FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY: Stop The Juggling Act
On Fridays I drop an idea/thought for our leaders. Here is this weeks musing…
Continually remind yourself that “church” is your new identity in Christ! This changes the way we move and function as a community. It is not just about “going to church”. The real emphasis needs to be on “being the church”.
We all know we live in a fluid culture. Things move fast and it feels sometimes in life like there is a lot to juggle. This is not the way we think about the church. Church is not something you juggle. Church is something you are.
The book Total Church has really helped shape our ecclesiology.
In the West we continually face the pressure to make “church” a program. We have our career, decisions, finances, our social lives, our family, sports, school activities, etc. to juggle and we often throw “church life” into the mix (see diagram below).
There a couple major problems with this. First, it makes church something you turn off and on. Second, it hinders mission because we are compartmentalizing our lives. Life simply becomes a juggling act and Jesus is thrown in. When we throw Jesus into the mishmash of life we remove him from the centre and this leads to greater problems.
The reality is that God’s transforming work of salvation saves you from your sin, but it also calls you to be a people (1 Peter 2:9-10). Instead of viewing the church as another ball to juggle we see in the scriptures that we are people in community and everything we do in life filters through us “being the church”.
This idea should also change the way we function as small communities or in our context Community Groups. Yes, gathering together both corporately on Sunday and in small communities is vital. It still goes deeper. Even our Community Groups need to caution from simply being a place to go on a Wednesday night in someone’s house. The deeper call is to be a community on mission 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
You are the church!
Know your identity and know it well!
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:11-22 ESV)
