It's Not About Me ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 3)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship this past Sunday morning, September 9.]

Mark 9:33-35

While I was serving in my first parish, the bishop appointed a group of twenty of us in the synod--ten laypeople and ten pastors--to be trained by a prominent not-for-profit institute as conflict management consultants. After receiving our training, one layperson, the superintendent of a northwestern Ohio school system, and I were sent to mediate at a small town congregation in deep conflict. The congregation's most recent pastor had been gone for some months, the latest of a series shepherds essentially driven out by one faction of the congregation. That faction actually consisted of just three people: a prominent business-person in the community and his daughter and son-in-law, who worked for “Dad.” It was them against the rest of the church.

My lay colleague and I spent several days and nights listening to parishioners. What became apparent was that these three people were calling all the shots. They viewed other members with a smug and smiling contempt, certain that their financial acumen gave them the ability and the right to make all decisions. 

After we gave our recommendations to the synod and to the congregation, those three people continued to be in control, eventually sending it on a death skid--even though at the time it was, like Living Water, a medium-sized and growing congregation--with their arrogance and penny-pinching.

Let’s be honest. We all like the idea of being in control. We’re born with that preference. It comes from our inborn sinful nature. And, no matter how much progress God has made in what the Bible calls our sanctification, the process of making us over in the image of Jesus, as long as we are still in this world, at our core, we will want to be in charge. 

But friends, that’s not the way of life for a disciple of Jesus. 

And it’s not the way of life for those who are blessed to be part of Jesus’ Church. 

As we continue to consider the Biblical teachings on which Thom Rainer builds his book, I Am a Church Member, we come to one of the most frequently ignored essentials of church life: Being a member of Christ’s Church is not about my preferences. 

It’s not even about the preferences of a majority of church members. 

It’s about God’s preferences, God’s call on His Church at any given time.

Truly, if gratitude for God’s undeserved and saving grace was at the forefront of our thinking...if we consistently appreciated that Jesus bled and died for our sins and then gives a share in His resurrection with God to all who repent and believe in Him, we might never be selfish again in our daily lives or in the Church. But that’s a hard proposition.

To see how hard, all we need do is take a look at Mark, chapter 9. Please open a Bible to that chapter and consider it for a moment with me. 

Six days after telling the apostles that some of them would soon see the overwhelming glory of God, Jesus took three of them--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop, where His appearance was transfigured before them. The three apostles saw the perfection of heaven shining from Jesus and Elijah and Moses affirming the greatness of Jesus. They saw that Jesus was God. (Mark 9:1-13)

On returning from the mountaintop, Jesus cast a demon from a boy after the other nine apostles had been unwilling to do anything for him. (Mark 9:14-29)

Then, Jesus predicted, for a second time, that He would be crucified for the sins of the world, but rise again. (Mark 9:30-31)

Now, tell me something. If you had been, say, Peter, James, and John and you had just seen Jesus’ transfiguration, seen Him cast a demon from a child, and heard Him speak of how He was going to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then, rise from the dead, wouldn’t you think, “I will do anything for this man’s glory. This is God and I will do what He wants and not what I want”?

But here’s a stunning truth: On this earth, before we have died in Christ and risen in His power, even when God's presence and power are manifested obviously to us, we will tend to want our own ways. 

Do you doubt that? Take a look at Mark 9:33-35. It picks up immediately following the events we’ve just looked at. Verse 33: “They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house [here, the house signifies the Church, the fellowship of believers in which Jesus talks to His disciples, including you and me], he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’”

Of course, Jesus knows what they’ve been talking about. His question is a bit like that posed by God to Adam in Genesis. He knows what Adam’s been up to and why Adam is hiding, but he asks Adam, “Where are you? [and]...Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” [Genesis 3:9, 11] 

As in the garden and God’s questions of Adam (and later, Eve), Jesus is giving the disciples a chance to be honest with Him, to confess their sins and receive His forgiveness. 

Listen: The God we know in Jesus is always anxious to give forgiveness and restoration to us if we will only be honest enough with Him to admit that we have sinned, that we’ve been selfish. 

King David in Old Testament times knew this and so he prayed, “...a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17) 

None of us will ever be what we are meant to be as human beings and as disciples of Jesus unless we are willing to be broken in the realization of our sin and human limitations. We must leave all pretenses of being “all that” before God can make us whole through the grace He offers us in Jesus Christ.

Mark 9, verse 34: “But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” The disciples were bent on getting their ways even though they were in the presence of the Greatest of all! It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Verse 35: “Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’” 

Imagine how the lives of our churches and the life of our world would be changed if we took these words of Jesus seriously! 

Imagine what our families and communities would be like if we tried to outdo one another in serving each other, in not wanting to get our ways, in not wanting to push ourselves forward.

Folks, do you know what most turns many people off to the Church? It’s when they come into a congregation and see the “Christians” treating each other with the same disregard and nastiness that they see in the world at large. When outsiders see Christians bent on getting their own ways, they don’t see the One they need and, whether they know it or not, crave. They don’t see Jesus.

To be sure, no Christian is perfect. 

No Christian congregation is perfect. 

But in fact, a local Christian congregation is precisely the community of which imperfect, sinful people need to be a part. In this fellowship:

• we confess our sins together, 
• we hear the good news of Jesus together, 
• we together welcome new members of Christ’s body in the waters of Holy Baptism, 
• we are strengthened and renewed by Holy Communion together, and 
• we are together empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  

But even then, the sin inside of us, the sin of the world, and the sin that comes from the evil one can trap us. 

I think that the author of I Am a Church Member, Thom Rainer underestimates how powerful the pull of sin is on each of us, even on Christians who want to be the servant-disciples Jesus calls us to be. Toward the end of chapter 3 of his book, Rainer writes of the commitments to church membership he has in his book, “...these commitments are not easy. In fact, without God’s power they may prove impossible.” 

I so recoiled at that last sentence that I crossed out the words, “may prove” and replaced them, in capital letters with the word, “ARE.” The sentence should read, I believe, “In fact, without God’s power they ARE impossible.”

My source for saying that is Jesus, Who has told all who would do the good to which God calls us, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) 

Without prayer in Jesus’ name and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we cannot believe (1 Corinthians 12:3). 

Nor can we make good on any of the commitments we make as members of Christ’s Church. 

You can find the commitments that we Lutheran Christian church members are asked to make at the top of page 201 in the green hymn books. This is part of the service of Affirmation of Baptism. We commit ourselves to 

• “continue in the covenant God made with [us] in Holy Baptism,...
• live among God’s faithful people,...
• hear [God’s] Word and share in His supper,...
• proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,...
• serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus, and...
• strive for justice and peace in all the earth…” 

And when we are asked to make these commitments, knowing that we can keep none of them in our own power, we’re also told to say, “I do [so commit myself], and I ask God to help and guide me.”

In the end, our capacity to live in the community of Christ’s Church and to accept that the Church and our own lives are not about our preferences and desires, we must daily come to God, daily confess our sins, daily receive forgiveness in Jesus’ name, and the power of the Holy Spirit to live more like the disciple Jesus died and rose to make me. 

We must give each day to Jesus if we are to live as God’s people and truly be members of His Church. 

May daily surrender to and trust in Jesus be the lifestyle of this congregation. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Can you be a Christian without being part of Christ's Church?

Something to think about:

The Church isn't just a group of like-minded individuals; it is individual members who form a body. So, saying you are a Christian but not an official member of a Christian church is really like saying you are a dedicated baseball player but don't believe in organized team sports. You might be a great baseball player in terms of your skills and knowledge of the game, but if you aren't actually on a team, then in at least one very important sense, you aren't a baseball team at all. (Peter Speckhard, Connected to Christ: Why Membership Matters)

The Bible teaches that Christians are members of Christ's body in the same way that a thumb, an eyeball, or a heart are parts of our bodies. If those individual parts are severed from our bodies, either those individual parts or our whole bodies die.

Without participation in a local church, faith in Christ cannot and will not be sustained. Without being part of a local congregation, there will be no one to minister to us or to tell us that we've gone wrong or regularly pray with us or among whom we can be baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, or from whom we can receive the life and forgiveness Christ gives to believers in Holy Communion.

We all know that sometimes work, health issues, or being a caregiver can prevent people from fully participating in the life of a congregation. But these are exceptional situations.

Even under such situations, if we or someone who loves us will contact a local church and ask for visits or for the chance to participate in small groups or to receive the Sacraments, most churches will be willing to provide for our spiritual health in these ways.

One of the most interesting baptisms I ever shared was with a man who had been raised in the Church, but had allowed his connection with Christ to lapse. His wife called me and asked if I would visit him. I did so over a period of some months, sharing Christ and the Gospel with him as he endured the final stages of terminal cancer.

One day he asked me if he could be baptized and then receive Holy Communion. That happened. The day he was baptized in his home brought a moment of peace to that man and his family. So did his funeral, when we were able to celebrate his eternal connection with Christ, given to him through the ministry of Christ's Church.

Can people in local congregations be annoying? Are some congregations so infected by egotism or sin that they cease to function as churches? Yes, of course.

But, I'll bet that there's at least one annoying thing about you or that you too sometimes act from egotism, selfishness, or sinfulness. I know that I do.

The Church is God's hospital for recovering hypocrites and other sinners. And here's the good news: There's always room for one more hypocrite and sinner to join us, including you.

If you would claim eternal life with God, Christ's body, the Church, is indispensable.

Think about this. Pray about it. If you don't have a church home, commit yourself to finding one. It may take a few tries, but don't be discouraged and don't look for the "perfect congregation." The Church is comprised of recovering sinners, remember. So, every congregation to which you could be attached will be made up of imperfect people who, at the most, are only on the way to being all that God desires us to be.

In the end, I think, Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, a statement of Lutheran Christians' understanding of the Christian faith, expresses better than I can what to look for in a congregation of which you can be a part and in which you can be challenged to grow into the maturity of faith and life that God has in mind for us. It says: "The Church is the congregation of saints [saints are forgiven sinners], in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] are rightly administered."

Notice this definition says nothing about the members of an individual congregation being morally perfect or flawless.

Nor does it say that churches are composed of people who rationalize their imperfection or sin away.

What it does say is that Christ's Church exists wherever the Gospel--the good news of new life for all who daily repent and surrender to the crucified and risen Jesus--and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are shared in accordance with Christ's Word and will.

Find a congregation of imperfect people whose communal life is built around proclaiming the Gospel  and administering the Sacraments rightly, and you will have found a church home.

Just a few thoughts. God bless you.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]