Ordaining Every Member

How to empower everyone to be an active part of "the church."

I meet hundreds of strangers while traveling, and I nearly always ask, "Are you in a church?"

The usual answer is, "Sometimes I go to such and such a church." They talk about going to church like they would going to the theater or the ballpark. Once in a while someone will say, "Yes, I'm deeply involved in …" but this is rare. I'm afraid the majority still think the church is just another thing you "go to."

When we look at the state of Christians and the church—at our values, beliefs, and lifestyles—there is certainly room for holy dissatisfaction. We are too easily satisfied with conventional success. We fall into an Old Testament mindset in which we look most intently at how many people come to the temple for the ritual. Meanwhile we forget Jesus' words in Matthew 12:6: "I tell you, something greater than the temple is here." 

Cheap Christianity can usually pull a pretty good attendance on Sunday morning. It is cheap whenever people think of themselves as spectators at a performance. I'm always shocked when I hear Christians talk about being "in the audience." Audiences are fine at the opera or the symphony concert, but worship is another matter.

In Christ's clearest call to commitment, he didn't say, "Come join the audience." He said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." The yoke refers to the operation of a team. Early Christians called each other yokefellow (Phil. 4:3) in order to signify a practicing Christian engaged in a team effort.

So when leaders ask how the general operation is going, they must not be too easily satisfied with numbers. You can always get a crowd if you demand little and put on a show. Rather, we need to be asking ourselves, "Are we increasing Christ's kingdom? Are we doing what he intended when he invented the church?" I use the word invented deliberately because there was no church before Christ. An amazing invention it was, something far more revolutionary than we normally suppose.

The church can only accomplish its revolutionary purpose, however, when it has certain characteristics. Read more