William R Collier Jr
The special and unique calling God has for you is the most important thing in your life because that is how God is both going to provide for you and bless other people through you to give glory to himself. I do not want there to be any mistake about that, as it clearly says in Ephesians 5:17 "let us not be ignorant but understanding what the will of the Lord is", or let us consider the picture He paints for us in Psalm 139 where He says "before you were formed in your mother's womb, I knew you." Talk about special!
There is a problem, however. Today it seems like all we read about are two kinds of callings: the individual's calling and "church ministry". That may or may not be a problem, it is however related to the problem. Christians are not really getting better results from their life than non-believers. Drug abuse, divorce, sexual problems, poverty, depression, ministers doubting their callings; these are not the problems of a People who are actually fulfilling their individual callings and ministering for Christ.
You can argue any which way you like, but reality is not going to say anything other than what is true and the truth is the "status quo" is a failure. If we stay in the rut of an over emphasis on "fulfillment" and "church ministry" we'll just keep getting what we have. As one lady wrote to me, "I am tired of the temporary fix and I want an everlasting love with Christ." How well said, and how true!
So much of what passes for Christian self help and self empowerment is exciting and interesting for a time and a season, and often makes the author lots of cold hard cash, but what we see in the statistics is that despite millions of best selling books and superstars who pack stadiums and mega churches that meet almost every day of the week the People of God are still meandering about in a wilderness where they are the wretched of the earth!!!!
Do you feel this, do you sense this deep in your spirit and your heart? You see all around you NOTHING CHANGES.
Yesterday someone told me about an excited pastor who came from a special event, raving about being a "Joshua church". Cute, but what does it mean and what has it changed? I'm told that the idea is to go outside the church and the new emphasis is... "bring a friend to church." So, we've gone "outside the church" have we? Really? NO, we SAY we are but in reality it's still all about getting more warm bodies in the pews. This is not bad, but if that's all you got for your trip then get a refund!
I do not believe in unbelief. Everything God has promised in His Word I believe in and if I do not see it I ask "what is wrong here" not, "why is God not doing this?" I feel a sense of anger at the lie and hope in the truth all rising up at the same time. We should feel anger when lies deny us access to the vastness of the prize of Christ. We should feel hope when we know that once we get into the flow of the truth the lie is no longer any hindrance to us.
If I see a certain kind of life described in the Word and then I see something less than that being lived I do not question the Word, I question the life. I question the life in me, I question it in the body of Christ, and I say "away with the life that is less than God's best, let us have something new that is God's best!"
What we have is church, not Christ, because if we truly had Christ our lives would demonstrate something different than they do now for the body of Christ. Let me say it like this: Jesus is coming for a bride without spot or blemish but if He came today He would find an immature little girl not fit to even consider marriage! Oh, please don't go away mad because I just exposed your golden idol and said "away with it!" The Body of Christ needs a new life, a life lived in the fullness of God's possibilities for us.
Christianity has become a boring, churchy social club that has no real power or influence and that doesn't even TRY to speak to the issues of daily life much less help the believer to deal with them.
I do not want to rail against the clergy, they get picked on a lot, but I cannot help but ask; who is being served by all this, our God or their bellies? I heard about churches now that give their clergy off on Mondays. Yeah, it goes like this: they minister on Sunday so they need another day off besides Saturday so that they can have a two day weekend. This is basically an admission that church has become work, but they get to have Monday off while we have to sit through two boring services all day long on Sunday and then off we go to work on Monday, and yet for all that we are no better off than the worldlings around us!
The Christian life has been reduced to three services a week, perhaps a church ministry, and a few extras like a "revival meeting" or a "missions trip". The People of God are bored! I once asked a man of God about long song services. I told Him "if this is God He can have as much time as He likes, but if this is not God I don't want to give a single minute of my time." He basically admitted that it was not necessarily God and invited me to take my concern up with the person in charge of the song service.
May God help the brother, but why are the People of God being put through all that if it isn't helping them to be more like Christ? In that case I think the people there, or most of them, really enjoyed those long song services, so at least they were happy, and that's not bad. We're allowed to enjoy long song services if we wish! What I wonder about is how the people are changing, because statistically the whole church world, overall, is in pathetic shape.
I am glad to trade in dull, boring, church-Christianity for something better, something that is not boring, something that changes everyone who touches it, and something that bears the fruit of souls saved and lives lived in the fullness of God's promises! I am ready to throw off the grave clothes of THAT kind of plastic-Jesus, wet-noodle Christianity for something REAL!
Don't think I am just an angry man railing against "church". If that thrills you and makes you more like Christ, if that is working for you, then I am happy for you. But as for me, and probably millions more people just like me, "that aint happenin'!" I don't want to be a passive observer, I don't want to be forced into a "ministry" because it is the closest thing they've got to what I actually enjoy doing or feel called to do, and I don't want to restrict my ministry to just building up another man's ministry or "church". I don't want to be divided from those brothers and sisters who attend different "churches". I don't want to be limited to shallow relationships where when one is gone from "the church" one is hardly even missed!
I want to be part of a community that is part mission, part mutual aid society, part family, and part army! Where does such a community exist, sign me up! The exact opposite of such a community is a temple organization, a traditional church that revolves around services and special events but not around meeting needs and fostering relationships of mutual trust and mutual support.
I do not mean to say church is bad, but church is not the totality of our Christian experience and church is not what we are called into as believers: we are not called to church, we are called to community and if church is part of that community that is good so long as it is not used as a substitute for real community. Church cannot ever replace community; it can encourage community and be part of community, but it cannot replace it or BE IT.
When we made the pulpit and the church service the center of our faith we discarded truth and power and the results are before us: the People of God are scrabbling about like the wretched of the earth, despised, persecuted, laughed at, ignored, and outlawed.
Now, let's get back around to your calling. I think we have pretty thoroughly dealt with the idea that your calling, indeed your whole spiritual life, cannot be limited to "church". When we make church, specifically church services and ministry, the center of our life we get "churchianity" not Christianity.
The self help gurus say all we need to do is find and do our calling. If we could just realize our destiny then we could have a new kind of life. Then of course they drag us, kicking and screaming, right back to "church" where our calling is, miraculously, somehow related to being a Sunday school teacher or a deacon or something like that. Interesting who writes this stuff: rich preachers!
Don't get your eye off the prize. The prize is not a church, and it isn't even your own happiness, the prize is Jesus Christ Himself: we are His prize and He is ours! If you want to do your calling you had better come back to the cross and you had better focus on Jesus Christ not only as your savior but as your reward. When we get "saved" we don't receive a church schedule or a church ministry or our own happiness or anything like that, we receive Jesus Christ Himself.
Catholic priests have a beautifully elegant way of describing this during the communion; they present the wafer to the believer and ask "the body of Christ", to which the believer responds "the body of Christ." I for one love this: they ask "is this body of Christ?" and we have to say "yes, it is the Body of Christ."
Let's relate this to us. Romans 12:1 tells us we should present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Wow. Let your brain process this: the priests asks us as WE stand in line, not the wafer this time, just us, and he points at me and you and says to me "the body of Christ?" and I say "the body of Christ." When I receive Christ, as I do in communion, I receive His People. Christ is my reward, we are the body of Christ, therefore we are my reward.
Next time you take communion, even if they don't ask you, say "the body of Christ" then look around at His People AND RECEIVE THEM AS YOUR REWARD AND GIVE TO THEM AS THEIR REWARD!
The Body of Christ is the assembly or ecclesia or community of believers and when we receive Him we receive His whole body. The foundation for you receiving destiny, or really any good thing from God, is Jesus Christ and by extension His People, His Body. Don't confuse the Body of Christ with Sunday and Wednesday church services. I am talking about the people, all those believers in your life and neighborhood. What I want you to think about isn't Sunday morning, I want you to think about Monday night talking to a brother about a pressing problem, or Saturday meeting with a group of Christian friends to go out do some street preaching, or participating in a food buying club with some local believers who are trying to stretch their resources.
Yes, you can go to church, but take church out of your mind when you think of the Body of Christ and think in much broader terms and with more specifics in mind: think of ALL believers, think of addressing every issue and concern of your life, and think of specific activities and relationships you can share with other believers.
I hope by now I have set the stage to talk to you about the call to community, and I beg patience of you if I have gone over long or bored you.
When I speak of the Body of Christ I usually speak of community, not church. I do this because the word community involves everything from church to shop to city hall and everything else. I mean all believers and every part of their lives! As believers on a global scale we have been called out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God and on the local scale we have been called out of the community of Darkness into the Community of God. No single believer can be thought of as not being part of this community and no area of your life can be said to not be under the authority of that community.
Don't get this confused with "Dominion Theology" or "Dispensationalism". The former believe they are literally going to usher in the literal Kingdom of God through political/military victory and the latter believe Jesus will return as soon as we have preached the gospel to the whole planet or some umpteen years after Israel was established and etc. Only Christ will set up His Kingdom on earth, we can only set it up within our hearts, our lives, and our relationships and of course while this will turn the world upside down our goal is to submit to Christ, not make others do so. As for the RETURN, we have no idea and neither does Jesus!
I want you to stop thinking of the Body of Christ in a limited way: you limit it to people in YOUR church, you limit it to the concept of church thus reducing the whole experience to church services, and you limit which areas of your life it has authority over. Stop thinking "church" and start thinking "community", with all that this term implies.
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"I hope by now I have set the stage to talk to you about the call to community,"
We have The Great Commission that defines for us, as Christ followers, our marching orders - per se.
So.. How do WE, the Body of Christ, put Gospel (The Word) into Action (the Commission)?
I agree we need to change our limited thinking of the Body of Christ, but HOW?
An important step is to understand God without the filters/limits humans would (knowingly or unknowingly) put on Him. Until we know Him in all of his limitless, embrace and submit to Him, desire to hear His voice, desire Him to be first, acknowledge He has placed a burden on our hearts with intent of fulfilling His work, we cannot move in the direction He would have us move. Much like in the times of Judges, we would find ourselves doing what is right in our own eyes.
What else? How do we break free from the walls of church and move into the idea of a community living and fulfilling Christ's Commission?
Bill, I enjoyed reading your post. The Bible tells us to live in the world, but to not be OF the world. I think this is a difficult concept to some people. It's like saying you are to live in a prison, but not act like a prisoner. Some people may think of it as a dichotomy.
I'm not up to par with the Old Testament as much as I am with the New Testament, so please forgive me if this next statement is not accurate: Living in the world but not of the world reminds me of the Jewish slaves of the Egyptians. Sure, they were slaves, but the one thing the Egyptians could not take away from them was their minds and their beliefs. Something else it reminds me of are Christian students in secular schools that are prosecuted for their beliefs - the world gets frustrated because no matter how hard it tries, it can't take away your beliefs.
I think that's what God means when He says we are to live in the world but not be of the world; it's that even though the world lives in direct opposition to the Word, we are to first and foremost keep our minds clean, as any sin first starts in the mind. The one thing the world can't take from you is your mind, so you should make sure it is focused on what God says, not what the world wants you to believe.
Replies
We have The Great Commission that defines for us, as Christ followers, our marching orders - per se.
So.. How do WE, the Body of Christ, put Gospel (The Word) into Action (the Commission)?
I agree we need to change our limited thinking of the Body of Christ, but HOW?
An important step is to understand God without the filters/limits humans would (knowingly or unknowingly) put on Him. Until we know Him in all of his limitless, embrace and submit to Him, desire to hear His voice, desire Him to be first, acknowledge He has placed a burden on our hearts with intent of fulfilling His work, we cannot move in the direction He would have us move. Much like in the times of Judges, we would find ourselves doing what is right in our own eyes.
What else? How do we break free from the walls of church and move into the idea of a community living and fulfilling Christ's Commission?
I'm not up to par with the Old Testament as much as I am with the New Testament, so please forgive me if this next statement is not accurate: Living in the world but not of the world reminds me of the Jewish slaves of the Egyptians. Sure, they were slaves, but the one thing the Egyptians could not take away from them was their minds and their beliefs. Something else it reminds me of are Christian students in secular schools that are prosecuted for their beliefs - the world gets frustrated because no matter how hard it tries, it can't take away your beliefs.
I think that's what God means when He says we are to live in the world but not be of the world; it's that even though the world lives in direct opposition to the Word, we are to first and foremost keep our minds clean, as any sin first starts in the mind. The one thing the world can't take from you is your mind, so you should make sure it is focused on what God says, not what the world wants you to believe.