Living Stones

      When Christians move to a different area and/or begin looking for a church they often have a checklist that they go through mentally (or maybe even literally, who knows!?) before deciding whether they will stay or leave. The most common ones I've found are something like "Do they have good doctrine?" (i.e. it's the same as mine) "Do they play music I like?" "Do people make me feel welcome?" Or sometimes even, "Are the chairs comfy?" (my tone may sound ungracious through the medium of text) A lot of this to me sounds like questions we'd ask to help us decide whether we'd be staying in a hotel again or not. It seems to demonstrate that our attitude towards church is a service that should be provided for us that can be measured on its quality. It's seen pretty obviously in the use of the term church "service". This thought both scares me and upsets me. Ever heard of "Mystery Shopper?" (http://www.mystery-shoppers.co.uk/) Me neither until I heard of the website "Mystery Worshipper" (http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/uk.html) which sends undercover spies into churches on Sunday mornings to sit through meetings and then write a report about them. I'll give you a second to satify your desire to go and have a look and see if they've been to your church...

      The general points of analysis include how long the sermon was, which instruments were played, how full the building was etc. I think a lot of us approach churches in this way. I know lots of people who have not returned to churches because no one spoke to them. This is not an attack introverts but these people often didn't get spoken to because they didn't speak to anyone. I'm not saying it's ok for church members to ignore newbies but I am saying that I think we (me included) need to change our attitudes. How about asking some questions? How about rolling our sleeves up and finding out where we can serve? How about finding people we can hang out with? I think it's time to stop treating churches like hotels that we come to be cared for and start treating them like the families that they are in which everyone has a part to play.
 

     If we enter churches and we feel unwelcome, perhaps God is leading us to introduce the gift of hospitality! Maybe if they're not reaching the community, God has put us there to lead people in evangelism. If we don't repair our attitudes, church becomes the hotel we check in to each weekend to be pampered in preparation for the rest of our week and nothing more. We "pay our money" receive our "service" and then we check out. The difficulty is these churches may have massive numbers of people turn up because people love to be pampered while their relationships with God and with each other remain shallow if not non-existent.

     We tend to wait for special titles and recognition or at least a request before we start serving in our churches which exposes our desire to be acknowleged and affirmed by people sometimes (which isn't evil in itself, perhaps another blog post sometime). I think God really values those who serve in secret before they get a title because they know they're serving the purposes of God and they're serving God's people. I know a few people who've been involved with planting churches and speaking to them about their experiences has somewhat change my personal perception of being part of a church. (I'm not claiming to know anything about church planting haha) If you plant a church with a small group of people, you understand very quickly what it means to be a member of that church. You understand that you are a leader even without a title and that you are an essential part of that group. You quickly discover that if you don't get a job and tithe and give offerings, the church has no money. If you don't preach the gospel, the church doesn't grow. If you don't make time to spend sowing into individuals and sharing your life with them, people can't grow and develop and community doesn't exist. If you don't personally invest time into your relationship with Jesus, the church feels the lack.

I believe in being part of a church plant you gain an understanding that you have a personal investment in the life of the church and you understand that it's not a part time thing but a lifestyle. Suddenly the Church of Jesus becomes part of you and you become a part of it. For real. Sadly as churches grow this mindset is often lost and we are able to sneak in the back of Sunday meetings and disappear without taking on any responsibility whatsoever while still claiming to be part of that church. I can remember being a teenager and being asked to stay behind after the Sunday meeting to clear chairs away. After a while it struck me that if nobody did this, it wouldn't get done. DUH!!! This opened my eyes a bit more to my place in the church as an individual member. The Bible says that we're living stones and together we make up a temple for the Lord (1Peter 2:5). If we're alive it means we're supposed to do something right? Otherwise we might as well be dead bricks. Instead of coming to meetings to be critical we can try getting stuck in to serving, living and loving the Church and see if that works out.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts! :-)