When the Church is the Church

  • Jason Smith
  • Nov 16, 2008
  • Series: Walk the Line: A study of Colossians

For the most part, I believe that people outside the church would describe the American church as a divided church. We are marked by our denominations and our differences. People who are on the outside don't understand why there are ten brands of Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. All they know is that they are not experiencing much difference in their lives and their world as a result of their local churches existence. As a whole the church in America today is ineffective in reaching those that God has put us on mission to reach. We are ineffective in truly doing what Jesus told us to do.

As I have shared before, I ditched church when I was around 14 years old. There were lots of reasons that I left the church, but the one that always comes back to my mind is that it didn't really make a difference in my life. I will start with the fact that I am fully responsible for making my faith my own. But the churches that I grew up in seemed to be more focused on doing than being. They did baptisms, alter calls, Sunday School, hymns. But there wasn't a whole lot of people investing in others what they were receiving from Jesus. There was not an overflow of Christ welling up from the lives of those in the church to those outside the church.

Maybe some of you are here today and you have had a similar experience; maybe even here at Harvest Pointe. You have gone through the motions and checked off the Christian to-do list, but there is something missing. It just doesn't seem like the church makes a difference in your life or your world. You long for a deeper walk with Jesus Christ and you have sought to find it by coming to church. But along the way you have developed some doubts that life can really be found between these four walls.

As week have seen so far in the letter from Paul to the Colossians, he has a much different picture of what it looks like to walk with Christ than most of us have seen or heard in the local church. Paul's vision comes directly from His encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and resulting life change that followed as he did what Jesus told him to do. As we dive into this next passage in this challenging letter, we will see that As God changes us, we can be the kind of church that He desires. The reality is that each one of us makes up this local church and the church is a reflection of each one of its members. If we desire to be the kind of church that is marked by its love for one another and for those outside the church, then we need to be marked by love. If we desire to be the kind of church that draws people closer to Jesus, instead of pushing them away, then we need to draw people closer to Jesus. Let's see what Paul says about how we do this beginning in verse 11 of chapter 3.