LAKELAND COMMUNITY
  • I'M NEW
    • ESSENTIALS
    • SURRENDER TOGETHER LOVE
    • HISTORY
    • LEADERSHIP
  • COMMUNITY
    • Course and Current
    • MINISTRY OVERVIEW
    • ADULT MINISTRIES
    • MILESTONES
    • 9-12
    • 5-8
    • K-4
    • PRE-K
    • MISSIONS
  • MEDIA
    • TEACHINGS
    • VIDEO ART
    • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • THIS WEEK
  • GIVING
  • EMPLOYMENT
  • RENTAL
  • Lakeland Live
  • Church Center

AN UNBIDDEN LIFE

THE CHURCH AS FAMILY, NOT VOLUNTEERS

11/26/2013

0 Comments

 
Last night was Hanging of the Greens.  Dozens of volunteers showed up to decorate the church for the Advent Season.  It was fun and powerful.  Everyone did a wonderful job and the church looks spectacular for the Christmas Season. 
Chris Lea, Worship Director, resists the term “volunteer” because it sounds like people are helping this thing called the church, which is wrongly assumed by both church staff and congregants to be separate and different from the people who attend. 
The church is family rather than a community center.  We help but we don’t volunteer, no more than doing dishes or mowing the lawn is volunteering at home.  You don’t volunteer at home.  You own it.  As owners the congregants have the ownership, responsibility and authority to decorate the church.  Yes, pastors and staff lead the charge but the brothers and sisters do the work and make it happen.  The church is nothing without everyone participating fully. 
This participation is exactly what Paul draws out with his body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12-14.  The body is made up of many parts.  They form one single body.  The hand cannot say to the eye, “Well you are not a hand – I don’t need you, you’re not important.”  The ear cannot say, “Well, I’m not important because I am not an eye.” 
In my thought then, the hand doesn’t volunteer to be a part of the body.  The hand is necessary.  And we miss it when it doesn’t do its role. 
One more theological point:  Christ is the head of the body, that is, the church.  We are not a body without Jesus’ Presence.  When two or three gather, Jesus is in our midst.  When we break bread, Jesus is revealed.  The bread we break is both common ordinary bread, a shared meal with fun and fellowship like Hanging of the Greens; and the bread is uncommon bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Body of Christ, broken and distributed among us as spiritual food.  The Communion is both symbol and reality, both real bread food and real Presence. 
This concept is meant to blow our minds because it defies our split world – when we split off the spiritual from the “real” material world around us.  (This splitting is called “Dualism,” and it is our most disastrous philosophy in Western thought – no, really it is.)  When we reunite the spiritual reality and the our material reality we become a One, a Unity, a Singularity, Wholistic.  Thus, we become Human Beings, rather than Human Doings.  We re-establish our true identity as God-Belongers, rather than just animals, hunters and gatherers. 
Hanging of the Greens did not have volunteers.  Last night was siblings coming together in the name of Jesus to have fun and ‘prepare him room’ with the advent of the Savior, the coming of the world’s King, who came to be among us, as one of us.  And while pastors and staff may thank congregants for showing up and working hard, this “thank you” is not a consumer contract: “Thank you for shopping at StuffMart.  We appreciate your business.” No.  The ‘thank you’ is the same as my wife saying ‘thanks for mowing the lawn.’  The thanks is love and appreciation (covenant), not a verbal consumer contract.
May we lean into Christmas now.  May we get excited.  It is time for the Body to prepare a feast.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    October 2021
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    May 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture

​913 NE Colbern Road
Lee's Summit, MO 64086

816.554.0929
​

SUNDAY SERVICES
9:30a Course Hour
10:30a Current Hour
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
SITEMAP
  • I'M NEW
    • ESSENTIALS
    • SURRENDER TOGETHER LOVE
    • HISTORY
    • LEADERSHIP
  • COMMUNITY
    • Course and Current
    • MINISTRY OVERVIEW
    • ADULT MINISTRIES
    • MILESTONES
    • 9-12
    • 5-8
    • K-4
    • PRE-K
    • MISSIONS
  • MEDIA
    • TEACHINGS
    • VIDEO ART
    • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • THIS WEEK
  • GIVING
  • EMPLOYMENT
  • RENTAL
  • Lakeland Live
  • Church Center