Jesus said, "I will build My church" (Matt 16:18) and proceeded to die and rise again to make that happen. It has always been absolutely clear from Scripture that the Church is not ours, not even about us, but about Him. The works of believers are supposed to bring glory to the Father (Matt 5:16). We are blessed by God to the praise of His glory (Eph 1:5-6,12,14). Since everything is about His glory (1 Cor 10:31), certainly church is as well. It is His making, His doing, His maintaining, and for His purposes.
Why is it, then, that we tend make it all about us? We work to make it more appealing. We aim to produce the proper emotional response toward our church, toward God, and toward others. We aim to encourage people, which isn't all bad, but we do it at the cost of things like biblical mandates and God's stated purposes. We will, for instance, make sure there is a gospel invitation but we won't make disciples. We will endure a sermon but not a sermon that makes us feel bad. (And "feel bad" includes "had to sit in that pew too long".) We'll sing songs that make us feel good -- hopefully toward God -- but not "those other kind of songs" (whether that's "old songs" or "too heavy songs" or what Larry Norman termed "funeral music", or, for some, those "too contemporary" songs). Upbeat. Cheerful surroundings. Current technology. Sermons that don't meddle. These are what we want in churches. All of it aimed at us.
Oh, we let God in there, to be sure. Not the Transcendent God. We like the Immanent God, the one that is "right here", the "buddy" God, the one more like us. Mind you, He is, in some sense or another, all of that, but I would think that worship would include, nay, demand that we embrace and extol the Transcendent God much, much more. So far above us. Over all. The God of Paul. "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!" (Rom 11:33) The God of Job "Who does great things beyond searching out and marvelous things beyond number" (Job 9:10). The God of David, the knowledge of Whom he says, "is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it" (Psa 139:6). We like the "Abba" God, but that "out there" God isn't really our cup of tea.
I live in a troubled world where sin seems to be on the rise and sin-bred insanity seems to be the norm. Governments are endorsing sin wholesale and moving against God's people. In our nation the move seems to be away from everything God and toward the full embrace of immorality as god -- not merely allowed, but worshiped. In this kind of a world I need a God who is Immanent -- right here beside me -- but I desperately need a God who is above it all, not mired in the day to day, not shackled by His creation, not losing ground or muddling through. I need that Transcendent God. And if church is about the equipping of the saints and the building up of the body of Christ to attain unity and maturity (Eph 4:11-14), I would think that the rest of the Church would, too.
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