Almost everywhere we go we find the churches struggling with the demands of different age groups who are amongst them. How to accommodate the pressures of the young to have things the shape they want and then the resistance of those that are older to any kind of change is often to be seen. The emergence of the subdivision of the churches in to ‘young adults services’, ‘traditional worship services,’ children’s church and young peoples services is not necessarily a sign of spiritual growth and development at all. I sometimes wonder if it is a testimony to the lack of understanding of what the Lord Jesus died to establish, namely, the church as a family, ‘the household of God’ as it is called in that same chapter two of Ephesians. I am certain that you cannot build subdivided churches upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Those very apostles when faced with the potential divisions in their day would not yield but led the church in Jerusalem into maintaining the manifest unity Jesus has purchased. Acts chapter 6 shows this clearly and Galatians chapter two shows how far Paul was ready to go to preserve that unity and allow no divisions to be emerging. He confronted his fellow apostle Peter when he was muddled and weakening on these issues. It is not that youth work and children’s work should be removed from church life, far from it. Rather we must be able to distinguish between that which is a sensible action to help minister to various ones of different groups in the churches and that which is striking at the very heart of the identity of the church this is a vital need in our day. It is so easy for the church to turn its eyes towards the world. Fragmentation of the community into various sections is promoted on every hand. We can all too easily adjust life itself to the lobbying of a certain section within the church community. We need to learn to struggle for the church as God’s family meeting together, submitting to one another. We know that church is hard. Its unity is rooted in a common faith in Christ and the maintaining of a life filled by means of the Holy Spirit and not being filled by means of other things. Each member of the church has responsibility in this and church only works when people are thus filled from above and maintaining that state. Paul mentions in his second letter to Timothy that ‘there will be times of difficulty’ and the characteristics he lists are amazingly relevant to the present day. I look on and share the struggle that is evident in churches and these kinds of struggles are evident wherever western influences are more and more pervading the societies in which the church is living its life. To deny one of the central reasons for which Christ died is saddening to those being taught of God. Not only so, the church will fail to display the glory of church has God’s family, a reality for which the human heart aches.
MORNING MUSING SEPTEMBER 26TH 2007
For several years I have pondered whether a re-written section of Ephesians chapter two was to be attempted. I refer to the verses in which Paul writes of the hostility that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles, he calls the former, those that are near and the latter are those that are far off. The wonderful thing Paul is bringing out is the way the Lord Jesus has broken down the wall of partition between these two groups of people and made both one ‘reconciling both unto God in one body through the cross’. It appears to me that nowadays the issue of the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile is not relevant to the churches however, other dividing walls are being built up and their presence denies the cross work of Christ. My re-write of these verses might substitute ‘the dividing wall between the young people and the older ones’ for instance.
