WHY WE NEED THE CHURCH!

(Preached on Sunday, April 13, 2008)

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.                                     -Acts 2:46-47

 

It had been an intense several day workshop on the AMinistry of the Whole People of God.@  The group had talked about the work of God=s people sent out to serve C in daily life experiences, in the community, in the workplace, in the world.  It had been a challenging experience.  But after the closing assembly, one unsatisfied young woman asked earnestly C almost angrily C AWhy, then, do we need the church?@  If the job of ministry is Aout there,@ she was saying, maybe the institutional church just gets in the way.  Maybe we just need to get out there and get the job done!  Why do we need the church? 

 

It is an important question.  It is a question people have increasingly asked over the past twenty years.  At the risk of oversimplifying, perhaps one reason people seem to ask that question more today is because of the way we have trained our children.  In April 1989, World Monitor, shared the results of a survey about preschool essentials.  They reported that 34% of American preschool teachers, administrators, parents, and child-development specialists said the most important thing for a child to learn in preschool is Aself-reliance and self-confidence.@  Only 5% said it was Asympathy, empathy, and concern for others.@  Now, self-reliance and self-confidence are important character traits and skills, but are they so important as to ignore the skills of sympathy, empathy, and concern for others?  Have we been training our children, before the age of 5, when most child development specialists suggest that 80% of a persons character has been developed, to be primarily focused on themselves, to take care of themselves, without regard for anyone else?  Survival of the fittest, every man for himself.  (Now I know that is not the case at 3 C=s Preschool, where qualities of sharing, concern for others, and community are very important.)

 

God did not create us to function as lone individuals.  God created us to live in community.  Genesis tells us that after God created the first human being, God looked at the man and realized it was not good for him to be alone, and so God went back to work and created a companion.  From the beginning God understood we needed other people to be happy and healthy. 

 

This truth is demonstrated in the study of anthropology and archeology.  Margaret Mead said the first sign of civilization was found where archeologists uncovered human skeletons with broken femur bones that had healed.  The law of the jungle is, AIf you fall, you die.@  Anyone who broke a femur had fallen and could not get away.  If a skeleton displayed a healed femur it meant that someone stood between this crippled person and the danger that threatened, took this person to a place of safety, and cared for this person during a time of healing, bringing food and water, and providing protection.  A healed femur, said Mead, was the telltale sign of a community that had learned to value life, care for others, and build a network of supportive relationships.

 

Jesus of course knew this truth.  As Jesus developed his ministry, he did so through the use of small groups.  He gathered around himself a small group of 12 disciples.  When he sent them out to expand his work, he did so in pairs, not singly.  After his death he met with them in small groups and encouraged them to stay together until the Holy Spirit came upon them.  Even after the Holy Spirit came, they continued to function in small groups.  As new people responded to their sharing of the gospel, they also became part of the group.

 

We see that community described in the passage we read from Acts.  It is a powerful community which has a powerful witness which brings more people into the healing community.  It is the first evidence of Jesus= resurrection power shaping a community of the future as God envisioned it.  It is a strong community that breathes with God=s redemptive life in Jesus.  It honors the diversity of God=s family, expresses optimistic faith, draws others with magnetic love, and celebrates the resurrection power and love of God.

 

How do we get there?  It is really quite simple.  So simple, we tend to overlook and ignore it.  It is laid out in the first sentence: AThey devoted themselves to the apostles= teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.@  The key words are: AThey devoted.@  Everyone in the new community made a commitment and practiced it.  They did it.  They didn=t wait for someone else to do it.  They didn=t sit around and wait for God to do a miracle.  They, each member of the community, did it.

 

What did they do?  They Adevoted themselves.@  They made a commitment and they put it into practice.  They gave their lives, their time, their attention, their resources, to the community.  They were there to hear the apostles teach.  They were there for fellowship, to spend time together, to re-create together, to build relationships, to get to know one another, to care for one another.  They were there to break bread together, to share meals, to share THE meal, the remembrance meal, the Thanksgiving meal to God for everything God had done through Jesus.  And they prayed C they took their concerns to God, they spent time seeking God and God=s presence, and God=s guidance, and God=s blessing C they prayed! 

 

What was the result of their devotion?  They started out with 3,000 new believers joining their community.  They became a community with no budget problems, for the community or for anyone in the community C as they all brought everything they owned, everything they earned, and used it for the good of the community, so no one went without, everyone had their needs met.  They experienced wonders and signs of God=s Spirit at work in their midst.  Amazing things were happening.  Everyone was happy, felt loved and accepted.  And their community was growing daily as God brought more people to their witness.

 

Sound like a community we would like to be part of?  The way to get there is to go back to basics.  It starts with a commitment on the part of each one of us.  That community will begin to be realized here as we Adevote ourselves to learning the basics of faith, to nurturing fellowship, to regularly breaking bread together (sacramentally and in fellowship), and to prayer.@  Those are the keys to building such a dynamic, growing community.  And such a community, where people feel loved, learn to share and care for one another, is vitally important for our world today and for our health and well-being as well.

 

Such community is a real possibility for it does happen, even in the most inhospitable of conditions for it to occur.  IN his book To End All Wars, Ernest Gordon tells of what he and others experienced in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp made famous by the classic movie The Bridge over the River Kwai.  The camp stood at the end of the Bataan death march that brought Allied soldiers deep into the jungles of Asia.  Few would survive, and everyone knew it.  In order to make the best of a terrible situation they teamed up in pairs, each watching out for a buddy.  One prisoner was a strapping six-foot-three fellow built like a tower of iron, but his buddy, got malaria.  The smaller fellow was much weaker, and very likely to die.  Their captors did not want to deal with sickness, so anyone who was unable to work was confined in a Ahot house@ until he succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration, and the collapse of his bodily systems.  The sick man was locked into a hothouse and left to die.  Surprisingly he did not die, because every mealtime his strong buddy went out to him, under the curses and threats from the guards, and shared his meager rations.  Every night his buddy braved the watchful eyes above that held guns of death, and brought his own slim blanket to cover the fevered convulsions of the sick man.