Lessons From the Early Church: Thinking universally will lead to a better Church
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Pastors do not have special powers. God does not listen to my prayers more than yours. I am no more righteous than you are. Pastors all struggle the same way other people struggle. We are people just like other people are people. We are not super-Christians.
I tell you this because, in my experience, you might not intuitively know it.
I learned early in my pastoral career that telling strangers about my job is always a gamble. Most of the time, telling someone about my job leads to either a much longer conversation or a much shorter conversation than I had intended. Either the person wants to talk about all the details of their personal life, or they have no desire associate with such an overt Christian.
But the problem remains - what do I say when somebody asks me about my job?
Then I discovered Jay John, a British evangelist. He gets around this same problem with this line, "I work in the training wing of a global conglomerate that specializes in humanitarian services. We have orphanages and hospitals. We do disaster relief and crisis intervention. Free counseling and support for all manner of difficulties. We offer more benevolence and aide than any other nongovernment organization."
What is this global conglomerate? The Church. I'm not talking about my church (with a little "c"). I'm not talking about Angelo Bible Church, Inc., the 501(c)3 organization that signs my paycheck. It's just the subdivision I work under. I'm talking about the capital "C" Church.
When you search "church in san angelo tx," you will find more than 140 different results, but the fact remains that there is only one Church in San Angelo. All people who have legitimately believed that Jesus promised eternal life with his word, paid for it with his blood and secured it with his resurrection are members of Jesus' one universal Church.
This seems to be something that we don't know intuitively, either, but the early church did.
Letters comprise most of the New Testament. I'd like to invite you to consider how each letter was addressed. For instance, Romans 1:7 addresses the letter, "To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints." 1 Corinthians 1:2 addresses it, "To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours."
Each letter of the New Testament is similarly addressed. Paul didn't write to "Rome Bible Church" or "Corinth First Methodist Church." All the Christians in Rome, all Christians in Corinth, all Christians in Galatia, etc. are all part of one church. A global conglomerate, if you will.
I am convinced we do not think about church this way. It would bear itself out if we did.
For instance, local congregations would measure growth by conversions, not attendance. If a believer stops going to one church and starts going to another, no actual growth of the Church will have happened. That's the same as moving a dollar bill from one pocket to another and claiming to have made money in the process. There is no actual gain.
We'd be quick to recognize when our own local assemblies aren't a good fit for a new believer and we'd know what congregation to send them to. After all, it's a gain for the universal Church even if it isn't a gain for our own local church. Which is more important, anyway? We'd be just as quick to work with other congregations. We'd be quick to attend events at other church buildings.
This is not to say we're terrible at uniting as the Church. Ministries abound in San Angelo where people from different congregations come together to do Jesus' work. The moments where that happens are amazing and unequivocally glorify God. This is to say that we still seem to draw lines between one group and another that the early church didn't seem to draw.
Jesus said, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Do we presume to be his disciples? Will we foster the necessary unity to prove it? "There is one body and one Spirit ... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Ephesians 4:4-6).
When we begin to lay hold of this truth, we will find a new unity in the Church in San Angelo. We will look at each building where brothers and sisters meet on a Sunday morning as just that, rather than as a completely separate entity. We will begin to function as Christ's hands and feet in this city more effectively. When we all collectively turn our eyes to the one Lord with one faith, he will receive glory and this city will be better for it.