CHURCH,
ROLE OF
A PASTOR’S wife often sits on the front row. While the pastor delivers his sermon, unbeknownst to the congregation, there is a lot of activity going on between him and his wife. Occasionally she rubs her ear as though she is scratching it. Now, if the congregation would look at her, they would think that she is massaging her ear because maybe the earring is irritating her ear or her ear itches. In reality, she is signaling her husband that he is talking too loud and that he should tone it down.
When she raises her hand to give what appears to be an “Amen!” she’s saying to slow down because he is talking too fast. When she closes her eyes and nods her head, she is not saying she agrees. She is telling him that he is not panning the audience well—his eye contact is bad, he’s looking too much to one side, and so on. When the pastor’s wife rubs her shoulder, she is not having a shoulder ache, she is telling her husband that his tie is crooked, that he is embarrassing her by the way he looks, and to fix it!
Many of the good sermons that pastors preach are attributed to the fact that the pastor’s wife is sitting there completing them for him. That’s what the church does. It takes the message of Christ and it helps it to be laid out there so that the public gets it in the most refined form possible. The church takes the truth of Christ, and the truth of God, and the agenda of Christ and it lays it out there so that the world can see it operative in society.157
[Ministry, Importance of]
1 Tim. 3:15
IF YOU want to go somewhere in your car, you need gas to get there. If there is no gasoline in your tank, you’re not going anywhere in your car because gas is the indispensable element needed for you to move from one location to another. Gasoline stations are places set up to give you what you need, but in order to fill up you have to get to where the gas is located. Many Christians ride on empty because they don’t go to the place that will fill their tank.158
A YOUNG couple got married and was on their way home from the honeymoon. A tractor-trailer pulled out in front of them suddenly and the young groom swerved to avoid it. The car went into a tailspin and crashed. The groom was okay, but his new bride was bleeding profusely. He knew if he didn’t get his new wife to a doctor, she was going to die. He got out of the car and saw a sign just a little ways away: “The Office of Dr. Rufus Jones—Internal Medicine.” He picked up his beloved and struggled up the hill toward the doctor’s home.
He began knocking on the door. An old man came to the door and the groom said, “Dr. Jones?”
The man said, “Well, yes?”
He said, “My wife is bleeding. She’s dying. Please save her!”
Much to this young man’s surprise, Dr. Jones said, “I’m sorry, son, I can’t help you. You see, son, I stopped practicing medicine many years ago. I don’t have any equipment here. I don’t have medical supplies. I stopped practicing medicine a long time ago.”
Distraught with frustration and grief, the young man said, “Dr. Jones, if you can no longer help hurting people, then please take down the sign.”
We’ve got a world out there bleeding to death. We tell people to come to the church where we offer Dr. Jesus, the medicine of the Holy Spirit, and the healing power of the Word of God. We tell people to come to the hospital. But if we’re not going to be the hospital, then we need to take down the sign. There’s no need in having a sign that says “Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, Church of the Living God,” if when people show up, they don’t get surgery. Let’s either be the real hospital or take down the sign. Let’s not have everybody thinking that we’re a hospital and practicing physicians and when they show up they die at our doorstep because we stopped being a church a long time ago. Let’s be the church—the authentic representation of that which Christ gave His life for.159
IN EVERY community there are grocery stores. The job of a grocery store is very simple. It is supposed to provide life-giving food for those who live nearby because without food people can’t live. Food is an absolute necessity for the well-being of a community because its inhabitants must eat to live. What good are grocery stores whose shelves are empty or whose food is stale?
When you go shopping, you want to know that what you need is there and that it’s fresh. You don’t go to a grocery store to get year-old bread and year-old meat. You want it to be fresh, and you want to know that there’s enough there so that regardless of how many other people shop, there’s food for you. It’s the job of a grocery store and those who work in it and own it to make sure that there is enough to service all the people looking for food. What a grocery store is to the physical well-being of a community, the church is supposed to be for its spiritual well-being.
What good is a church where the shelves are empty and the food is stale? What good is a ministry where, when people come for meat, there is none? Or when they come for bread, it’s molded? Or when they come for vegetables, they are no longer firm? How could the church still call itself a spiritual grocery store? 160