Not the Church's Job

Just read this, the latest edition of The Serious Times by James Emery White. We all need a healthy challenge in this direction...

It’s Not the Church’s Job

I love the church.

I have given my life to the church.

I believe, as is often said, that the church truly is the hope of the world.

But that’s not the church’s job.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here you go: Make me close to Jesus!

It’s not the church’s job.

Save my marriage!

It’s not the church’s job.

Raise my kids!

It’s not the church’s job.


Give me friends! It’s not the church’s job.

Feed me!

It’s not the church’s job.

It is not the church’s job to give you the life you want, or hope for, much less the one that you are expected to forge through a relationship with God through Christ under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The church cannot ensure that all goes well with you. Most of life is your responsibility.

Why do I say this?

To defend the church.

Why do people often come to a church? To get fixed, find friends, renew faith, or strengthen family. All well and good, and the church can obviously be of enormous assistance in all four areas. But the church can’t be held responsible for these four areas of life, nor should you expect it to.

Let’s try and drive this one home:

The parents of a middle-school student drop their child off at a middle-school ministry. The child does not change into a model Christian student. The parents immediately search for a new church with a more effective middle-school ministry.

What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong is the complete absence of any sense that spiritual life is the responsibility of that middle-school student, not to mention that spiritual leadership within the family is the responsibility of her parents.

Instead, we have a mentality of “drop-off parenting,” which is just part of the mentality of a “drop-off church.” We drop our wives off at a women’s ministry to get them to be the wives or mother’s we want; we drop our husband’s off at a men’s Bible study to get them to be spiritual leaders; we drop ourselves off at a service or recovery group to fix our problems, or a Bible study to renew our lukewarm faith.

It reminds me of the sixties and Timothy Leary’s famous line regarding not only the benefits of LSD, but the spirit of the age:

“Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.”

That is not the way to approach the church.

There comes a time when personal responsibility kicks in. The church exists to coalesce and enrich; to coordinate and inspire; to provide order and leadership. It exists to pull together the collective force and will of those who follow Christ in order to fulfill the Great Commission given it by Jesus Himself. Yes, it serves the family trying to raise a child; it seeks to heal those who are broken; it provides the richest of communities for relationships; it offers the necessary resources for a vibrant relationship with Christ.

But it cannot circumvent the choices and responsibilities of the human will.

It cannot do life for you.

That’s your job.

- James Emery White (www.serioustimes.com)

choosing david

Sunday is Sanctity of Life Sunday. I always used to think that good Christians should take a pro-life stance and that we should defend the rights of the unborn when it came to abortion and the like. Two influences have since come into my life that have greatly challenged my views on this issue.

In the past few years I have become of devotee of the Mars Hill Audio Journal (a bimonthly audio magazine of contemporary culture and Christian conviction). Ken Myers has, over the years, interviewed many guests who have raised my awareness that abortion is only the beginning of the crisis facing our culture when it comes to the value of life. He has interviewed the likes of Richard John Neuhas, Nigel Cameron (a regular guest), Carlos Gomez, Michael Uhlman, C. Ben Mitchell, Joel James Shuman and others about issues like stem cell research, the relation of God's nature and purposes to our approach to sickness and medicine, the vocation of medicine, the meaning of human life, issues of suicide and euthanasia and many related topics. The take-away that continually resonates in my mind and heart is that the church by and large is behind the times on the variegated issues that surround sanctity of life. In an age of assisted suicide, genetic counseling, eugenics, fertility specialists, a lack of moral moorings, the Church needs to be educated and needs to stand up and fulfill its prophetic role in our culture.

Besides being stirred intellectually regarding these issues, we have faced them personally and deeply in raising a child with special needs. Our oldest son, David, was born with Cornelia deLange Syndrome resulting in small stature, global developmental delay and physical abnormalities. The conventional wisdom in the medical community today seems to be that testing should be performed during pregnancy to investigate the health of the "fetus" (I had a professor at Fresno State who once commented that pregnant soccer moms never have tee shirts that read "Fetus" with an arrow to their tummys!). While it might seem these good people in white lab coats want the best for your "fetus," unfortunately they are more often than not investigating whether they need to counsel termination of a pregnancy gone wrong. "In light of modern medicine, it is ridiculous that anyone should be born today with genetic disorders" is a sentiment I come across often, whether from the likes of Peter Singer or from doctors interviewed in Newsweek and on such programs as 60 Minutes. They don't mean that modern medicine can heal. David and his classmates at Chris Jesperson, in many such people's opinions, should never have been born. They're "quality of life" lacks too much and the financial outlay to our society costs too much. Yet, as I have watched my son over the past 41/2 years, it is offensive that anyone would dare to rob him of his opportunity at life. This kid is full of joy, determination and love. He brings joy to those who get to know him and has challenged many people (including me!) in the way they see others. Beyond that, the Lord, the Creator of life itself, speaks directly to this issue in Psalm 139:

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.

The God of the Bible revealed in Jesus of Nazareth invented life. He is the giver of life. He sovereignly superintends every dimension of our lives.

There are a ton of great resources out there to learn more about the issues facing our culture on the issue of Sanctity of life. I want to recommend just a couple. After David was born someone gave Lisa a copy of Choosing Naia which she found extremely helpful. It is a book about a couple, Greg and Tierney Fairchild, a happily married, interracial professional couple who went for the usual prenatal screenings and came away with some very bad news: the fetus carried a major heart defect that could signal Down syndrome. The Fairchild's are not believers to my knowledge and begin as a couple who are not particularly pro-life. This is the story of their journey coming face to face with these issues in their daughter Naia.

I would also recommend Bioethics: A Primer For Christians by Gilbert Meilaender. As one review on Amazon puts it, Meilaender comes to the point early: "I have tried to say what we Christians ought to say in order to be faithful to the truth that has claimed us in Jesus." Recommended on Mars Hill, I plan to read this book this year to continue my own education on this issue.