Table of Contents:
Life Together
Information Age and Compassion Fatigue
Making the Point at Communion
Exegetically Speaking
Words to Stand You on Your Feet
Living out the Living Word
Following God
Points to Ponder
Jewels from Past Giants
Counselor’s Corner
The Story behind the Song
Church Builders
Advancing the Ministries of the Gospel
Marks of the Master
Book Reviews
News Update
Sermon Helps
Puzzles and ‘Toons
___________________________________
Life Together: Unity and Discipleship in the Congregation
By Justin Lonas
A version of this article appeared in Pulpit Helps, June 2007.
Why is it that when Christians meet together under threat of arrest in communist China and other closed countries, they praise God with fervor, unity, and commitment seldom seen in the free environments of the West? Why here in the West, where neither persecution nor financial pressures prevent us from being able to gather together freely and frequently, do church members drift in and out of fellowship at local churches as casually as one switches toothpaste brands?
If we want to faithfully proclaim the Gospel of Christ to the lost and serve as a beacon of hope in our ever-darkening culture, a reasonable starting point is for Christians to recapture the deep, Christ-like love for one another we are exhorted to in Scripture. A healthy and growing local body is not a product of church size, financial assets, never-ending programs, slick marketing, celebrated leaders, or a prominent location. At minimum, it is the outflow of brothers and sisters washed in the blood and abiding in Christ’s command to love one another.
The Common Denominator
The first step to loving one another is remembering where we all came from. Paul addressed petty squabbles within the church at Corinth by reminding them of their common redemption, and his exhortation applies as powerfully as ever today: “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our Lord” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
We are all Christ-bought sinners! That’s the beauty of Christian community—our partaking in the Church is not about our individual contributions, but about Christ’s uniting us through His blood. The sooner we take this truth to heart, the sooner we begin to recognize that what unites us is more solid and real than what divides us. As C. S. Lewis put it through one of his characters in The Great Divorce, “That’s what we all find when we reach [heaven]. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.”
Of course, divisions will come, and sometimes they are as much called for as unity is. When “unity” comes at the expense of truth, we cannot stay together without transformation. If some among us dilute the Gospel to allow some sins to remain present (as opposed to defining what we “were” before Christ rescued us) or refuse to allow God’s Word to define belief and practice, and they cannot be won back through pleading and reasoning together, separation is necessary for the sake of the truth. The problem comes when we separate over issues that should not be important enough to divide.
Rejoicing in the Privilege
If we can’t live in truth and love toward one another in the Church—as 1 John 3:18 says, not “with word or tongue, but in deed and truth”—it’s no wonder that the world has serious doubts about the legitimacy of our faith. An effective witness requires an abiding love for our own fellow partakers in grace. That’s what has always made Christ’s teaching unique—He said that we would be known by our love for one another (John 13:35), not our achievements, our morality, or our cultural relevance.
Because we often allow the ethos of individualism to reign in our fellowship, we are in need of a shift in the way we view our fellow believers and what it means to be a local church together. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer addressed this in his 1939 book, Life Together, stating that we should enter into Christian community “not as demanders but as thankful recipients.” He went on to say that “We thank God for giving us those who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily…. It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.”
Bonhoeffer’s call to viewing membership in the Body of Christ as a privilege should wake us. That’s why oppressed believers can rejoice so vibrantly—they are acutely aware of the tremendous cost that Christ paid so that we may have intimate fellowship with Him and with each other! As always, however, the issue gets sticky when we move from abstract to concrete. This is about more than the big picture; it is about you and me and our local church bodies.
Faithfulness Beyond Sunday Morning
Working out the teaching of love for another “in deed and truth” within a congregation is a huge undertaking because the love John is speaking of only comes from Christ’s transformation of our hearts.
What does it mean to love in truth? In practical terms, we need to cultivate intentional, continual fellowship with those in our church, to the end of deepening our relationships to Christ and to one another. This comes through faithful teaching from the pulpit, to be sure, but for the truth to take deep root, we need devoted relationships that carry us beyond the one or two relatively “sanitized” church meetings each week and into our daily lives. If God is concerned about all of our lives, so should we as believers be concerned with the lives of our fellow church members outside of our official gatherings.
One of the best ways this is played out is through small groups of families and even smaller groups of men or women meeting together regularly outside of Sunday worship services. Such gatherings over time give participants a chance to truly know each other, to cultivate relationships, sharpen each other’s knowledge of the Word, to practice the “one-anothers” of Scripture, and to exhort one another to seek God’s glory—in short, this is discipleship. Intentionally meeting together is much more important in an era when many church members drive long distances to attend services—congregations aren’t necessarily a part of each other’s lives outside of church anymore, so we need to make the effort to bond together in Christ.
In bringing church members closer together in Christ, small groups and discipleship groups also help in developing a church’s attitude toward the community at large. How can we expect to love and serve the lost without first practicing loving service of those with whom we share the eternal bond of salvation? In working toward humble and faithful fellowship with other Christians, we are awakened to the need to be the salt and light to everyone else around us as well.
Churches with vibrant congregational life beyond Sunday worship almost always have a more vibrant congregational dynamic on Sunday morning, too. These churches, by seeking to love one another, are often the most ready to respond to community needs, the most willing to reach out to non-believers, and the most willing to take bold steps for God. This fact is too important to ignore. Unless our congregations are willing to submit to one another in love and the common gratitude of redemption, the other aspects of our church life will not flourish. The privilege of communion with one another is a crucial aspect of God’s design for our time on earth; we forget that at our own peril. When we honor that, however, we draw closer to His will in our whole walk.
Justin Lonas is editor of Disciple Magazine for AMG International in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Table of Contents.
___________________________________
The 21st Century Christian,
the Information Age,
and “Compassion Fatigue”
By Shea Oakley
It is impossible for the believer to be content with this world as it is, but it is also impossible to change everything our spirit tells us is wrong with it. This can create a conundrum for the sensitive soul who longs for the redemption of all things, knows this must await the return of Christ, but at the same time also knows that we are called to be lights in the darkness in the interval. This dilemma is only compounded by living in an age in which mass communication on a global scale has made us more aware of what is wrong with the human race than any other generation in history.
The vast majority of Christians in 500 A.D. or 1000 A.D. or 1500 A.D. most likely had no idea what the needs were of people outside of a twenty mile radius from their place of birth. The ability to know what was wrong with the world (and to act in any way other than prayer to address how that wrong impacted people) was radically limited by the lack of media technology we take for granted today. This most likely both simplified and focused the lives of our predecessors in the faith. Their immediate community was their only world and, thus, their primary concern.
This kind of existence is nearly impossible for a conscientious believer today, at least in the developed world. Through an endless supply of print media, television programming, websites and other forms of modern communication we citizens of the 21st Century daily come face to face with a myriad of problems that plague both the Church and the world at large. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed by the immensity of needs on this fallen planet.
This reality contributes in a profound, but perhaps little appreciated, way to the afflictions in the community of faith that we today call “compassion fatigue” and “ministry burnout.” There are saints who deeply and sincerely want to make a difference for the Kingdom of God, but they have become so inundated by what they see and hear and read every day that they either feel paralyzed by the immensity of it all or they have taken on too many causes at one time. The result is a sense of frustration and failure that can be discouraging to an extreme.
Added to this problem is the wrongheaded assumption in the West that we are all capable of doing far more than the benighted people of the past. Too many in the church have unconsciously adopted the world’s idea of unaided human potential being somehow limitless. Some have justified the taking on of too many challenges by using the biblical declaration that “with God all things are possible” or “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” They take this to mean that God can give us the strength to do the superhuman things it would take to address many, or even most, of the problems we see everywhere thanks to living in the Information Age. The rub here is this: God will indeed give us the strength to accomplish what He truly has called us to accomplish. What He will not do is give us the strength to accomplish something he never had in mind.
In this truth is the solution to our conundrum as Christians living in the 21st century West. We must seek God’s will for our ministerial lives while purposefully not listening to the cacophony of needs that are served up by our access to mass information. God expects us to learn to listen to His often “still, small voice”, not to what other people, or we ourselves, may tell us we must do to save the world. We are only responsible to do what He has called us to do with our finite human lives. Yes, our Lord can empower us beyond what we are capable of accomplishing in the flesh alone, but He does not expect us to achieve what He has never asked of us.
Sometimes we truly need to ignore all the voices telling us to “do something” and listen to the Voice which says “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If we decide to only take on that yoke we will find we accomplish far more than we could ever do, in and of ourselves, at the beck and call of even the Christian voices in media that tell us we must somehow do the impossible.
© Shea Oakley. All Rights Reserved.
Converted from atheism in 1990, Shea Oakley has written over 350 articles for electronic and print publications since 2002, including Disciple Magazine (and Pulpit Helps Magazine),The Christian Herald, The Christian Post, Christian Network and Crosshome.com. In 2003 he graduated from Alliance Theological Seminary with a Certificate of Theological Studies. Shea and his wife Kathleen make their home in West Milford, New Jersey.
Table of Contents.
___________________________________
Making the Point: Delivering Powerful Communion Meditations
By Andy Heisler
Preparing a 3 minute Communion meditation has challenges that are unique from crafting a 30 minute sermon or Bible lesson. Through a sermon, the speaker is able to follow the arc of a story, and take time to unpack the meaning of a text. In a meditation, the presenter only has a few critical moments to engage the congregation and lead them to the foot of the cross. Preparation is so critical to crafting a message that hits the mark. Consider the following suggestions:
I. Make the Point
Being clever or creative is not of greatest importance, and can become a distraction in the short time that you have to share. Consider if an illustration or story will distract from, or lead toward the ultimate point. Be sure that what you share quickly moves to a clear and compelling message of the cross. The remembrance of Christ’s body and blood will never be stale or lacking in power. As Paul inferred, things of great importance are worth repeating (Phil. 3:1).