Church Alive: Every Member a Minister

Jesus' dream for his church was that it would penetrate and transform the world like salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16), assaulting the very gates of death (Matthew 16:18).  

After his death, resurrection, and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, it did all these things!  It did it through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Church members received spiritual gifts, by which they equipped each other to be the body of Christ, continuing his work in the world (1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Rom. 12:3-8; Eph. 4:11-13).  

Sadly, the church got off track.  In a way, it was a victim of its own success.  It became settled and institutional.  The practices of the baptism and the Lord's Supper became sacraments that required special handling.  Those special handlers became the clergy.  They became the ministers of the church.  Most people became the laity.  They became the supporters and consumers of the work of the clergy.  

That arrangement worked well as along as Christianity dominated the culture.  But with the coming of modernism and then postmodernism, the institutional model of the church became unsustainable.  First, mainline churches like Methodists and Presbyterians went into steep decline.  Later, conservative churches joined them.

This has caused us to rethink the institutional model, which never reflected the ideal of the scriptures.  The New Testament church penetrated and transformed a hostile culture by being incarnational/missional.  They were incarnational in that they saw themselves as the embodiment of Christ in the world.  They were missional in that they believed their locale was a mission field and each of them was a minister and missionary.

To fulfill our mission today, we need to follow that New Testament model.  First, we need to discern our individual spiritual gifts and exercise them within the church body.  Our gifts build up others, and others' gifts build us up.  This is our work of ministry.  

Once we do that, we go out to be missionaries, taking Christ's presence into our communities.  We love others in Christ's name and introduce them to the God we love.

These are challenging, even scary days for the church.  But the church is at its best when its under stress, and I believe a better church will emerge from its stresses!