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I was heading home from researching in Eastern KY (thank you, Jarrod Hunt, my tour guide, and his mother, Sharon, who treated me like a queen at their home in Grapevine!) and listening to some Bible teaching CD's, when the priest said something that just jolted me. He was speaking about confessing our sins, and made an off-hand comment about whether we treat church as church or as a literary club. Now that wasn't the main point of the CD at all. But it got me thinking.
Do we treat church as church or as a book club?
Do we go time after time, enjoy what was said, but go home unchanged? I know that happens at book clubs. We sit around, talk about the book, how much we loved it, and then place it on the shelf afterwards, forgetting about it.
Or maybe all we do is study the book. We read, read, read, going over every inch, and we get to church, and read some more, and hear some more about it, and our life is all about that book. Yet for all that reading of that book, we're still depressed and discontent, we're still doing the same besetting sins, we still hate your boss and take our husband or wife for granted. We still don't do much to love anybody else.
Please don't misunderstand me and say that I think some brands of churches are book clubs and others aren't. Although some may be, I don't know. That's your call. But ask yourself, am I treating my church like a book club? Is my church only about the Bible, learning it, studying it, memorizing it? Or is there the challenge and the opportunity to live it out, really live it out? All of it? Even the parts that put a cross on our back and send us to places we'd rather not go?
I'm not saying the reading and studying of the Word of God isn't important. But I am saying, it doesn't mean much if we don't do something with it, if it doesn't expand our hearts to love more, if it doesn't change us into the image of Christ. And that, of course, goes back to our willingness to let the Spirit move in and through us. As St. Paul said in I Cor. 13, "Though I can fathom all mystery and all knowledge . . . and have not love, I am nothing."
If you are going to a book club every Sunday, maybe God wants you to be the one to provide those opportunities to shine the Light of the World to your community and your world. Being the hands and feet of Jesus is great on your own, but it's even better in the company of your brothers and sisters in Christ. Whether by ourselves or in full force we're still the singular hands and feet of the Body of Christ. I love how that works.
Just something to think about. Still have a long way to go on this one myself!
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