All the Church I Need

Meditate: Acts 2:45

Church works better when we don’t treat it like an organization and remember that it’s really just all the Christians God has gathered together in one place. The Church is the Body of Christ and we’re all members.

In fact, we’ll see later in the Book of Acts how life together as Christians gets complicated when we move away from thinking of the Church as “us.” I remember growing up in small Midwestern towns it was easy to spot the non-churchgoers: Church people would talk about what “we’re doing” at “our church” and non-churchgoers would talk about what “those folks down at the church” were up to.

Today, I hear people say that “the Church” didn’t help them in some way. Then when I ask who did help them they’ll tell me the name of someone in their congregation. Remember, the Church is the Body of Christ. If any Christian helps you, the Church has helped. (Often the real complaint is that the Christian who helped didn’t have the right title in the Church organization but then that’s not about caring, is it?).

It’s easy to confuse the help we want with the help we need. The Texas Rangers (the police force not the baseball team) tell the story of a time in the Old West when a town needed help quelling a riot. The local sheriff was shocked when he met the train and found that only one Ranger had been sent to help. The Ranger’s response? “You’ve only got one riot, you only need one Ranger.”

I’ve even heard “helping” Christians miss this one. They’ll say, “But I wasn’t doing that for the Church.” Okay, you weren’t doing that for the Church but you, a Christian, a part of Christ’s Body, took care of a fellow believer. Like it or not, if you were able to help them then in that moment you were as much “Church” as that person needed.

• Who can I “be the Church” to?
• How much “Church” am I demanding?

Pray:
Praise: You are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Confess: I want to be served more than I want to serve.
Thank: Thank You, Father, that You have given us Your Church to care for us and to serve.
Ask: Give me ears to hear what the Spirit is saying, eyes to see where You are leading, and a heart ready to serve You and Your people.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 104

Posted by email from Ferndale Tonight (posterous)