Tag Archives: imitation of Christ

Our focus determines our outlook

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In yesterday’s Links To Go, I included a post from Jay Guin’s blog. He did an excellent series on the mission of the church, and this post was one of the conclusion articles. He made a point that I want to repeat. In talking about the lack of emphasis on personal transformation in our churches, Jay observes:

Here are some quick and easy tests:

  • When your members have more tenure in your church, do they become more entitled and demanding or less?
  • Are your older members harder to please and appease than your younger members?
  • When your members are unhappy, do they voice their unhappiness by economic/power means (withholding money; threatening to leave) or as family (through conversation; persuasion)?
  • When a difficult change is suggested, do the members respond in terms of how this change will affect the members? Or how it will affect the people they plan to invite to church, have a Bible study with, or serve in the name of Jesus?

Excellent point. I differ with Jay as to the misplaced emphasis. He’s says this happens because of the emphasis on personal salvation, which is seen as being achieved through membership and attendance. I would argue that it’s because we’ve reduced Christianity to a restoration of the early church, with a focus on practice. I do agree that what’s lacking is an emphasis on transformation into the image of Christ. Rather than encourage people to become more Christlike, we encourage them to be better rule keepers. Too many people in our churches know the five acts of worship better than they know the Beatitudes.

If we spend a lifetime focused on rule keeping, we’ll end up dominated by three things:

  1. A critical nature
  2. A contentious spirit
  3. Fear

If we spend a lifetime focused on becoming like Jesus, we’ll end up dominated by three things:

  1. Love
  2. Forgiveness
  3. Peace

I know which I prefer.

The early church

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Had an interesting thing happen at the Lipscomb Summer Celebration at the first part of this month. I went over to where the Spanish classes were being held, and the brother in charge apologized to me for not having invited me to speak. I told him that wasn’t a problem, that I was there to listen but would be happy to speak for them at some point in the future. Then one of the men said, “But you can help us out, right?” I said that I would be happy to the next year or some other time. He said, “No, I mean today.” Long story short, I was asked to give a talk that afternoon on “The Early Church.”

So obviously, this wasn’t a class that I spent weeks preparing for. But as I put my thoughts together, I realized something that I should have realized before. We often look to the early church as our model. The early church didn’t, at least not primarily. Sure, there were things that they learned from one another. But their goal was to imitate Christ.

The apostles didn’t go around saying, “Look at the church in Jerusalem and do the things they do.” They said, “Look at Jesus and try to imitate Him. We will try to imitate Him as well, so you can look at us and imitate us, but only as we imitate Him.”

Fact is, when we set out to imitate the early church, we have to ask “Which early church?” The church in Jerusalem where thousands still lived according to Jewish law? The chaotic Corinthian church? The confused Galatian church? We talk about “the early church” as if there were uniformity across the landscape… and there wasn’t.

If our churches are made up of people who are doing their best to imitate Christ, we will have the right kind of church.

Pretty obvious, I know. But sometimes I’m a little slow to pick up on these things.