This past week I asked my young married class: “What’s the job of the church?”  The looks were priceless.  You know the ones – when they’re trying to read my face so they can pitch the “right” answer.  No one wants to lead with a wrong answer.  After all, we’re in church; it’s a church questions; we’re church people.  This should be pretty easy.

After just a few moments of total silence, the first answer came; a little muffled because of a crying toddler, but I heard it.  ”Discipline.”  I thought it was a strange one to start with but sure, why not.  The church is to be about discipline.  Besides, it looked better than a blank piece of paper so I quickly added it to the very top of the page - only to realize what he really said was to his wife and the full statement was, “Our son needs more discipline.” 

Then the other responses started coming – recruiting new members, fellowship, studying the Bible, prayer, moral support, and discipleship.  (Discipleship was from my wife, and she got bonus points).  It was weird - no one said worship.  Anyway, we all talked about how the church needed to be doing these things, and how good our church does at doing these things.  Everyone agreed that every church should be doing these things. 

Dealing with my next statement sort of consumed the rest of our time.  ”If the church should be doing these things, and if we are the church, then we as individual Christians should be doing these things, too.”  That was a little harder to deal with, and our individual grades were not quite as exciting, but no one could deny its truth.

Maybe It Happened Like This

Years ago this was a country that looked out for its neighbors.  If a neighbor needed help with the farming, individuals would help, on their own, without being paid or – often times - even asked.  If someone was facing hard times, you might have given them an envelope with some cash in it – not a loan, but a gift.  If a neighbor had a baby, meals would be taken.  It wasn’t required.  It just happened.  It’s the way it was.  That’s what neighbors did.  People saw it as individual responsibility.

Then there was a shift.  Instead of people looking to their neighbors for help, they started looking to the government for help.  And right or wrong, the government organized the work bees or fund drives.  And to pay for this help, the government collected taxes to pay for these services.  No longer did the individuals see themselves are directly responsible for helping a neighbor.  If the neighbor needed help, he or she could call an organization, usually one run by the government.  Responsibility shifted from the individual to the organization, and we became more organized and less neighborly.

The Shift In The Church

Jump with me over to the church and let me ask – sound familiar?  Have we done the same thing?  There once was a time when the CHRISTIAN saw him/herself as individually responsible for recruiting new members, fellowship, studying the Bible, prayer, moral support, discipleship and, yes, even disciple.  But there was as shift.  We started paying our taxes in the form of tithe and offerings to the organization of the CHURCH; we see the ORGANIZATION as responsible for recruiting, fellowship, studying the Bible… and in doing so we become more religious and less Christ-like.

So what kind of Church are we teaching our students to be?  Or are we more concerned with them going to a church (ours would be nice) than being the Church? 

Somehow, we need to teach our students the difference.  But it can't happen until we understand it ourselves.  

When we honestly realize that the health of the CHURCH rises and falls in direct proportion with our individual, spiritual health -- with MY spiritual health -- then there’s a chance for the Church to be THE Church that God has called us to be, and there's an even better chance that our students will get what Church is really all about.