Tag: The Church

Membership Matters

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After taking a week off last week to enjoy some time away with the family, we are back on it this week, continuing in our teaching series, Nuts and Bolts. For these few weeks, we are talking about the church, what it is, and how to get it right. After spending the first two parts of the series looking at the big picture of what the church is, starting today we are beginning to unpack how the church was designed to work. And, like the basic unit of operation when it comes to the human body is the cell (yes, there’s a good argument to be made that proteins fit that bill a bit better, cells work as an okay metaphor here), the basic unit of operation when it comes to the body of Christ is the church member. So, this week, we are talking about church membership. While much of this is going to wind up being focused on my own congregation, the ideas here are broadly applicable. Consider how they might apply to you and your situation. Enjoy.

Membership Matters

So, the other night we were all sitting around the table eating dinner together, and the subject came up of what the boys are currently learning in school. One of them said that he had been learning about the cell. I still remember sitting in science classes in 8th and 9th grade and learning about all the various parts of the cell. I remember rather distinctly the fact that there are a lot of parts. To be such tiny things, cells are really pretty complicated. They are a work of engineering magic that is absolutely unrivaled by anything we’ve ever created. 

We didn’t use to understand this. Used to be, biologists thought cells were just little blobs of goo that really didn’t do very much except to provide the basic structure and framework for an organism. Then we built better microscopes, and discovered there’s a whole world of complexity and function down there that we are only just beginning to grasp. For tiny things, cells are a big deal. Your body is composed of roughly 37 trillion cells of about 200 different types. Any single one of them by itself doesn’t do much and doesn’t seem to matter. After all, what’s one cell out of 37 trillion? But without all of them collectively doing what they do, there would be no you. One part may not seem to make much of a difference by itself, but when you combine that one part with a whole bunch of other parts, some pretty incredible things start to become possible. 

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Toward a Purpose

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This past Sunday we continued in our new teaching series, Nuts and Bolts. Last week we talked about what the church is. This week, we spent our time experiencing together what the church is for. I say experiencing because that’s more of what this service was. Below is the short message I gave at the beginning of the experience. For the rest of the experience and some powerful examples of what it looks like when we get the church right, watch the imbedded video of the service. When we get the church right, the work of Jesus is made possible. Check out some examples of what this looks like below.

Toward a Purpose

The church gets a lot of things wrong. Have you ever thought that? I have a pretty strong suspicion that even if you haven’t you know at least one person who thinks that. You may know a whole bunch of them. You may live with one—or more. Now, depending on how outspoken you happen to be about your own attachment to the church they may sit on those particular thoughts out of respect for you, but they’re there. Do you know why they think the church gets a whole bunch of things wrong? Because the church gets a whole bunch of things wrong. 

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Building the Body

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This week we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called, Nuts and Bolts. For the next few weeks, we are going to be exploring some of the ideas we introduced in our last series in a bit more detail. We have been talking for the last few weeks about how the church got its start. Knowing that history is good, but it doesn’t tell us how the church was designed to work. That’s what we’ll be addressing in this series. In this first installment, we are going to start with what the church is in the first place. Join me as we talk about what it is and what one powerful implication of that is for our lives. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Building the Body

I remember a season growing up when my dad would make monthly trips to Hutchinson, KS. He went there to attend the board meetings of Collins Industries, a small bus and ambulance manufacturer, for whom he had done some legal work over the years. Now, Hutchinson is located in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I’ll grant you that’s most of the state, but Hutchinson really earns the title. Normally, kids probably wouldn’t have any interest in going to the middle of nowhere with their dads for a business trip. But Hutchinson had one really cool thing going for it: a world class space museum. 

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A Simple Matter

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This week we are wrapping up our series, The Story of Us. This final part won’t take us to the end of Luke’s narrative of the early church in Acts, but rather to the halfway point. From here his focus shifts from the church itself to Paul and his missionary journeys. This halfway point marks what is perhaps the most significant moment in the story. The question on the table was frightfully important: just how complex a thing was following Jesus going to be? The debate was fierce, but in the end, they decided to follow Jesus in making it a very simple matter. Let’s see together how this all unfolded and what exactly it means for us. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Simple Matter

Have you noticed that things tend to get more complicated over time? If you haven’t, perhaps some examples would help. Let’s start with the tax code. The original 1913 income tax law was 23 pages long and took about 400 pages to explain. Today, the tax code comes in at about 70,000 pages of text. No wonder politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly promise to reform and simplify things! Or consider a business. Apple started with two computer nerds in a garage. Today it is the most valuable company in the world, employing thousands of people, and is vastly more complex than it was in 1976. Or perhaps consider…churches. Most churches begin very simply. They have a vision and a message. Then over time they add programs and committees and policies and by-laws and buildings and furniture pieces and ministries all of which become enshrined both in structure and in placement such that the message and vision become a mere sideshow to the main event of tradition. And tradition is a complex thing. 

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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

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A little something different for you this Friday. I had the chance to see Disney’s new movie, The Haunted Mansion, last weekend, really enjoyed it, and will plan to review it next Friday, Lord willing. Today, though, I wanted to share with you a bit of inside baseball. Yesterday I was invited to deliver a message to our local Baptist association’s monthly pastor’s gathering. It gave me the chance to say to a bunch of pastors some things I think a bunch of pastors needed to hear. I shared with them some thoughts on how to go about keeping the main thing of the church (the Gospel) the main thing of the church. What I had to say may not be what you expect. Read on to find out what three suggestions I had with the help of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

Karl Barth was one of the giants of Christian theology in the 20th century. That doesn’t mean he was always right—he very often was not—but in terms of the people who shaped Christian theology in a profound way and whose influence absolutely cannot be ignored when taking stock of how the world thinks about God today, Barth sits on a very short list. Now, in spite of that, I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge and understanding of Barth’s theology is pretty limited because his influence tended to be much stronger outside the evangelical world, but neither was he simply a theological liberal. He carved out his own space on the theological map. 

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