Next | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Index | Tellout Home
6C. The Connected Body of Christ
One of the keys to a healthy church is ensuring that each household member is connected to Christ himself. The church and its dependent household bodies are linked to Christ and draw their life from him. The New Testament emphasizes this bond between Christ and the members of his Body of which he is the Head.
The household is the bride of Christ and Christ is the bridegroom. She is the building and Jesus is the foundation. She is the branch in the vine and Jesus is the stem.
Vine and Branches
My late wife and I together with our little daughter were on holiday in Folkestone. As we walked along the sea wall one evening, we came across a vine growing inside a greenhouse. A dense mat of branches and leaves covered the roof. We searched diligently to eventually find the stem in a corner bringing nourishment from the ground.
In the Household Body of Christ, Jesus also provides nourishment for the various parts. Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit"(6).
Christians, like branches, are nurtured by the Jesus trunk. A bough failing to produce fruit is pruned off to stimulate new growth and prevent contamination of the rest of the vine.
Religion a la Carte
In today's culture, the man in the street views religion quite differently than in past generations. Previously, the norm in society was weekly commitment to one Christian denomination.
Dr Reginald Bibby describes this modern view as "religion a la carte" whereby "religious commitment is replaced by religious consumerism." (7)
Religious Consumerism
In our age of cash and carry Christianity, most people want to pick and choose from a religious menu. They expect a congregation to provide a wedding, funeral or baptism without any real commitment of time or resources on their part to it.
Some people shop around from church to church to get the best deal in terms of minimum involvement and lowest cost. They begin with their own denomination then look elsewhere. Beliefs or traditions are secondary!
Primary is that the building picked out for a wedding will look nice on the wedding photographs! Walking into a religious supermarket, they expect to lift their rites of passage needs off the shelf.
Consumerism produces great problems for the congregation. The church traditionally views itself like a social club where members should stay and mingle, but society sees it as a corner store to pop into whenever one needs a ceremonial occasion!
Clergy get very frustrated when promises made to get the sacramental or pastoral products are broken by people who don't want the social club aspect of the church.
Reason to Be
Modern men and women in their hyper-activity have forgotten why they have their being.
An eastern mystic comments on our western society, "they have the know how, but do they have the know why?"
Our churches continue to perform the same religious things like services, committees, renting space and raising funds because they always have, but do they know why?
Marginalized Religion
No one respects or listens to the institutional church anymore. It is generally ridiculed in the media.
Television portrays clergy as bumbling eggheads or as Bible thumping extremists out of touch with society's needs. The institutional church reacts by diluting its standards to accommodate others. Instead of pacifying its critics this only stimulates further erosion.
It finds itself brushed aside, stripped of its morals, weak and afraid. Dr Bibby explains, "The majority of young people in Canada are sending a sobering message to those who value organized religion. The tough reality facing the country's religious organizations is that religion is being strongly marginalized by the vast majority of Canadian youth"(8).
The situation is not hopeless. The solution is not to abandon the institutional church but to look again beneath its clothing for the real Body of Christ. This may be embarrassing initially as we have denied the existence of the Mystical Body for centuries. Turning aside from other concerns, let us devote our energies to the building up of household bodies.
As in the early days, these household bodies are the future hope for the wider church. The challenge to be effective and relevant is being faced not just at the corporation level but on the wider horizons of the denominations and global community of faith we call Christ's worldwide Body.
Question for Discussion
1. What affect would it have on your church if you had no church building?
Notes
(6) John 15.5. (7) Dr Reginald Bibby "Fragmented Gods". (8) Dr Reginald Bibby.
"We are living members of his mystical body"
