Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Called Out and the Called

The Church is a collection of individuals who have been called.  Individuals are called.  The Church is a collection of the individual callings of those who have been called.  Still, individuals are called; churches are collections of those who are called.

During my lifetime, the work of the Church has been placed upon the backs of the collective body of those called instead of on the individuals that make up the church.  The congregation is responsible for worship, discipleship, encouragement, outreach, service, etc.  The individual's responsibility within this framework is to accomplish the work of the Church.  The responsibility of the individual has been replaced by the responsibility of the collective.  The body of Christ image has been distorted to refer to the function of the whole without the required function of the individual.  We speak about 80/20 rules and the like.

There are a few implications that concern me.  (1) The locus of individual response to the call of God is now primarily understood in congregational terms [i.e. an individual serves on a mission board of the local church].  (2) Calling is seen as a function of the Church and not an individual response to the call of God.  (3) Calling as the central characteristic of the assembly has been replaced by membership or identification.  (4) Accomplishment of the work of the Church is now defined by "our" work instead of "my" work.  (5) The missional understanding of calling diminishes when we generalize the Christian life in terms of our collective life.  (6) The valuation of ones calling becomes a reflection of the shared ideals of the group rather than the innate working of God within you [i.e. variety is undervalued while homogenous coersion is the natural outcome].

I love the Church.  As a pastor whose calling is to care for God's flock, God's people are my life.  While we must accomplish what God has called us to do, that will never happen without you doing what God has called you to do.  I see the individual calling as having primacy over the actions of the group.  Both are essential and in some ways the same, but we should never look so intently at the church that we stop seeing the individuals (and callings) that make up that church.  Individuals should not have to fit into the church's mold; individuals should mold our image of the church.

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