How To Change The Church

How to change the church

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (Ephesians 2:19-22 NIV).

I would like to begin this morning by asking two questions.

What would this church be like if every member of it were like Jesus Christ?

My second question is What would this church be like if every member were just like me?!!!

You can almost feel the shock waves at the very thought.

If we ask ourselves the question – if every member of this church was just like me would the Kingdom purposes of the church in this area be advanced or would they be reduced?

Well we might all get different answers and we might be surprised to get god’s answer.

We might find that God is far more positive about your contribution than you are yourself.

But whatever the answer is we can be sure of one thing.

Each one of us has room for improvement.

We can raise our game.

There used to be an old joke.

How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb.

The answer one but it has to want to change!!!!

What would we need to change in order to be more fruit bearing for the body of Christ?

Have you ever seen the super nanny program on television.

In super Nanny a child expert comes in and makes a few subtle changes for a parent and the chaos that was the home is beautifully gone and peace is restored.

This morning I would like to explore the concept of what it means to be a member of the body of Christ.

My first comment is that we have no where else to go:-

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household –

The context for the Christian is the Body of Christ,.

I heard recently of a Christian who returned from the East and decided that the church in the West was lethargic and lacking in vigour.

So he didn’t join it.

That is crazy!!!

The proper context for the Christian is the church and change starts with the individual.

When I grew up my family in Winton were a little different in some ways.

But you can not divorce your family – You can leave them but you still have the same DNA – you can do what Michael Jackson did and have massive plastic surgery – but he still is Michael Jackson.

So it is with the body of Christ. 1CO 12:21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!" 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

This is the situation for the church – Sure we should encourage and lift each other up but one thing we can not do is divorce the church.

Our question is not – How can we find a better Church?

Our real question is how can we make the church better?

There is a cartoon of a man cutting a limb off a tree – the only problem is he is on the piece that is being cut off and that is the situation for the person who is a Christian without a church.

So my first point is we have nowhere else to go.

Once Jesus was with his disciples –

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (Ephesians 2:19-22 NIV).