In recent blogposts, I have focused heavily on the need to prioritize offline communities, particularly in the local church. In conversations that have ensued following some of my posts, a recurrent theme that begs to be addressed is “is it necessary or a biblical mandate to be committed to a local church body. This is such an important question, and one I look forward to discussing in a subsequent blogpost but i feel led to address something else on this topic prior to that.
Perhaps, you’ve been reading along and thinking to yourself, “EARTH TO IVY! DOES SHE REALIZE HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND A SOLID CHURCH OUT HERE?!” If this is you, you will certainly want to read this post.
EARTH TO IVY?!
Have you been reading my recent blogposts while rolling your eyes because as far as you’re concerned, I must be living on a different planet with perfect churches and opportunity for community? That is far from the case, and actually this is a good time to give some background to all this. It may seem like out of nowhere I started writing about the church but actually this is a topic that I’ve been passionate about for well over a decade now. I know what it’s like to be part of a church where you find yourself often frustrated with what you observe. I have, in the past, been part of an institution where there was so much discrepancy between what I saw in scriptures and what I saw played out there. Ultimately I felt led to leave (after finding a church that better fit the biblical definition of church), mainly because while there was so much emphasis (and opportunity) for ministering, there just wasn’t any real emphasis on the church growing in Christlikeness, and (generally speaking, of course) it was obvious in the lives of the leaders and congregation alike . There seemed to be a huge disconnect between what was being said, how most of them lived, and how acceptable that seemed to be. But even with all that I didn’t just up and leave; while there, I tried to share my observations and the burden I felt. Also, when I finally decided to leave, I was sure to communicate it with one of the pastors I was under at the time.
Moreover, I can’t exactly pinpoint when this burden started, but I know that over a decade ago, I was very troubled by division in the Body. Around this time, I spent an incredible amount of time studying in and writing on 1 Corinthians. So this is a subject matter that has been dear to my heart for a very very long time. Following the conversion of my now husband, the book of Acts became a favorite of his, and during our courtship we would talk a lot about the way church was done in the early church versus what we see out there. Later around that time, he was approached by a customer while he was working and through that encounter he found out about a church that sounded pleasantly different from what we had been used to. He told me about it and I decided to check it out for myself. I fellowshipped with them for a while both in corporate meetings and also their homes. In no time, I realized that it was the closest thing to what I had been seeking and what scripture revealed, and I eventually committed to it. It is not a perfect church, but it is made up of people who love the Lord and who are committed to Him, who have a clear understanding of the eternal purpose of God and the Gospel of the kingdom and how that informs how we live. People who have counted the cost and are willing to follow Him no matter the cost. One of my biggest blessings in my life has undeniably been God ordering my steps to this group of brethren. However, even with them, although the sense of community and brotherhood is so clearly night and day from the vast majority of churches out there, it is not without toiling and constant work to have the kind of community God desires for us. It is a constant work in progress, and there are many times of frustration as we all navigate the growing pangs that come with building community with a growing group of redeemed yet imperfect people. I say all this to say that I don’t write on these things because I live in some alternate universe where all is perfect and without strife.
So have you been side-eyeing me and my recent posts because you felt that I just don’t get how hard it is to find community offline? You’ll be surprised. You’re also likely approaching the posts from the wrong vantage point. Hear me out. I get it, it is tough out there. It is no child’s play to find a decent church to commit to. Please know that my posts aren’t written out of ignorance of the tough realities out there. I unfortunately know too well how tough it is and how flat out discouraging it can be to find the offline community and communion that your heart desperately yearns for. I may have a lot more advantage now to be part of a Body where these things are understood and desired, and practiced to some extent, but I assure you that even now, working it out hasn’t been without our fair share of disappointments, at times hurt and frustrations. I’m sure if you picked a random sampling from my church and asked, you would find they too have had their fair share of discouraging times, you know those times when you’re tempted to just throw your hands up in the air, give up and retreat into isolation and just do you.
But praise God, the omnipotent Lord of the church doesn’t allow us to stay in that state perpetually. He knows how to build His church and He doesn’t relent in bringing His vision to fruition in our church. If you’ve found or find yourself in this spot of discouragement or frustration, please know that I relate to you more than you think and I sincerely sympathize with you. I pray you’re encouraged in the Lord to keep doing your part in the building up of the Body of Christ.
MEMBER OF A BODY OR MEMBER OF AN INSTITUTION?
There’s something else I need to clarify though, what if i told you my focus isn’t so much about people finding a good church as it is about us BEING a good church. Did you catch the difference? Often, we look around, looking for the perfect church so that we can join it and “become a member.” This attitude tells us everything we need to know about the gross misunderstanding of what church is. We tend to see the church as an established social organization that we patronize or even seek membership in, rather than a living organism, a family, that we commit to. Changing our mindset regarding this makes a lot of difference in our approach especially as we handle grievances and issues we find in our local church.
A TWO WAY COMMITMENT
There needs to be a two way commitment- our commitment to the brethren in the local church, and in return their commitment to us. First, what does our commitment to the church imply? It implies that we are taking responsibility for the spiritual wellbeing of the people who belong to that congregation. It is not simply a commitment to the institution itself. A commitment to the institution will look like this- attending events, going to meetings, perhaps even giving generously for the upkeep of the institution. We cannot confuse commitment to an institution with commitment to the souls of our brethren in the Lord. It is important to make this distinction because many are committed to their local church institutions without any real commitment to the souls there. And in worst case scenarios, any overt care shown to the people is shown not out of a commitment to that human soul, but is motivated by keeping the person around the church long enough to fulfill our selfish desires. The true motive is purely selfish in that the person is basically being seen as a commodity rather than a soul; they are being used to achieve our own goals be it monetary or ego or to make a name for ourselves or bragging rights about how big our institution is. For example, I have been at an institution in the past, where I’ve heard leaders say things to the effect of “it’s okay if you aren’t able to make the church meeting, as long as you send your tithes in with someone.”
Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to live worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Thee is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to one hope at your calling – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all…the one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, to fill all the things..But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head- Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.
Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: you should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.
– Ephesians 4: 1-6, 10, 15-25
COMMITTING TO ONE ANOTHER
Committing to a local church body is one thing, but being part of community in that local body is another thing. Earlier I distinguished between a commitment to the church as an institution, and commitment to the brethren- the actual souls that make up the church. It is important to recognize that commitment to an institution is easily accomplished without really demanding much of us beyond our time, perhaps our energy and money. Whatever it is that it costs us, it is simply superficial and it is hardly comparable to what commitment to souls will cost us.
The commitment to souls requires not only a lot more effort than simply attending church events, it also costs us our very lives. Commitment to souls of course costs us everything a commitment to an institution will cost us- our time, our energy, our money- plus a lot more. It additionally costs us our pride, our convenience, our comfort, our independence, our autonomy and often our privacy and our rights. In short, it requires us to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses to follow the head of the Body- Jesus.
I’m sure you can tell by now how this creates a perfect environment for progressive sanctification. Beyond that, I hope you can decipher from the above that Commitment to the souls in church demands communing outside of the corporate meetings and events. Going to sit together in corporate events- church service, bible study, prayer meetings does not lend to the kind of atmosphere that a Christian needs to grow and thrive. All of that is important and have roles to play but it cannot substitute raw organic unstructured fellowship in each other’s spaces, where we learn to be like Jesus as we serve, listen, encourage, love, advise, confront, be confronted, be vulnerable, confess, pray, heal, forgive, repent.
In these unstructured, casual settings, we have no choice but to take off any masks we wear when at corporate meetings, and to be truly known. Being at a church service tells me nothing about how a brother or sister lives at home. Being at a group bible study may give me edifying knowledge and encouragement but it is incomparable to sitting face to face with a sister and being able to pour my heart out, be encouraged, hugged and prayed with. In short, one of these things is just not like the other.
IN CONCLUSION
While working on my book about love and accountability in the Body of Christ, it soon became evident as I wrote that there was another essential aspect to that discussion that I had to focus on. Everything I had written begged for a particular atmosphere that most Christians just didn’t have because of how church operates in the modern world. It was incumbent upon me to dedicate a good portion of the book to the state of the church versus what Jesus Christ’s heartbeat for the church is and how that plays out. It is meditating on these things as well as my observations as I consumed social media that has caused me to blog this much on this topic. And actually as it stands, there seems to be a semi-permanent shift happening on my blog. I feel pretty strongly that my blog is evolving from mainly a personal blog into more of a “Christian” blog that will focus mostly on the church and the church navigating the (mostly technological) world of a millennial generation. I don’t know if I’ll start a second blog dedicated to that, and keep this one for my personal journey as dictated by the name, or if I’ll merge the two into one somehow or just switch this over completely. I’m unsure what changes, if any, this will bring to the blog and I have no plans to make any intentional changes. I’m okay with letting things unfold as organically as possible here, and hopefully you enjoy the journey too. For now, I’m just focusing on writing as I feel led to.
In upcoming blog posts, I hope to share more about issues standing in the way of the kind of community that pleases God. I will be sharing on some foundational problems- lack of understanding of what defines church, lack of understanding of how church functions, lack of understanding of what church structure ought to look like- as well as structural problems with church as we know it today. Till then, remain
In His Love and Light,
Ivy