Church: This Has to Stop

The mission of the Church is not to impose the Law of God on others. Such attempts at imposition were what the Pharisees, those first-century Judean legalists, were guilty of and that Jesus so often condemned.

The mission of the Church is to proclaim God's Word, both Law and Gospel, so that all people can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, receive the gifts of repentance and saving faith in Jesus Christ.

It's through the proclamation that Jesus Christ, God the Son, has died and risen to save sinners like you and me from the eternal death sentence we deserve, that God gives faith to us. It's through such God-given faith that people have eternal life with God.

I have repented for a past in which I, as a pastor of Christ's Church, engaged in partisan politics.

While individual Christians are free to be as involved in politics as they wish, the Church and its pastors should not, except in rare circumstances, get involved politically.

We are seeing today in the US and Europe the tragic results of pastors and churches adulterating the proclamation of God's Word by indulging the vain conceit that their political preferences come straight from Christ. People are turning away from Christ because they think there's some actual connection between the Lord we claim to follow and the politics some Christians push.

Whether the agenda of these Christian legalists is politically conservative or liberal, it's a lie, an idolatry of self or of ideology that, whether intended or not, pushes Christ from His throne and gives people an excuse not to listen to God's saving Word about Christ.

It has to stop. For Christ's sake, it has to stop.

"...one of the most segregated hours...in America"

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s observation about 11:00am on Sunday mornings, when Christians of different colors worship the same God revealed in Jesus Christ, is about as true today as the day he first made this observation. It was on April 17, 1960, Easter Sunday, on NBC's Meet the Press that King made this famous pronouncement.*



The reasons for this persistent segregation are many: the momentum of history, the locations where worship happens (often influenced, even mandated, by race), differences in comfort zones, and, yes, sometimes, racism.

But I pray that one day Christian congregations will mirror heaven and the words of a song many of us learned as children in Sunday School:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world!

Even now, Lord Jesus, "Thy kingdom com, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Amen

*The day was also the birthdate of one of my kid sisters.

Saturday This and That

Things that caught my eye this week.

Secretariat versus American Pharoah...
...In a race, which horse would win? By the way, the name of the latest Triple Crown winner throws me off. The title of the Egyptian false deity/king was Pharaoh. But hey, if misspelling was good enough for the Beatles, it's good enough for a winning racehorse.

5 really bad reasons to leave a church...
...from Relevant magazine.

How to know you're from the Midwest...
...in case you forget, I guess.



It absolutely rings true! (Thanks to my daughter for sharing this with me. By the way, I was just told that I have four cans of opened pop in the refrigerator.)

Want to get obese?...
...Spend one year ordering one signature item from one of these places just once time a week.

How can liberal arts education be saved?...
...By proving its utility.

Happy she didn't go to law school...
...here.

Is Lindsey Graham the candidate for president people are looking for...
...while no one is really really looking at him? Chris Cilizza has an interesting take on the South Carolina Republican. (No endorsement implied. I don't do politics here, although I sometimes observe it.)

The Bible's 'love chapter'...
...isn't just for weddings. In fact, it was originally written by Saint Paul to a first-century church riven by division caused by loveless spiritual pride. That's not where the author of takes this wonderful piece, though and it's worth the few minutes will take your time to read.

Saturday This and That

Things that caught my eye this past week...

People are ticked off at Manny Pacquiao...
...They think they were ripped off because he boxed with a severely injured rotator cuff. And the Nevada Boxing Commission isn't too happy with him either. But I think the promoters are gleefully counting their take.

If you like Chipotle's guacamole...
...the restaurant chain has made your dreams come true, revealing their "secret" recipe this past week.

The secret recipe for getting "millennials" in church?...
...Be the church.

In recent presidential election cycles, less experience...
...has led to victory in November.

If you're passing through Dayton in the next month...
...there's still time to see the Dayton Art Institute's interesting show, on loan from the Reading museum, of American Impressionism works. Saw it a few months ago and it's worth the price of admission.

Set Apart

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Advent is a season of anticipation. 

It recalls the centuries when God’s people anticipated the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Anointed One. 

In Advent, we also anticipate the coming of Christmas day. (Especially if you're about six or seven years old.)

But more than anything, Advent is a season in which we remind ourselves that we need to live each day in eager anticipation of Jesus’ return. 

One of the most ancient liturgical confessions of the Church is simply: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

Over the past two Sundays, the first two Sundays in Advent, we’ve talked about how to anticipate, how to wait, for the return of Jesus, how to get ready to meet Jesus, either at the ends of our own earthly lives or at the end of this world, when He will, as we confess each Sunday, “judge the living and the dead.” We’ve talked about preparing through daily repentance and daily renewal through the forgiveness God gives to those who trust in Christ as their only God and King.

But in today’s second lesson, the apostle Paul gives us a different way of looking at how to anticipate the coming of Jesus. It’s one I like a lot and it can all be summarized by a single word: sanctification. 

The word sanctification is rooted in a Latin word, sanctus, which means holy. The part of the traditional liturgy in which we sing, “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God power and might, heaven and earth are full of Your glory…” is called the sanctus. 

The word holy means set apart, special, different. It could even be translated as weird, odd, not like other things.

This book is called the Holy Bible or Holy Book, because out of all the books in the world, this one is set apart. It is the Word of God. No other book can make that claim. 

Holy Baptism is set apart and different from any other baptism, including John the Baptist’s baptism, because Holy Baptism is set apart, the only baptism in which God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in the baptized. 

Holy Communion is unlike any other meal in which people have community with each other because in Holy Communion, we have communion with God, we receive the very body and blood of Jesus, and through it, God's forgiveness and life pulsing within us. 

Now, we’ve mentioned before what the Bible scholars call inclusios or inclusions. An important theme of a particular section of Scripture is underscored when a particular word or idea appears at its beginning and at its conclusion. That signals the reader that everything in between those two markers is about a single idea. These bookends form what they call “inclusions.” 

Pull out a sanctuary Bible, please, and turn to page 825 and then look at 1 Thessalonians 4:3. We’re not going to look at the whole verse right now, just the pertinent start of it. It says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…” 

Now, turn the page and look at a line that comes almost at the end of our second lesson for this morning, to chapter 5, verses 23. It says, in part, “May the God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through…”” 

So, the theme of this section of Paul’s first century letter to the Christians in the city of Thessalonica, including today’s second lesson is let God set you apart. 

Give God access to your heart, mind, and will so that He can make you over in Christ’s image. 

That’s God’s will for our lives, to make us more like the One Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death, set us free to be the people God had in mind when He formed us in our mothers’ wombs. 

We’re not supposed to look, act, sound like, or be like the rest of the world. We’re supposed to be set apart, different. 

In 1 Peter 2:11, we’re told, “...as foreigners and exiles...abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.” 

And in Romans 12:1-2, we’re told: “...in view of God’s mercy...offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

It turns out that being open to the process by which God sets us apart from the world and makes us over into Christ’s image is precisely the way we prepare to meet Jesus. 

But what does that process look like? 

Please take a look at our lesson, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 (page 826 in the sanctuary Bibles). Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 

Can you imagine anything harder than fulfilling the three imperatives that Paul gives in this one verse? 

"Rejoice always"? 

Even when the gift I’ve been unable to find at the first five stores also isn’t at the sixth? 

Even when my child is in the intensive care unit, his life hanging in the balance? 

Even when I’ve lost my wife or my husband? 

I think that we react in this way often because we don’t understand the difference between joy and happiness. (I know this is hard for me to remember!) 

Happiness is about the things that happen to us: We laugh at a joke, win the lottery, meet a friend. 

Joy is that deep in the bone sense of contentment that comes from knowing that because Jesus Christ died and rose and still lives and because I believe in Him, I have the forgiveness of my sins and life with God forever. 

Happiness happens to us because of our circumstances; joy is ours in spite of our circumstances. 

Joy can’t be taken from us even when we’re unhappy. (I have often found that an important truth to hold onto.)

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, for example, Paul talks about the difference between the grief of those who follow Christ and those who don’t: Those without Christ grieve with no hope; those who trust in Christ still grieve. It would be unnatural not to. But they have an eternity of hope. They have joy.

Back in our lesson, Paul says, to “pray continually.” (Some translations put it, "pray without ceasing.") 

I’d guess that in my years as a pastor, this is the passage about which I've gotten the second greatest number of questions. “‘Pray continually’ or ‘Pray without ceasing,’” someone will ask. “How on earth am I supposed to do that? Don’t I have other things to do in life?” 

Yes, you do. 

And so did Jesus. 

And it’s from Him that we can learn what this means. 

Jesus had intense times when He went off by Himself to pray, of course. 

He also prayed publicly with other people. 

But Jesus was also in continual fellowship with God the Father. In John 5:19, Jesus says of Himself, “...Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

Jesus remained prayerfully connected to God the Father all through His day. And if Jesus needed to pray constantly like this, how much more do we need to do the same thing? 

Trying to live the Christian life without the power God gives to us through prayer in Jesus’ Name is like trying to drive our cars without gas in the tank. It doesn’t work. 

The prayerless person simply isn’t prepared for the inevitable tough times of this life...or for the coming of Jesus. 

I once saw evangelist Billy Graham on a late night talk show. He amazed the host by saying that the whole time he was being interviewed, he was praying, asking God to help him say the right thing, to glorify God even in this interchange. That’s praying continually, even while hard at work.

“Give thanks in all circumstances.” This passage has been the subject of maybe the greatest number of questions I've gotten as a pastor. 

It’s important to note that Paul says to pray in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. Not all circumstances that come into our lives are blessings, you know. Evil things come from the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. Jesus makes clear that all disease is ultimately attributable to the devil. But even in the midst of life's difficulties, even horrors, we have reason to be thankful to a God Who understands us and has conquered for all eternity our enemies, sin and death.

An elderly man, deeply shaken by the death of his wife, told me that every night, amid tears of grief, he fell to his knees and thanked God for the years they’d had together and for the hope of eternity through Jesus Christ that they’d shared. Even in sadness, he was thankful and had God’s peace, what Paul calls elsewhere in the New Testament, a “peace which surpasses all understanding.”

Starting at verse 19 of our lesson, Paul continues: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all;hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” 

We live in a cynical time, a time too, in which people doubt the notion that there are any hard and fast truths. So, when people--even Christian people--hear others speaking in the Name of Jesus, claiming that what they say has the backing of God’s Word in Scripture, we tend to be cynical. We tend toward skepticism in the face of witnesses for Christ who display what one Bible scholar identifies as the key characteristics of John the Baptist: “public, certain, and humble.”

Part of our skepticism may be that we don’t know God’s Word well enough to know what “prophecies” spoken in Christ’s Name are true or false. 

A knowledge of God’s Word is just as important as prayer in helping us get through our days, living in hope, or anticipating the coming of Jesus. 

In fact, if prayer is conversation with God, reading and digesting God’s Word is essential to prayer. 

Our words of prayer to God are mere responses to the Word from God. 

We respond to its call to repent, to believe, to trust, to live in the assurance of His love, grace, and provision, to call on God and be saved, and to call on God in every time of need. 

When we know God’s Word, we grow up, no longer, in the words of Ephesians 4:14, “...infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” This is one reason why I hope that you’ll join the journey through the Bible in 2015.

Paul’s words for this morning end in a prayer. Verse 23: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” 

May God grant these things to us as well. 

As we submit to God, allowing Him to set us apart and sanctify us, worship with His people, soak in His Word, thank Him in all circumstances, pray continually, and receive His body and blood, may you and I be ready to truly celebrate Christmas, be ready to meet our Lord face to face, be ready to face life and death and eternity. Amen

Risking Being Known

From today's installment of Our Daily Bread:

One reason we are unwilling to risk being known is that we fear rejection and ridicule. But when we discover that God knows us, loves us, and is willing to forgive even the worst thing we have done, our fear of being known by God begins to fade away. And when we find a community of believers who understands the dynamic relationship between forgiveness and confession, we feel safe confessing our sins to one another (James 5:16).

Read the whole thing.

So Much Church Fund-Raising is Legalism Mocking Grace

John Schroeder:

Somehow I cannot help but think that if we concentrated on producing mature Christians the money thing would take care of itself.

Read the whole thing.

Churches Aren't About the Pastors

They're about Christ's people being the Church. (HT: John Schroeder for linking to Mark D. Roberts' post.)

"Lunchtime Churches"

This concept is exciting to me.

It's good for Christians to remember that the first church building wasn't built until the fourth century, some three hundred years after Jesus' death and resurrection. Church isn't a building, it's the people of God gathered in Christ's Name and sent to spread the message that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ have everlasting life.

Church can happen anywhere!

Why 'fear of intimacy' as a reason people give for staying away from Church may say good things about the Church

It's a provocative argument advanced by John Schroeder in this blog post. But I think that his point is well-taken. Some people aren't ready for the kind of vulnerability to God and empathy for others that is central to church culture. They're not prepared for the intimacy with God and others that's a part of Christian life which Christians, when we're tuned into God, take for granted.

Of course, in the face of the fears of non-churchgoing friends, we Christians aren't, in Jesus' phrase, to keep our light under a bushel basket. A relationship with Jesus Christ is the very best thing that any human being can have. Things like love, compassion, and friendship will cause Christians to want to share that relationship with others, in spite of the prospect of rejection. Just because some people aren't ready yet for the kind of love that can be found in Christ's Church doesn't mean that we shouldn't love them enough to let them know that the welcome mat is always out for them.

Like Philip in the New Testament, who, when asked by his friend Nathanael if anything good could come from Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, we're called to tell our friends, "Come and see."

The Church: Essential for Anyone Serious About Growing Up Spiritually

[The following was the daily inspiration from my colleague, Glen VanderKloot, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois.]

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Thought for the Day:
"Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wiser. Trying to live for Jesus doesn't work, but training ourselves does, which is why we need a team of people around us to help." [John Ortberg]

Scripture:
1 Timothy 4:8 NLT: "Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come."

Prayer:
"Lord, transform my life through training myself to live for Jesus. Amen"

*************************************************
If you would like to receive Glen's fantastic daily emailed inspirational pieces, contact him at olwf1@gliq.net and put SUBSCRIBE on the subject line.

This is...

intriguing. (Thanks to Nancy on ShoutLife for linking to this story.)

Letters to My Non-Churchgoing Friends (#4: The Church Only Wants My Money)

Dear Friend:
Today I want to discuss a fourth reason people give for not being involved in a church. Some say: "The church only wants my money."

I need to tell you something. As a Lutheran, I'm part of a Christian movement which, secondarily anyway, began with disgust over money the Church was "guilting" people into giving, usually money they didn't have to give.

Martin Luther, a German monk, priest and professor, began our movement and what's called 'The Reformation' when he nailed ninety-five theses--or statements for theological debate--on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. The immediate motivator for Luther's action was his digust with a practice of the Roman Church of his day, that of selling pieces of paper known as indulgences. The church claimed that people who bought these documents got time out of a place called purgatory for themselves or their loved ones. (Luther also came to challenge the very idea of a place called purgatory.)

At the root of Luther's challenge of indulgences was the idea that a relationship with God or eternity with God could be bought or sold or earned. Luther insisted, and Lutherans insist today, that God's gifts of everlasting life, reconciliation with God, and forgiveness of sin are really gifts. They're freely granted to people willing to give up their dependence on sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

Having said this, you should nonetheless know that churches do want your money. They want my money, too. But, I hope they do so for the right reasons, two of which come to mind immediately.

The first is a practical one. Simply put, without money, churches find it harder to fulfill their missions.

But there's a second reason. One movement in the Church calls it, "the need of the giver to give." When we willingly make giving to God's work the first expenditure to come out of our paychecks, we drive a stake into the heart of our common tendency toward selfishness. (This is what the Bible calls crucifying the old self.) We tell God that we're grateful for Christ and that we're putting Him first in our lives.

For years at our congregation, we've made an announcement at the beginning of our worship celebrations, asking first-time visitors not to give any money when the offering baskets are passed around. "It's our privilege to have you with us today," we say. We want visitors to know that we care more about them as people than as owners of wallets.

But not every visitor likes it when we say this. One person who worshiped with us for the first time several years ago had already become an enthusiastic believer in giving the first ten per cent of her income to the work of the church. She eventually became a member of our congregation and told us that when, during her first visit, first-timers were urged not to make an offering, she thought, "There's no way you're going to keep me from giving!" That woman is what the Bible calls a "cheerful" or "hilarious" giver. She understands that the church needs money to do its work and that giving to God's work feels good. Giving has become a huge blessing in her life!

Honestly, giving doesn't come easily to me. And I hate it when churches become obsessed with money, treating people like sources of revenue rather than children of God. But people like that woman remind me of why the church wants our money. And why that's a good thing.

Sincerely,
Mark

[UPDATE: Spencer Troxell, one of my favorite people, responds to the first three installments of this series here. PS: I've never met any Zoroastrians either.]

Letters to My Non-Churchgoing Friends (#3: Is the Church Filled with Hypocrites?)

Dear Friend:
In my first letters, I've addressed two big reasons that people give for not being part of a church: that they don't need the church to be Christian and that worship is boring.

Here, I want to talk about a third reason: "The church is full of hypocrites."

Our word hypocrite is a transliteration of a Greek word found in the New Testament, hupokrites. It was a term originally used of actors, people who have one identity but act another way on stage. It came to be used of any person who "acted" in ways different from the beliefs they claimed to hold.

Honestly, the church is full of hypocrites. I'm one of them. I say one thing and often, live another; think one thing and do another.

In my better moments, I do love God and I do love my neighbor, as Jesus commands. In such moments, I'm a standup guy with pure thoughts, pure motives, pure actions.

But during the other twenty-three-hours-and fifty-five-minutes of my days, I'm not so pure. I’m a lot like Saint Paul, who wrote in the New Testament portion of the Bible: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

A war constantly rages inside any person who genuinely tries to live out their faith in Jesus Christ. It's a conflict between the new part of us that wants to follow Christ and the old part that wants to get our own ways. From moment to moment, we Christians need God's help in order to choose which side will win this internal war.

And this is where the church comes in. A man told me once, "The church would be an empty place if God didn't let the sinners in." Every person who worships in every church is a sinner, most of whom want to live more like Christians.

The church is God's hospital for hypocrites, the best place for us to come to confess our sins, receive God's forgiveness, hear God's Word for our lives, and draw strength for the battle to become less hypocritical and more authentic as followers of Christ.

The church is God's support group for recovering hypocrites. Like those recovering from other addictions, church people sometimes find the allure of sin overpowering. At the party, the husband becomes unkind in his remarks about his wife. The teen fibs about why he couldn't make his curfew. The woman gets so carried away with her frustrations at work that she begins to gossip about a co-worker. The preacher uses God's name for something other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

The church is where hypocrites like these--hypocrites like me--need to be.

If you ever say one thing and do another, the church may be the best place for you too.

Sincerely,
Mark

Letters to My Non-Churchgoing Friends (#2: Worship is Boring)

Dear Friend:
In this second letter, I want to deal with an entirely different objection people raise to being part of a church. "It's boring," they say.

The comment usually relates to worship and there are variations on this theme heard from non-churchgoers, whatever the "flavor" of church they've experienced. People will say:

• "The praise songs are repetitive and brain dead."
• "The sermon goes on forever."
• "They use words I've never heard before."
• "I don't get those old hymns. The music drags and the lyrics make no sense to me."
• "What's with the organ?" (Or the guitar, the drums, the keyboard, the kazoos?)

There's a lot of truth to the idea that worship is boring, even in churches with excellent preachers and great musicians. It sometimes seems that we churches and preachers have a goal to so bore people that they won't want to have anything to do with God.

But more than the imperfect efforts of pastors and congregations lay behind this common complaint. It also has to do with our expectations of any public "presentation."

Today, we have constant access to slickly produced movies, music, dramas, comedies, video games, and reality shows. We can watch them on our TVs, at movie theaters, and on our computers and iPods. Even compared with the average, perfectly-coiffed local anchorperson talking about a fifty-car freeway pile-up, the stuff that goes on in worship can seem lame.

Of course, the Good News of a God Who wants to set us free from our sins, hurts, and addictions so that we can have more of life today and an eternity with God, is pretty exciting stuff. But socialized to believe that only violent theft in video games, "hook-ups" with multiple partners, and smash mouth tackling in the NFL are really exciting, it's often hard for us to see the excitement of a life with God.

Most churches and pastors, I think, will try to be interesting. And we know that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, knew the value of entertaining people to educate them about life with God: His stories, called parables, both entertain and call people to faith even today.

But there's something important for us to understand: The purpose of weekly worship isn't to entertain us.

Worship is about taking our gazes off of of our own lives.

• It's about turning our attention to God.
• It's about praising God for sending His Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead for us.
• It's about God giving us our marching orders for the week to come.
• It's about re-orienting ourselves to the call to turn from sin and to believe in Jesus Christ.
• It's about being empowered to once more dedicate ourselves to the lifestyle of truly "human" beings: love of God, love of neighbor.
• It's about drawing strength and inspiration from other worshipers.
  

Worship, in short, is surrender to God. I used to hate the idea of surrendering control of my life to God. I still rebel against it sometimes.

But weekly worship reminds us of a fundamental fact of life: God is God and I'm not.

That's not always welcome news, especially for many of us in America, accustomed to having just what we want when we want it. But if it isn't welcome news, it is good news. We don't have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders! We can give our lives to God and He'll keep pumping a new and better life with Him into us!

If even a boring worship service helps us to surrender to God, it will have done its job.

Sincerely,
Mark

[THANKS TO: Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice for linking to this post. You can find the other installments in this series by clicking on any of the labels below.]

[THANKS ALSO TO: Bruce Armstrong of Ordinary Everyday Christian for linking to the first two posts in this series.]

Letters to My Non-Churchgoing Friends (#1: Can You Be Christian without the Church?)

[This series of posts, which are to be columns I submit to the Community Press newspapers, for whom I've been writing since 1996, are heartfelt letters to non-churchgoing people. My hope is that whether people are active participants in the lives of local congregations, only occasionally worshipers, Christian skeptics, or atheists, all will find them useful.]

Dear Friend:
Since you and I may never meet personally, I've decided to send a few letters to you about why so many people choose to be part of the church. And why you might want to make the same choice.

If we did actually talk together, our conversation wouldn't be as one-sided as these letters are. I could ask you questions and listen to your story. But at least for now, that option isn't open to us.

Nonetheless, I do think I have some understanding of why you might not be part of a church. For more than a decade of my life, I considered myself to be an atheist. I had little use for churches or Christians.

Most non-churchgoing people aren't atheists, of course. They just don't see the need for being part of a church. This leads me to the most common reason I hear non-churchgoing friends give for not participating in a church. They say, “I can be as good a Christian without the Church as I can be with it.”

If you you said this to me, there are two main things I might say in response.

The first thing is that being Christian isn’t about being good.

Don't misunderstand me. God does care about whether we treat others well and that we not violate His will. But good morals aren't the object of the Christian life. Better morality is a byproduct of a strong relationship with God. (Although no Christian will ever be morally faultless this side of the grave. I'm speaking from personal experience here. More on that in a future letter.)

Being a Christian is really about having a relationship with the God we meet in Jesus Christ. That relationship begins when we acknowledge our moral deficiencies, asking God to help us to turn away from sin and to surrender our whole lives to Christ. Turning away from sin is what the Bible calls repentance. Surrendering to Christ is what it calls faith. When we repent and believe in Christ, God sends His Holy Spirit to initiate a makeover of our souls. He also intends for us to be part of a church where we can be supported in living our faith and support others in living theirs.

That leads to the second thing I might say if you told me that you can be as good a Christian without the church as you can be with it.

I would tell you that it may be theoretically possible to maintain a vital relationship with God outside of the fellowship of the church. But only theoretically.

Two-thousand years of church history suggest that no one is likely to remain a faithful Christian without a connection to the living organism of the church, which the Bible calls "the body of Christ."

"What about Bono, lead singer of the rock band, U2?" you might ask. "Isn't he a Christian who doesn't belong to a church?"

Bono, who is one of my heroes, is often described as a nonchurchgoing Christian. And it's true that he doesn't belong to a congregation. But Bono is networked with the church. Much of his work on debt relief and AIDS-eradication in Africa is done with the cooperation of the church. Bono is more connected to the church than even he might realize.

Asserting that we can be Christian without the church is sort of like saying, "I don't need to regularly eat food or drink water to live." Those who forego food and water will die. Without the fellowship of the Church, our faith dies.

Tell me what you think.

Sincerely,
Mark