One of my favorite church life memories was summer Vacation Bible School. The program was all-hands-on-deck as we decorated the sanctuary and the fellowship hall, welcomed the kids, provided snacks, played crazy games, sang enthusiastic songs that fit the theme, and sent them home with gospel truth on replay in their little brains.
Everyone, from our teens to our octogenarians, was mobilized for that week of serving together, using our gifts, and contributing to the team. I remember VBS when I read New Testament words about the church’s identity as the body of Christ, “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16).
Sadly, in recent years, questioning the need for the church has become fashionable. Believers seem to have forgotten what it means to be God’s family or why church attendance even matters. Unfortunately, bad actors and bullies in the pulpit have provided plenty of ammunition for those who want to take potshots at the church.
G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts on loving his country seem to apply as well to our culture’s misgivings about the church: “Can we hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?”1 That seems to be the question that faces the church today: Can we find grace to “heartily hate” the weak and the ugly about our past and our present, and at the same time “heartily love” all that is well-intentioned and hopeful about our future?
G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts on loving his country seem to apply as well to our culture’s misgivings about the church: “Can we hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?”
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Becoming God’s Family
If you are wondering about the meaning or the significance of the family of God, if you have grown skeptical of the church, Carmen Joy Imes offers a biblical foundation, revealing the heart of God for his people. We were designed from the very beginning to live in community and communion with one another.
Although we tend to think of “the church” as a New Testament innovation, born after Christ’s resurrection, Imes argues convincingly that the church stands in “continuity with the covenant people of the Old Testament.” Our identity and our mission are one: “To bear witness to something outside [ourselves] by waiting and praying with the world for an encounter with God.”
I’ve written here before about my experience of the local church as God’s sandpaper in my sanctification, so I was deeply encouraged by the message of Becoming God’s Family. Those who are involved in the nuts and bolts of church work need the reassurance that we are not God’s employees; we are God’s image bearers. We participate with him as we carry his presence.
A culture plagued with loneliness needs the hope that comes with a connection that blurs the boundary between family and friend. As we join hands and make eye contact in corporate worship, we foreshadow the thicker-than-blood union that God intends for his kingdom in the new Jerusalem. Until then, may the beauty of God’s presence in his people reassure us that the church does, indeed, matter more than ever in our polarized world.
Holding You in the Light,
If you are wondering about the meaning or the significance of the family of God, if you have grown skeptical of the church, @carmenjoyimes offers a biblical foundation, revealing the heart of God for his people. @ivpress
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