Don't Let Them

I was writing for a lecture to a class of Juniors and Seniors in High School. It will be a one time lecture. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even see these kids again, much less have a chance to talk with them. They are most all from Christian families. I went here and there considering material used in the past or things that I felt have impacted teens I’ve spoken to over the years. None of it seemed to “land” with the impact I wanted to have on these minds. Surely you’ve been there too. 

I landed on a few simple lines. Today will you think with me about one of them? 

- Don’t let someone try to tell you your church is something it is not.

It is not lost on us that Paul was writing about maturing in Christ when he wrote: “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14). 

But even for those of us in ministry, surely with a degree of maturity we feel it don’t we? Those voices telling us the church is not…followed by some negative. Or the church is…followed by an invective. That if we are to grow, impact, influence, reach, keep, sustain, be what we must be, we must change. And it’s fascinating that the change harkened for is one that would jettison either some biblical imperative or some practice that has given the church any distinctiveness. 

What if? Perhaps, that church didn’t need to reinvent itself. What if the church belongs to Jesus and it is His revealed Will that is to be its guide? What if for a time in our culture we had or have swung so far from our biblical moorings that for us to so swing is a bridge too far?

For the vast part the churches I grew up knowing were simple, loving, caring, sacrificial, committed, and dedicated to string to do the Will of God. How bad is that? Did they get it all right? No. And neither did any of the churches of the distant past or will the pseudo “churches” stitched together in the future. They got it right in so many ways. As I said to those Juniors and Seniors I remind my fellow ministering brothers. Don’t let someone try to tell you the church is something it is not! See the good, build on that. Be the good. There’s much more good in God’s Family if we will just sit back and strive to see it. Don’t quit.