BLOG 6/5/18. ‘CHURCH MEMBERSHIP’ OFTEN OBSCURE, EVEN MINDLESS
It helps me to step back periodically and examine what forms my understanding of my participation in the church. After all, in these two millennia since the church’s birth in Jerusalem when it often had to meet in secret and behind locked doors, … to the era of Christendom when the church is established as a part of the empire, is a journey that has taken its toll. It has meant that the itd has now, essentially, become a ‘plus’ to be identified as a member of the church. Going to church was something one did on Sundays. It became habit. One went to church, or was at church as though it was a place, or an activity, or an identification with an institution.
Someone wrote the limerick: “They do it every Sunday. They’ll be over it on Monday. It’s only a habit they’ve acquired.” Or, “The clock on the steeple chimed twelve, and the Presbyterian Church on the courthouse square gave up its dead, back to the world where they knew how to live.” These are, confessedly, cynical critiques from the watching world, … but they do remind us that we need to be very clear about what Christ’s message and mission are all about. We need to be lucid and persuaded about how it is that the church is designated by the apostles as the body of Christ, how it is the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit, how it is the community of God’s New Creation/Kingdom. Are we aware of the cost of discipleship?
The very Greek word ek-klesia (which comes into our English translations as the word church) is a composite word that means ‘called-out’. It is an assembly/community of those who are called out, so then the insistent question is: called-out from what? And, therefore, called into what? What is the ‘calling’ of those who identify themselves with this community? What is God’s purpose for calling me/us out of one condition/culture/community, … and into another? How is the church the community of God’s New Humanity, and what are the demands of my identification with that. It, obviously, has to encompass much more than going to Sunday morning gatherings? What change in purpose? What change in lifestyle? What transfer of loyalties so that I/we serve one Lord, and not conformed to what we have been called out of?
We speak of being saved, … but saved from what? To say, simply, saved from sin is true enough, but incomplete. What is the dominion of sin and darkness from which we are told we are delivered? What are its components, its subtleties and seductions? In the realities, the vicissitudes of my daily life, what have I been called into that is transformational? The apostle says tells us that God’s design in calling us is to conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Elsewhere he ‘fleshes that out’ as consisting of being conformed to God’s Son in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness—the image of God in our lives.
Stop! Take a deep breath. This is costly, but it is the cost of discipleship, which should also translate into the meaning of our participation/membership in the Christian community/church. It is such that we are called into. Elsewhere, the apostle spells-out that the mature participant/believer in Christ is one who is equipped to participate in the mission of God in the world, to discern the cultural context in which he/she operates, is able to effectively communicate the message of Christ, and this because he/she is formed by the Word of Christ (cf. Ephesians 4:11 ff.). It is not a community dominated by church professionals/clergy, but rather a community continually being equipped to demonstrate God’s in-breaking New Creation.
One does not (or should not) join such a radical, counter-cultural community mindlessly. And if a community is not self-consciously engaged in such a calling, it’s integrity should be questioned!! There should be no fuzzy-brained, or mindless ‘church members’. But, alas! this happens continually and the church deteriorates into salt-less salt, into simply a religious component of the dominion of darkness. Run with that.
[http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html]
