Jonathots Daily Blog
(3103)
I had the privilege of sharing in Lighthouse Point, Florida.
What a fabulous name. Opens the door for all sorts of clever interpretation–especially for a writer who might become overly exuberant.
But what struck me was that we were returning for our third occasion to be sponsored by Pastor Gabe, in yet another of her assigned churches.
She is a dynamic woman. Let me change that. She is an outstanding person–a breast cancer survivor, a minister, an individual with a delightful sense of humor, and also, as I found out yesterday, enjoys watching reruns of “West Wing.”
During a conversation with Gabe, she mentioned that this present church was about the same size as all of the other churches she had pastored.
Kind of small.
Although she did not express any sadness or misgiving about the size, I thought to myself, “We live in a country that thinks the bigger things are, the better they are.”
Although that might apply to hamburgers and ice cream cones, it certainly does not come to play in discussing a church.
For you see, a church is not an organization, a meeting hall, a service or a club. A church does not become more impressive because there are more butts in seats.
A church is a place where those who are seeking maturity can come together to strengthen one another.
Factually, I don’t know if you can do that with more than a hundred people at a time. You can jam fifteen thousand Christians into an auditorium, but it doesn’t mean that a single-mindedness of joy and faith will be produced.
Yes, the purpose of the church is to encourage people to “grow to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Jesus.”
Whenever you gather more than three or four hundred together, you’ve got to have a program with praise band singers and create some sort of atmosphere of worship, hoping that somewhere over the coffee and donuts provided in the fellowship hall, human conversation might somehow ensue. But that’s not who we are.
We need fullness.
In the human experience, fullness occurs when we allow ourselves to feel. So when I go into a church and people are reluctant to express emotion, I know they’ve convinced themselves that they’re in a worship service instead of a fellowship.
We also need to reach a certain measure.
What is that measure? A sense of survival. After all, we will never succeed if we can’t first survive. We learn to survive by hearing the testimony of others–like Gabe, who herself survived the horror of disease.
We realize we are not alone. For after all, there is nothing lonelier than being in a room with ten thousand people and knowing nobody.
And finally, church should grant us stature.
In other words, we know we can grow. Why? Because we just testified to people about our new discovery.
This is the atmosphere that was intended for the church of Jesus of Nazareth.
- I can feel
- I can survive
- I can grow
And what Pastor Gabe, and all of us, need to celebrate is that the church is not noteworthy because of its sanctuary. It becomes the light of the world because it lights up its members.
The good news is that America is doing well because people like Pastor Gabe are on the job, with an attention to detail and a care for fellow-travelers.
The better news is that we in the church become a highly functioning organism when we motivate the souls around us to grow “to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Jesus.”
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
Jonathots Daily Blog 