Maybe starting a Zoom group in the first century wasn’t an option technologically, but there’s value in considering what would have been lost if Jesus had chosen to mentor His disciples online instead of in-person.
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church life
If you’re a Christian parent, at some point, church will probably be a challenge for you and your kids. It was for me, and yet in retrospect, those challenges blessed our kids and our family, and I’m grateful for them. Let me share some of the lessons we learned when church was hard.
When people think of church, they think of buildings and sermons, choirs and sacraments. But beneath the surface, the church has a hidden strategy that is the real power of the church. It’s spelled out in a leadership plan that’s given in the apostle Paul’s letter to a pastor named Timothy. Consider where you fit in the plan.
The shift began during the pandemic. At first, we all celebrated the technology that enabled us to watch sermons online. But subtly we began to think that what we were doing online was the same as what we used to do in person. It was a natural conclusion to make. Let’s talk about what’s wrong with it.
When we decided that it would be cheaper to pump our own gas than have someone do it for us, the calculation was that it was gas that we needed, and the people involved were just a wasted expense. The same value judgment went into ATM machines and self-serve kiosks. It’s only natural that we would be tempted to see church through the same lens that we see gas stations, banks, and grocery stores.
As a former missionary, I’ve preached a lot of sermons on the Great Commission. Jesus famously called His disciples to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18). Those words have inspired Christians to take the good news of the gospel around the world. As urgently as I feel the need to share the good news with people at the ends of the earth, I fear that many Christians don’t even share their faith within the walls of their own church. Let me explain.
Once you’ve been reading the New Testament for a while, you run into various lists of spiritual gifts. They can be confusing and intimidating. There are so many of them and people disagree about what some of them mean. It can be hard to understand what your gift might be. One of the ways that the church has responded to the confusion has been with quizzes and assessments. You can go through questionnaires that are designed to predict your spiritual gift (see an example: here). While those may have some value, I think there’s a better way.
Have you ever wondered why others in the church don’t care the way you do? Have you at least noticed that they don’t? If you haven’t felt this yet, before long you probably will. When I first felt this, I didn’t ask the why question; I assumed it. I assumed that other people didn’t care the way I did because they just didn’t care. I assumed that it must be a deficiency in their faith or their passion or something! What I was experiencing was real, but my assumptions about it were all wrong. Let me explain why other Christians don’t care the way that you do.
Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘The pastor should do something about that’? I have. The more you read about the church in Scripture, the more you see that needs to be fixed. There are things that we’re not doing. There are ways that we’re not relating. There are purposes we’re not fulfilling. As a pastor, I feel burdened to evangelize those who are lost, disciple those who are new, counsel those who are struggling, comfort those who are weak, train up our leaders, oversee our office, lead the church in prayer and still devote the bulk of my energy to teaching and preaching God’s Word. The reality is that I often try to do all of those things, but the Bible says that there are a few things a pastor should focus on.
I think we often take for granted the fact that Jesus lived and ministered with a group of twelve disciples. Moses didn’t do that. Neither did David or Elijah. In one sense, the apostles were unique. Jesus was setting apart twelve representatives for the birth of the church, patterned after the twelve tribes of Israel. But the character of the church was forever transformed by the fact that Jesus invested in a small group of disciples rather than just signing a book deal or travelling as a conference speaker. The impact of Jesus’ small group shows us why it’s important that we make time for small group fellowship ourselves.