That’s Why the “church” Is Not the Church

Leaders of Christian churches were asked in a survey how they determined whether or not a church was successful. Overwhelmingly the answer was four-fold: size, money, church programs and buildings. None of them mentioned anything about transformation of people’s lives through preaching and teaching with truth and love. My immediate thought was that these men don’t have the mind of Christ; therefore, they’d be better off working in the corporate world. A few days earlier I had been listening to some young adults giving reasons for leaving their churches; “not relevant” was the dominant answer.

They were not saying Jesus was not relevant, they were saying they were not prepared to buy into the stuff that their leaders had bought into. Those young people were smart enough to discern that, “Get with the program” has very little to do with, “Get with Jesus.” ‘One size fits all’ might be the philosophy of the secular school class room, and the armed services recruits, but it is not the philosophy of Jesus Christ. It is always Jesus’ desire to meet with the individual before He meets with the group. In spite of what political leaders and church leaders are forcing upon us, God Almighty has cursed the doctrine of collectivism and so has His Son Jesus, Lord of His church.

‘Collectivism’ is the Socialist belief that the group is more important than the individual and that the individual must be sacrificed if necessary, for the greater good of the greater number. Not all church leaders understand that this is a doctrine from hell but neither do they understand that having embraced it, the individual in the church is being spiritually sacrificed for the greater “good” of the greater number! When Jesus spoke to the multitudes, the heart of each individual was touched and ministered to, not the heart of the group. For Jesus, making disciples did not mean making clones or cults! The church loves to talk about love yet how sad it is that so many within don’t get to experience what love truly is.   

How flippant many church leaders are when they talk about love; ‘God loves you’ ‘We must love one another’ ‘God so loved the world…..’ ‘God loves us unconditionally’ etc. How many people are there sitting in their pews thinking or inwardly screaming, “Where is your love? I hear you going on about it every week but if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re putting conditions on it! You tell me my sins are freely forgiven, but you imply otherwise with your guilt-tripping about the need to be committed and obligated to this place. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to shape up.” So with that belief in mind, when the service is over they quietly slip out the door and never come back.  The leadership gets to hear of it later and says, “Well, he wasn’t part of us anyway!”

Standing at the Bema seat judgment 2 Corinthians 5:10, such church leaders will one day hear Jesus say, “You’re right. He was never part of you, but he was always part of Me!” One of the most astounding truths I discovered about Jesus is that not only does He love us, but that He loved us before the foundation of the world Ephesians 1:4. Grace to you and peace….from Jesus Christ….To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father….. Revelation 1:4-7. How about that … all in the past! Jesus loved us before He washed us. Here we were up to our necks in everything foul, unclean and filthy and He, loved us. There’s no hint from Him of, “Get with the program first, then I’ll………”

Not only did Jesus love us but He called us by our individual name John 10:3. Jesus Christ knows the name of every person that’s ever been born upon the earth. How different from the systems of government, the work place and even many churches where people are nothing but a number in spite of lip-service to the contrary. The Eastern shepherds give names to their sheep as Westerners do to their horses, cows, cats and dogs. What’s good enough for the shepherds of the East ought to be more than good enough for the shepherds of the church. If seeking genuine, personal relationships with individual people became their goal rather than merely addressing them as a group, God would deliver them from their collectiveness mentality.

Church leaders, possessing the mind of Christ will not fail to constantly draw Christ’s people to the glorious truth that their sins have been washed from them in His own blood. Not, “will be if…..” That language is for evangelism, it is not for making disciples of Christ. Where the majority of people in the Sunday service are Christians he ought to speak to them as Christians not as heathens. That’s one of the downsides of leaders not knowing their people as individuals; they don’t really know who they’re talking to! Jesus washed us from our sins in His own blood. Past tense … one great, almighty act of atonement from the Lord Jesus never to be repeated again!

Some Bible translations say freed instead of washed. The church leader should not only be familiar with both words, but perhaps he should also ask of himself, “If my sins are washed in the blood of Jesus, why am I not free? If I’ve been freed from my sins, then why am I guilt-tripping?” The man who has a deep love and respect for the Lord Jesus and His word and His blood knows who he is in Christ and he knows who Christ is in him. Therefore, he will have no deal with guilt-tripping. He will say it for what it is when he has to, letting God the Holy Spirit speak through him to convict who He will, but he will not let the serpentine spirit bring condemnation upon God’s people Romans 8:1.

The majority of God’s people in churches around the world have no idea what their spiritual gifts are. Why? They’re never given opportunities to discover them. Those who do have an idea don’t develop them because they’re not given opportunities to practice them. Yet part of the guilt-trip they endure is to regularly be told they should be serving God. That’s why church working bees are well attended … they’re told this is how they can serve God! Think of it – God’s precious people yearning for a chance to pray and lay hands on the sick for healing, or longing for the chance to prophesy and the best they can get is the chance to pull a few weeds from a garden bed and prune a couple of shrubs!

In fact, it’s worse than that. The leaders don’t know what their people’s gifts are either! That again is because they don’t know their people well enough as individuals. What  the leader fails to realise is that both he and “his church” will never grow and flourish unless each individual grows and flourishes. How many leaders have taken the leadership model of Jesus, who grabbed a dozen men and loved them, taught them, mentored them and was patient with them until they “got it”? How many of those have then gone and grabbed a few people and done the same thing over? You and I know the answer to that … that’s why the “church” is not the church but merely a religious institution.

The “church” is really only the church when God’s loved and blood-washed people start operating in their rightful calling as kings and priests to His God and Father. That’s not, “what we will be if…..,” that’s what we are. Jesus is not going to make us such, He already has! The fact that most Christians have never operated in their rightful calling and probably never will if they remain institutionalised, changes nothing. What a glorious calling! Some of us were nothing but dregs of society when we turned to the Lord. It’s one thing to be lifted from our spiritual, mental, moral and perhaps physical gutters and be given some lowly position in God’s family, but it’s quite something else to be exalted, lifted up and made a king and a priest to God Himself.

Those of us who truly know we are kings and priests to God will stop at nothing till we find out what our spiritual gifts are and if that means ultimately that we have to walk away from our religious institution, we will do so. That doesn’t mean we are not praying and interceding for those in there, for as kings and priests to God, that’s part of our calling – but it’s only a part. There are nine spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 and once we discover the one/s the Spirit has given us it is our objective never to neglect what’s He’s given 1 Timothy 4:14. As it is presently around the world, however, most are not functioning together as the body of Christ because there are so few leaders trusting the Holy Spirit to work through these people.

In the meantime, through much prayer and waiting before the Lord alone, they rise up when prompted by the Holy Spirit and they go ministering where He leads them – the work place, the streets, shopping centers, hospitals, schools, jails, radio, TV, writing, the Internet etc. Such Christians don’t believe being “out of fellowship” is the way it’s always going to be; they long for the time when God brings them together with other like-Spirited people. But they also think that perhaps that won’t happen until God allows full-on persecution to hit. Should they be correct on that, then the Spirit-gifted body of Christ will come together and go into overdrive like the first church did at its beginning!

Those leaders who did that survey … I don’t believe any one of them are functioning as kings and priests to His (Jesus’) God and Father. If they were, they would not have come up with those foolish, carnal answers. That’s an insult to the Lord Jesus. It’s evidence that it’s been a long time (if ever) since any of them have come boldly to the throne of grace seeking God – for the individual or the group! Hebrews 4:16. If it were otherwise, Jesus would be their focus not that other stuff and under the Holy Spirit’s anointing their preaching and teaching would reflect that reality. This being the case, “not relevant” would never be the vocabulary of those young adults and they would stay. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways” Isaiah 55:8.”For as many as are led of the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” Romans 8:14.