a distinct possibility that your mouth and the big toe on
your left foot may never come in contact with each other even though
your body needs both to function properly.
Your big toe on you left foot is joined to other bones on your
foot, and your big toe works directly with these bones.
My point is simple.
I am personally joined to just a few specific people in the Body
of Christ. I’m not joined to everybody.
This is a simple practicality.
You can only have a few close friends at any given time.
I believe that Jesus has personally joined you and I to our close
Christian friends. The
connections between you and your few close friends are called
“joints”. Look at one of
your fingers. Where one bone
comes in contact with another bone, a joint is formed. The bones in a finger are
joined for a reason, and that is to form a finger. Each bone in a finger
has a job to do in the context of the finger.
When each bone in the finger is working properly with the bones
it’s joined to, the finger will work as it should.
In turn, as your fingers work as they should, your hand will work
as it should. A grade one
child can understand this. Each
body part, no matter how small it is works by itself and in conjunction
with a couple other body parts that it is joined to. The whole body is
as healthy as its weakest member. Also,
the individual body part can only work as it should when it is healthy
itself. This means that you
and I must be in good standing with Jesus in order to do our jobs right.
I really don’t think we
consider ourselves as body parts in Christ’s body. I
also don’t think we’ve thought through the idea that Jesus could be
the one who has joined us to our close friends. We tend to think in
terms of being joined to a church organization.
This lack of understanding affects the life of the church. Here’s
an example of how organizational thinking has affected the church. In
general, about all the average Christian does in connection with serving
Jesus revolves around a church organization, a church building, and a
church curriculum. When we
think of working in the service of our Lord, we think in terms of doing
something in the church group we belong to.
These jobs have been put in place by the church structure, by a
committee, or the pastor. We
simply pick what job we want as it is advertised in the Sunday bulletin.
We may work with others as we do the job, but the basis of the
work is organizational for the most part, not relational.
To say it another way, the job is there because the organization
created it. It’s not there
because you and your friend created the job based on you and your friend
asking Jesus what job He’d like you to do.
Here’s an often
experienced scenario that helps explain my point.
A man who was involved in a certain church for a few years was
lamenting the fact that he hadn’t gained any new friendships in this
church, even though he worked with others in the church. His
two closest friends were men he had known long before becoming a part of
this church. He question why
this should be. I’d suggest that this
man ask himself if Jesus has joined him to these two friends he’s
known for years. If he and his friends believe Jesus is behind their
friendship, then they should ask Jesus if He would like them to do
anything by way of serving Him together. I
believe Jesus has placed him with these couple of friends, but not just
to be good buddies. He and
his two Christian friends have been joined together to function in the
Body of Christ. They have work to do for Jesus as friends.
If this man could think in terms of functioning with his friends
in Christ’s body, and not merely functioning in an organization,
he’d feel much better about things.
This is my point.
Don’t think organizationally.
Think relationally. Don’t
think in terms of working for a particular church organization.
Think in terms of working with those few good friends Jesus has
placed you with, whether they are in the particular organization
you’re in or not. Or at
least, add relational thinking to your organizational thinking.
That’s better than nothing.
What I’m speaking about
here is what I call “functional relationships”. That means the
relationships we have with our friends have an element of work to them.
They function in some kind of capacity in the Body of Christ that
in turn makes the body healthier. I know if we all thought
in these terms, things would be different.
Most church organizations would undergo great change and look
nothing like they presently do. Others
would cease to exist. The
problem in the ecclesiastical maze as I see it, is that we’ve lost the
idea that we are individual parts of a living body. We’ve replaced
something that was meant to be relational
with something that is organizational.
New Testament thinking says nothing about being joined
organizationally. Emmy Lou Harris once
lamented that in the making of music, we‘ve lost the living room
experience in our music. Emmy
Lou Harris and her friends once sat around in their living rooms
enjoying each other as they played musical instruments and sang songs.
Once the business of music set in, the making and selling of
records, the “living room experience” was lost.
The comfort of the living room was replaced with the structure of
the studio in order to promote the business of music.
That’s the way it is in the ecclesiastical maze.
We’ve lost the living room experience in the Body of Christ and
have replaced it with the “business of church”.
I know this may be hard for some to comprehend.
It’s something that needs to be pondered over and studied from
a Biblical perspective. Here are a few pertinent
questions to ask yourself. Who
are my closest friends? Do
I believe Jesus has joined me to these friends?
Am I maintaining a good relationship
with these friends? And
lastly, am my close friends and I doing anything in the service of our
Lord together? If not, can
we seek Him for direction? We often think in terms
of maintaining our close friendships, but don’t often think in terms
of working in the service of our Lord together.
We go out for coffee together.
We go to movies together. Why
not work for Jesus together? Friendships
should be functional as well as relational.
This is the Body of Christ in action. This
truth is not evolutionary in nature, but we have evolved far from this
New Testament approach to church. Your best friends might
well be in the church group you are a part of, and you might well be
working for Jesus with them. If
this is so, great. But this
isn’t always the case. My
heart goes out to the growing multitude of Christians who are no longer
satisfied with traditionalism. This
message is especially for them. If
you are one such unhappy “church-goer” and have left traditionalism,
I hope and pray you don’t leave the Body of Christ.
You can leave the traditional church, but you shouldn’t leave
those to whom Jesus has joined you.
It is with these friends that you can function in God’s kingdom
and find peace in your heart.
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