Horse Manure Revisited

I received an email the other day from a friend; someone had told him of their leaving a church because they had felt used by the church. The church had asked them to work in one of their ministries without paying them, they had said. 'yes,' but then left feeling used...

This had prompted my friend to email me; we asked the question, 'Does the church exist for people, or do people exist for the church?'

Now on the face of it, this question is a great one to wrestle with; however, when we come to the truth that the church is people, then we have to realize that the question (as poignant as it is) fails to grasp the basic nature of church, and so is ultimately an invalid question...

The question as it stands is really, 'do people exist for people, or do people exist for people?' It's a non question because it is attempting to ask, 'does A exist for B, or vice versa?' But A and B are the same thing!

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The question needs to be turned inside out...

Does the Church (Christian people) exist for itself, or for something else?

The simple truth is that the Church (Christians) exist for non-Christians!

We often talk about the various functions and purposes of the Church, mission being one of them, yet the reality is the Church does not have a purpose.

Let me explain:

God's purpose is to redeem the entire world, His heart is to reveal His Son to all people, but what is His method? How does He plan to accomplish such a task? God's chosen method is to create a new thing, the community in mystical union with the Son, the Church!

So the Church does not have a mission, but rather, God's mission has a Church. To talk about the purpose of the Church is to confuse the issue, the Church is the method of achieving God's purposes...

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We must take a good look at our hearts and ask, "am I the gravitational center, around which everything else orbits?" (Questions about purpose, God and His desires, my own desires, etc.)

OR...

'Is God is the center of gravity, around which we find our own orbit?" (We find our purpose by first finding His, we find our desires by first understanding His.)

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So the people actually do exist for the people! But which people we are talking about is the real question! The people (church) exist for the people (world)!

Whenever we exist for ourselves, we are piling up horse manure into a massive lump of poop (hold your nose!), but whenever we exist for others, we are spreading manure over the field causing things to grow; the difference between excrement and fertilizer is whether you pile it, or spread it...

So here is what I want you to do:

Repeat after me:

"This is not about me, it is about them!