This week I welcome guest blogger, Kirk Marks. Kirk is a retired pastor, having served 30+ years in both local churches with his wife, Debbie, and in denominational administration. He has also taught theology and led a pastoral assessment center for many years. He and Debbie, along with their two daughters and son-in-law are members of Faith Church. Kirk preached at Faith Church this past week, continuing our series on Relationships in the Church. I think you’ll find his thoughts as compelling and helpful as I did.
During my years of pastoral ministry serving several different churches, I participated in countless board meetings and committee meetings, in which we’d talk about all sorts of things that happen in the church. I also had numerous people approach me, saying, “Pastor I’d like to talk to you about our church.”
The topics we talked about in those meetings and the things that people wanted to talk with me about often revolved around a number of general subjects that we spent an awful lot of time on. Things like our church building and our church equipment. Being a pastor in an evangelical church, I have become an expert on roofs, parking lots, and photocopiers.
We also talked a lot about our church money, what we are going do with our money, how we are going raise money, how we’re going get enough money to meet the budget.
We talked a lot about church attendances. Who’s coming to church? How many people do we have? How can we get more people to come to our church? How can we get more people to give more money so we can fund the budget?
Of course, we would talk about conversion growth too. How can we get people saved, get people to hear the message of Jesus and accept it and have decisions for Christ in our church?
If you’ve been in church leadership, you’ve likely participated in those kinds of conversations.
That’s not what the Bible talks a whole lot about. The New Testament begins with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those gospels tell us about Jesus’ life. Then the book of Acts tells us about what the disciples did after Jesus died and rose and ascended into heaven. We hear about the beginning of the church with the coming of the Holy Spirit. We hear about churches planted and Paul’s missionary journeys.
After that in the New Testament, we have nine books: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 & 2 Thessalonians. These are Paul’s letters to churches. He’s writing to churches or churches he knows, some of which he’s planted. He knows the people there, and he’s writing to them about what’s going on in their churches. He’s reminding them of what’s important to them, to spur them on to do what they should be doing as a church of Jesus Christ. Sometimes he speaks encouragingly, sometimes he speaks rebukingly, sometimes he speaks familiarly.
In those letters to churches about what they should be doing, he doesn’t say anything about buildings or equipment. There were no church buildings or equipment in those days. He doesn’t say anything about churches getting more people to come to their church. You won’t find that in Paul’s letters anywhere. Paul even extremely rarely talks about getting people saved. He talks about proclaiming the good news of Jesus. He talks about being ambassadors for Christ. But he does not talk about getting people saved into our church, like we talk about within our churches. Paul talks very little about those things.
Now, we could discuss that observation for a long time. But the reason I bring that observation up is because the thing that Paul does spend a significant amount of time on, 70-80% of the teaching in his letters, is relationships in the church and how we can relate to one another better.
Paul’s emphasis on relationships makes perfect sense because what Paul is doing is carrying out what Jesus said to do. Jesus said his disciples were to be teaching one another how to obey what he, Jesus, had taught them (Matthew 28:16-20). Jesus’ teaching is indeed about “loving one another as I have loved you.” Paul is spurring the church on to do that.
I believe that observation makes it clear that we need to think about our relationships in the church. We need to focus on that. It is a good focus to have and a good thing to think about, to pursue and to seek.
This week, then, we return to our series on relationships in the church, how to foster a flourishing church. I believe with all my heart, and based on good scriptural reasons, that relationships in the church, and how we relate to folks outside the church as well, is very key to being disciples, is key to following Christ, is key to what God asks us to do and doesn’t get enough attention in the church and it should.
With that in mind, check back for the next post as we learn what Scripture has to say about speaking life to one another, which is all about what we disciples of Jesus should be talking about.
Engaging Scripture 