Who Sorts Out Church?

Trusting God is a challenging thing to do at the best of times.

It’s difficult when you are used to relying on yourself. So it’s not unusual that you are instructed to trust God with relationships, but in your fear or pride, you feel the need to help God out by taking matters into your own hands.

It’s not unusual that you are instructed to trust God with your finances, but in your anxiety or arrogance, you feel the need to help God out by taking matters in your own hands.

It’s not unusual that you are instructed to trust God with … you get the point. God says to trust Him, but that step seems so daunting and leaves you so vulnerable that it just seems safer to cover your bets with contingency measures, ones that you’re likely to turn to at the slightest hint of things not going your way.

Trusting God is a challenging thing to do at the best of times.

How we learn to trust God is the growing ability to be lead by the Spirit to walk in the Spirit and so not fulfil the things that we would want to do when we take matters into our own hands.  Notice that key phrase growing ability. Each step we take by faith is a step in which we practice the trust.  The more we take a step the more aware we are that we need His grace to trust Him more.

That’s tough on an individual scale, but it’s certainly possible. This is why the Bible is refers to examples of men and women who were like us and did great exploits in faith because they learnt to walk by faith.

I noticed something recently, while a group of us was studying Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth.  It may be one thing to be challenged by the individual walk with Christ, but how about the communal walk with Christ?

It’s interesting noting the issues that Paul addresses to the church, that he is doing just that – addressing them to the church. It would be reasonable for Paul to just address the matters to the church leadership.  Paul doesn’t do that. He writes to the brethren with the expectation that the issues raised about and/or by the brethren are addressed by the brethren.

How does that work? It’s certainly expected that the brethren themselves together reflect on what Paul states and then get on with it together to tackle the issues. It’s not just a matter of leaving it to the ‘pastor’ or the ‘bishop’.

Consider what that means for our community life. See what that means as we relate together to each other.  Issues are not just private affairs that are left to an individual behind a closed door. Sometimes it requires at least a group of us together looking to urge for sins to be confessed and repented and any who have stepped away from God’s path to be restored back into fellowship in the light.

This, however, is not an issue of democracy. It’s not something about putting things to the vote. It’s about learning, just as we do on the individual level, on the corporate level to trust God to declare his way to us. As He communicates we then obey the instructions He gives us.

Sure that could well come from someone with the pastoral or prophetic gift.  It could well be from someone who is a mature member of the Body and an example of the Christ-centred attitude we all should have. God, however, is not limiting Himself how He expresses through the Body. That means we have to give room for Him to express Himself however He chooses, through whomever He chooses.

That takes a step of faith. That calls for us to trust Him through His Spirit to get the church to sort out the church. This again is why the underlying principle of mutual submission among us as brethren will give us at the least the attitude of listening carefully to what Jesus says to His church.

Let me stress again, I am not against church leadership. I am for church life that really is about the life of Christ expressed through His Body.

That way in us collectively as well as individually we can celebrate success in meeting the challenge of trusting God.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden