18 Jan Views from the Deer Stand

Ron Ramsey, Bishop
I spent a few days last week in Texas at the deer ranch, hunting. Yes, I had a great time and yes I was successful in my hunt. But hunting isn’t really what I want to talk about.

At the ranch this time was an interesting, older gentleman. By the way, I am finding out that there are fewer and fewer times when you can talk about someone older…anyway, in the course of our initial conversation, after we had spun all our hunting stories, he asks me, “Say, what do you do?” I told him I was a pastor. His response was classic. “Really,” he said, “I believe in God and Jesus. I even read the Bible. But I don’t go to church.” We chatted a little more about this and he tells me how he was treated poorly in a church, so he believes but just not in the church. We talked about a personal relationship with Jesus and he assured me that he had that. He believed he was a Christian. Well, I don’t know about you, but I have had that conversation with many others.

So, sitting in the deer stand early one morning I began to ponder the conversation I had with him. I began to think theologically about Christ and The Church. Christ is the Head, the Church is His Body. So how could someone say I really believe in The Head but I don’t want anything to do with The Body? There is really a disconnect in that.

The Head is the control center for the body. My fingers move across this keyboard typing words that my brain (head) think. My fingers can’t think for themselves. I have trained them to know how to be placed on a keyboard, which fingers are responsible for which letters, and to coordinate the movement in such a manner that words put on the screen. But my head tells my fingers what to type, they don’t come up with it themselves. Every action of my body is the direct result of my head telling my body what to do.

So, if Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His Body, wouldn’t it also be true that the Church doesn’t act on its own but acts as directed by the Head? So what was this man saying?

I think he has confused the Church with the church. He thinks that when he sees a church he is seeing the Church. I can certainly understand that. There are many times that the local church does not represent the Church. That happens when the church does not listen and obey the Head but some other head becomes the one giving direction to the body. Is it possible for a local church not to be a part of the Church because it doesn’t take direction from the True Head? I think not only is it possible but that I have been in churches like that.

Whenever a local church is controlled more by what some member(s) think, rather than what God thinks should be the priority and practice of that church, it no longer is representing the Church. And what is so confusing to the unchurched is that they sort of expect the local church to somehow represent what Scripture states as the purpose, direction and ministry of that church. If our local church is to be a part of the True Church then it must get its direction from the Head, Jesus Christ.

Some might say, “Yes, but I’d really like to know what God thinks.” Well, you can.

A word is a thought expressed. We have a thought and then express it in words so others can know what we are thinking.

Jesus was the Word of God in flesh. Jesus is the Word (the Thought) of God expressed.

So when we see Jesus, the Word, we know what God has on His mind.

Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost” (Luke 19:10)

And He willingly went to the Cross so the lost could be saved. So saving the lost is a primary thought on the mind of God. He provided a plan that the lost could be saved. He provided His Body, the Church to be the instrument of getting that message out.

See, I think this is what the old gentleman was trying to say. That when a church fails to be that instrument of proclaiming salvation to the lost, then it ceases to be a part of the Church. It seems to me that there are a lot of churches scattered around that are not part of the Church. Because if Christ is the Head and we are His Body, the Body will make it a regular practice to do what the Head thinks.