Does anyone care if Private Ryan is actually saved???
You ever watch a movie and an image or scene just burns in
your mind? One of those for me was in
the movie Saving Private Ryan when it showed a young soldier on the beach
bending over to pick up his detached arm and carrying it off to who knows where. That scene was amazing for all the wrong
reasons, and it has just stuck with me since I saw it for the very first
time. That scene came back to me while
reading 1st Corinthians 12 the other day. Was this scene what our
church looks like today??
1 Corinthians 12:12-19 says “The human body has many parts, but the many
parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are
Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all
been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I
am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any
less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body
because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If
the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an
ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has
put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had
only one part!”
The church is one body made of many parts. There are feet, hands, legs, arms, etc… And yeah I know what I’m about to say is common
sense, but feet not attached to any legs are pretty useless. Hands with no arms aren’t gonna do you any
good. Try sitting on your shoulders
sometime…not gonna work too well you know?
So back to Saving Private Ryan and the beach scene. There were body parts everywhere because this
was a warzone…and in a lot of churches that is exactly what it looks like. Body parts everywhere detached from the body
and useless to serve because of the separation.
Now before I go any further let me say this, I
am not bashing the church. I never will
because that is what Jesus died for and in the end that is the only thing left
standing. So don’t read this and be
inspired to write your “let’s love and not bash the church” status or
tweet. And if you feel inspired to do
that, I challenge you to look at what many churches have become, and if you are
happy with that or you think Jesus is happy with what we have made of church go
right ahead. More power to you. I personally think that a lot of people are
gonna be held accountable for realizing what is going on in our churches and
doing absolutely nothing and saying
absolutely nothing about it in the name of this is “my” church and this is “our” way or I don't want to upset the "money" in the church. Also I’m pretty sure God was not too proud of
the church when it killed Jesus, just my opinion.
And man oh man am I as guilty as I can be of
detachment. Working with youth for about
the last 12 years I not only wanted to but actually did try to distance and
shelter the young people from many aspects of the “business meeting” side of
church. (By the way don’t you have to know that the devil’s favorite services
are those churchwide business meeting services!) But anytime you’re a foot and you try to
distance yourself from the leg you’re just killing yourself. And anytime you
try to be the head it definitely doesn’t work.
There is only one head and it’s not the pastor or chairman of the
deacons or the little old widow lady with all the money…it is Jesus. And when you try to replace Him with yourself
or with anyone else you better look out!
But when the body parts works together and
function and perform their role in conjunction with the other parts then the
pastor doesn’t care about being perfect, just transparent. The charter member of the 100 year old church
doesn’t care when the music changes and the songs lyrics are shown on a big
screen and the 1611 Baptist Hymnal isn’t our only source of song. The chairman of the deacons doesn’t know the
church bylaws better than he does the Bible.
When someone gets saved we are more concerned about going crazy and
rejoicing because hell just got smaller than making sure we got a first, a
second and a church wide vote to make sure WE accept who God already has. Religion and tradition (by the way the reason
that the church killed Jesus, addiction to those two things) do not matter,
what matters is that we have the one thing that can save people from going to
hell and we want as many people to know about Him as possible. People are more important than protocol. (And I am not against protocol but I have
seen WAY TOO MANY times when Robert from Robert's Rules of Order was way more important than Robert the lost man who is visiting our church.)
When the body parts work together we go meet
lost people where they are and don’t expect them to just come to us. Because the legs carry the feet allowing the
hands to meet at the back of the ones our arms are embracing and showing the
love of Christ to. When the body parts
work together we realize that being an alcoholic, pornographer, drug addict,
child abuser, or a sex addict isn’t the problem with lost people, it’s that
they don’t know Jesus.
After all, the body of Christ is the one body we should always want to get bigger.
