Articles
What Christ's Church Does Not Look Like
Last weekend, Olivia and I made a trip to Louisville, KY to look into the Taylorsville Road congregation, which will soon be in need of an evangelist. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, the people, and the city.
Louisville has a thick history, both in the physical sense and the spiritual. In many debate and church history books, you will quickly notice that Louisville has been a hotbed of religious activity and has seen the brunt of many divisions in the Lord’s church. We saw some of the ramifications of that history while we were on our trip and were distressed by the aftershock of such division.
One of the clearest examples is seen in the Southeast Christian church. Boasting an assembly of 34,000 in four different campuses, they illustrate the hideous monster that division results in. One campus is located just off of I-64 on the eastern side of Louisville and we had the opportunity to drive on their campus. The buildings were opulent. The activity fields and ministry halls were ostentatious. We guessed that the campus cost around a combined $250 million. There were ball fields, theaters, bowling alleys, and plush seating for its members. We even saw a city bus picking up members. During our conjecture as to the cost of such a facility, I pontificated that the cost was equal to the souls in attendance.
Beloved, the church belonging to Jesus Christ does not look like this! His people are enraptured by His Word and seek to gratify Him in all ways. God’s church does not focus on recreation; it focuses on re-creation. During Jesus’ ministry, He took the flippant assessment of His Word seriously and rebuked people for it. After the miraculous feeding, Jesus rebuked people for their myopic focus on corporeal fulfillment: “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled” (John 6:26).
Jesus calls us to focus on spiritual priorities: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33). His body does not possess multiple heads. His meeting places do not prioritize supposed “ministry” teams, bowling clubs, and humanistic counseling seminars. He does provide an outlet for all of our social needs, but that outlet is secondary and is an after effect to the proper worship of Him in spirit and in truth. Let’s consider today where our priorities are.
