The Church, What should we do?

Having just done a piece on the conscience, I think it is best to start with our response. To help our consciences has to be better than entertaining the soul!

So what should our response be? In broad strokes, nothing! We are told to do all things to maintain unity and a bond of peace. We are told to love one another. The worst church in scripture has to be Corinth. The letter that Paul wrote was full of guidance and correct, but never once did Paul tell anyone to leave it and start again, this time getting it right. Never once did he tell anyone to go along to Ephesus because they were getting it right. The instruction and correction was given "to the church" and not to individuals. We are the body of Christ and Christ's body is not divided. We are the family of God and God's family is not about factions and divisions. Paul even goes so far as to say that divisions are of the flesh.

So no matter what I write about the church, no matter how much you feel that you want it so bad you have got to go and find one, or start one, let me warn you, God will more likely bless those who stay and faithful to His body than those who leave!

I have been in churches where a group has left to "do it right!" and a few years later you hear that it all dissolved into nothing, yet the church that was doing it wrong is still going!

Personally, and I don't want anyone to feel challenged by this too much, I'll give qualifiers, I feel that the only criteria as to which church we belong to is geography. In scripture churches are known by there location. Paul even specifically speaks against denominations in 1 Corinthians when he says twice, about "one of Paul," and so on. No where do we see the idea of people migrating, going past church doors to meet with another group, because "it suits "ME!" The number of people I meet who say that we should choose a church based on what suits us!

Now, let me give some grounds for mercy here!! We live in a world where the church is already divided, I am blessed in that the church nearest me is a nice family church. It isn't all singing and dancing and the teaching is a bit less than "wow" every week! There aren't miracles happening up the front, and I haven't seen anyone older than six fall over! But it really does have a great sense of family and for me that is more important than all the other stuff.

Like I say, I am blessed, the church has already been divided. Basically, I would stay where you are if you are happy. If God is using you then wait on Him to do any changes that are necessary. If our nearest church was a Catholic church, for example, I would have a real problem, I would not want to go there. There are other types of church that I really wouldn't want go to as well, so, what I would say is, we should go to the nearest church that doesn't give us problems! What I mean by that is, I don't really think we should be choosing churches based on what we want. For example, let's say there is a perfectly wonderful church that a person has to go past in order to get to the one where "Mr Big" is the pastor, in my mind they are choosing the church based on one person rather than the family of God.

I have found that generally the reason we join a church is often the reason we leave it. For example, if we join because the teaching is great the moment the teaching isn't great we leave. If we join because of the Big Guy, then when He career moves to a bigger church we leave. If we join because the singing is wonderful, when the singing isn't wonderful we leave! We may not leave physically, but the moment we aren't satisfied anymore, we leave spiritually and start sticking the knife in.

Obviously if you find there are unresolvable personality clashes then it probably is best to move on to where you feel relaxed in God's presence. But the reason we are going to Church, is and isn't to meet with God. We can and should meet with God all the time. That should be what we are striving for. to have more of God in our lives. The thing we can't do on our own is be with God's people, have fellowship. We can talk in tongues, prophecy, pray, read the bible, listen to a study, do a study, worship, get involved in ministry all on our own. The one thing we can't do alone is be family and have fellowship with that family!

Church is really about going round dad's house as His family and having a meal together. That in essence is what and where church started. Now, some people, like toddlers, like to roll on the floor and have their tummies tickled! Others like to get together and chew the fat. But, if the toddlers go to one place and the fat chewers go to another, we have divided the family, and the family is already divided. We have become like the age where learning is divided into colleges, where colleges look down their noses at each other. It isn't about what we want, we might as well be heroin addicts. When one needs his fix of tummy tickling and another needs his fix of erudite debate, we are no better than those in the world.

Our response to all of this is to wait and trust God to sort it out. It is only if we all humble ourselves and listen to Him that we will ever unravel this mess!