It's About Us, Not About You!

I have been thinking a lot about the church. Not a church, but the Church, the universal body of Christ. The problem that we Protestants often have is we have become really, really individual in our faith. We have a "personal" relationship with Jesus, it's just us and Christ and we forget about. . . well, everyone. Our Baptism is personal, our communion is personal, we do all these things on our own. We have this idea that it's all about us, and we have separated ourselves from others. We gotta stop.

First, let's talk about Salvation. We are saved into a family, we are adopted. I don't know about your family, but when I bring a new kid home, regardless if they are natural born or adopted, it impacts the whole family. It changes things, and it should change the church when a person joins. When a person gets saved, they are saved into a family, into a body. It's not about that one person, it's about the whole body.

That brings me to the next point, it's a body. The body of Christ is the visible representation of Christ on earth. We are saved and brought into the church. If I gain or lose a body part, I sure notice. For me to do something, to join a church, leave a church or do anything else in the church, it should matter. It should matter. In too many Protestant churches, we are full of non-functioning body parts, parts that grow and then fall off all the time. We don't even seem to notice. A church will have a few hands, a bunch of eyes and ears, a lot of mouths, knees but no feet and several stomachs. Parts come and go, and this strange mutated body doesn't really seem to notice or even miss a beat.

We need to care more about the people than the building. We need to care more about the other members of our church than we care about our preferences. We have to stop caring about the music and the lighting and the coffee more than the people. We must stop having leadership battles and power struggles and personality conflicts. We, the church, is supposed to operate as a singular unit, as one body. The church will never make the impact it should until we can join together and function like a body.

We must stop mutilating the Body of Christ.