Resolving To Get Back To Church (Part 3)

The church is missing out on something valuable... You!

A few weeks ago, after something like 10 years (I’ve lost count) of coaching Ashlyn and Molly’s rec league softball teams, I coached my last Winter Springs Babe Ruth game. It was a really great season. We only lost 2 regular season games but we also lost the first game in the last tournament of the year to end our season.

So, overall, we lost 3 games.

Interestingly, all of those games had one thing in common. Kristina wasn’t there!

Kristina was our overall best player. She could hit, she was a loud and vocal leader in the dugout, and most importantly, she was our pitcher! Not one of our pitchers, but our pitcher. Sure, we could throw Molly or Peyton out there and they would give it their best and that’s what we did when Kristina wasn’t there. But when we had to do that, we were pulling them from their main positions, so not only did our pitching suffer, so did those other positions.

The bottom line is we needed Kristina because we literally couldn’t win without her!

Not Showing Up

When it comes to church, being part of a local body of believers, my experience is that most people who have stopped showing up, who think it’s possible to do church online or to be a Christian on their own have a little bit of a skewed view of what church actually is or should be.

Can I encourage you to consider that you being a part of a local church body isn’t really about you, so much as it is about the group of people who are missing out on you being there?

If statements like, “I can’t find the right church,” or “I don’t really get anything out of church,” or even “I’ve been too hurt by the church,” are what you’d say when someone asks why you don’t show up, I’d respectfully point out that you are putting the emphasis on the wrong object in those sentences. When we make church about “I,” we completely miss the point of church.

Could it be that there’s a group of people who cannot fully function at their best, because like Kristina, you’re not showing up to provide the gifts and talents God has given you for the good of the church?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul has a lot to say about how the Corinthians were conducting themselves when it came to church. Apparently what was happening was similar to something that happens in our culture. Rather than viewing the church as a collective group of people who all had gifts and talents to utilize for the advancement of God’s kingdom, they were essentially ranking people based upon their gifts and talents. People with some giftings, like say for instance passionate preaching, were seen as more important than people with other giftings, maybe something like hospitality. The comparison of gifts got to the point that some people didn’t feel like they belonged or were valuable parts of the body at all.

Paul tells them the body, the local church, is made up of all kinds of people who have different gifts and talents and it’s not okay for one part of the body to tell another part of the body they aren’t needed.

“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

And, a few verses later, he explains that it’s God who forms the body.

“...But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it., that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” (1 Corinthians 12:24)

So, every member of the body is put in place by God, every member is of equal importance, and every member has a function based upon their God-given gifting. So, when we remove ourselves from the body, we are not only devaluing the gifts that God has given us, but honestly, sinning against the God who put the body together in the first place.

I know that might be a blunt statement, but if sin is simply us living our lives the way we want to live it rather than how God designed it, then wouldn’t it be sinful to not be part of the body God put together and desires us to be part of?

Paul also says just like we might tell others they aren’t needed, it’s also not okay for us to claim we aren’t needed in the body. A little bit earlier in Chapter 12, he writes, “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less part of the body.” (1 Corinthians 12:15)

The Church, the body of Christ, through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, is God’s only plan for the restoration of the world, the salvation of all who believe, and the establishment of His kingdom. As wild as that might seem to us, because we often witness how broken the church is, it doesn’t matter what we think about it. The reality is all believers are part of the body (like it or not), and we are given gifts and talents the body needs to function properly.

You and I are valuable parts of the body, whether we feel like it or not, and we are to use our gifts and talents to build up the body and empower it to do what Jesus wants it to do. Sure, it’s true, God doesn’t need us, but that actually makes this whole church thing even more wild.

God allows us to be part of the thing that He's using to bring about HIs Kingdom here on earth? Absolutely! In fact, He seems to delight in using weak, broken people for HIs purposes. Praise God for that! Because that’s me and that’s you!

It’s A Big Deal To Jesus

Jesus also had something to say about using our resources. He told a parable we actually call the Parable of the Talents. Now, a talent back then was a large sum of money, but I believe the principle applies not only to money, but also to other resources God has given to each of us, namely the gifts and talents we possess that He expects us to bless others with.

In the story (Matthew 25:14-30), the master has three servants. He gives one five talents, another three talents, and to the last, he gives one talent, with the expectation that they will all use the talents wisely, faithfully stewarding them for the master. When he returns, the first two servants have been faithful. They did exactly what the master desired. They both doubled the amount of money they had been given by using it wisely, and they are commended for it.

But, the third servant allows his emotions to get the best of him and rather than do what the master desires, he does what he desires. Out of fear, he hides his talent in the ground. The master is furious, and calls him a “wicked and slothful servant!”

And, as if that weren’t harsh enough, the master takes the talent from this servant and gives it to the servant who already had ten talents. What!?

Oh there’s more! Then the master orders that the worthless servant who didn’t use his talent wisely be thrown into the outer darkness to a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Essentially, the master is saying, take that wicked, self-centered servant who refuses to do what I’ve asked him to do; the servant who has taken the resources I’ve blessed him with and squandered them, take that servant and throw him into hell!

These are extremely difficult words from the mouth of Jesus, and while I don’t think this parable is specifically talking about using our gifts and talents only in the context of church, I do think, based upon what Paul has written 1 Corinthians, it is God’s desire and plan for us to build up the church with all the God-given resources we have at our disposal and if we aren’t showing up, we can’t do that!

Kristina had very valid reasons for not showing up for those three games, but her reasons didn’t really matter to the team. We lost because she wasn’t there! We needed her to use her talent to perform a specific task to help us be successful and we missed out when she didn’t show up.

The same is true when it comes to church. When you’re considering all the reasons you might have for not showing up, just ask yourself, “Am I putting me first or am I putting the body of Christ first?”

And, finally, I keep using the phrase “show up,” but in reality that’s only the first step. Engagement in the life of a local church body is the only way to fully put our gifts, talents, and treasures into full use, and engaging is risky, and uncomfortable, and in the context of a local body of believers full of other sinful people, it’s often times messy and difficult, but none of that really matters if the Master is the one who’s telling us to do it! I sure as heck want to be regarded as a faithful servant and If I were guessing, I’d say you probably do too!

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This is the 3rd in a series of blog posts on Resolving To Get Back To Church. Here are the first two.