Every Christian needs to appreciate the dual expression of church; first the 0ne-bodied global spiritual entity and second the many local assemblies of believers scattered in different parts of the world.
In 1 Corinthians 12: 12-20, Apostle Paul gave a wonderful analogy of the church as a body and in this case a human body. Paul describes the body as being one unit, with many unique body parts.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”
The body has one major function which is to give a physical expression to the Soul and spirit within. The body parts or the organs on the other hand exist to serve a limited but crucial function in the body. We could then say, the Body INCARNATES the Spirit, while the organs RUN the body.
The church as a large unit is called THE BODY OF CHRIST. Christ is a Spirit and He needs the church to find expression in this physical world. The church then becomes the eyes, the legs, the ears, the mouths and hands of Christ on earth.
Individual believers and church members are ORGANS both to the local church and to the global mystical body of Christ.
Anyone who gets born again must therefore be brought into the awareness of their belonging to body and understand the core function of the body/the church. This would help the believers as they grow and mature to begin to find their place of functionality within the body of Christ.
This would also greatly help in curing one of the diseases in the church today where we have 10,000 SITTING members and only 50 SERVING members!!!
All believers need to be awakened to the truth that no ORGAN JUST SITS in the body. Every organ serves a purpose! If I belong long to the body, it’s imperative that I find my place of service in the body.
No one is called to SIT in church, we are called to SERVE. Callings, Gifting, graces, Maturity levels and experiences often determine where and how we serve yet we are all called to serve.
The local church assemblies need to inspire and train their congregants to deliberately participate in the Running on the body as their service to the larger body of Christ.
RUNNING OF CHURCH SERVICES
I visited one church with around 80 members and what I experienced left me quite displeased. I arrived the day before and early Sunday morning, the pastor woke up to lead the intercessory prayers.
I saw him carry the PA system to the church venue. I saw him tell the wife, “rush and wipe the seats”.
When we got to the church, the praise and worship team leader was late and was being called on phone, “the church is about to start, we have not seen you yet”. At some point in the service children were running all over the place and hardly could one person stand to create some order.
You could feel how burdened, drained and divided the pastor was as he stood on the pulpit. Yet there were mature men and women, and youth in that service. After the service, the same pastor who visibly physically and emotionally very tired had around 6 people waiting in line to be ministered to privately in prayer and counseling.
When some churches are planted, the whole team would probably consist of the pastor and his or her family with one or two members. In this set up, the pastor or the minister could be justified to do everything.
However as the church grows, and many people are worn to the faith and to the assembly, there needs to be better order in the way things are done.
Looking at the First church in the Jerusalem in Acts6:1-4, the Bible says,
“In those days AS THE NUMBER OF THE DISCIPLES WAS INCREASING, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciple together and said, IT WOULD NOT BE RIGHT FOR US TO NEGLECT THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD IN ORDER TO WAIT ON THE TABLES. Brothers , choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and Wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
The physical increase to the church brought with it new challenges that needed more hands to handle them. As it was true to the church in Jerusalem so it is to all the church assemblies everywhere.
As the church grows, its needs grow and its problems grow thus more people and more structures need to come up or else disorder can cause the church to crumble.
Order and excellence doesn’t appear naturally; These are things that must be created and sustained through intentional proper training and teaching.
When the disciples saw a problem, they did not just pray about it, they called a meeting and spoke it. They undertook a process of selecting potential people who could be of help. They ordained them and commissioned them.
Some of the things that the local church assembly will want to put into considerations as the church grows are:
- The Time for church services… Some congregations have will indicated that services begin at 10.am and end at 1pm but without any notice the service will run until 4pm and if one leaves they are victimized.
- Whatever can be done by any other member should be offloaded from the pastor’s shoulders so that the pastor can concentrate on the ministry of word and prayer.
- The fear of God and reverence for the church sanctuary must sustained at all times…. Sometimes you will find people in the church busy in their phones while the church service is on or even phones ringing in the church and distracting the attention of many.
- Respect for the Pulpit area/ the altar needs to be cultivated into people’s hearts:…Some places you will find people climbing to the pulpit area or allowing their kids to run up and down the altar.
- The pulpit should never be used to settle personal scores either by the pastor or any other person given chance to minister or speak or sing.
- Attentions needs to be given to the children through proper Sunday school teaching and other activities
- Where it is possible, a vibrant youth church could be equally established.
- Training for ushers, protocol teams and security should be done continually to enhance the effectiveness of their services.
- There needs to training and practices for praise and worship teams so that there is oneness in spirit and excellence in their ministry,
- Decency and modesty should be encouraged in the church services so that people are not distracted by indecency or flamboyance of others…. People should be reminded always that we come to church to worship and not to show-off.
- Decimation or favoritism by tribe or status should never be entertained in services….
- The Language of delivery of sermons needs to be such that most of the congregations would not have to struggle to understand…. If need be, let there be a translator either to Kiswahili or vernacular language so that most people get to hear the word.-
- Emerging needs in the church should need noted and attended to such as there may need to come up with as mercy ministry to attend to the needs of the vulnerable….. There may be a need to have special separate healing and deliverance services….
- Feedback from the community should also be factored into decision making…. For instance if then church is playing very loud music either in the day or night services and the neighbors are justly offended, adjustments must be done. If the church is in a rented facility, other users of the building should also be respected.
CHURCH DEPARTMENTS
Borrowing from Paul’s Analogy of the Body in reference to the church in 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31, the local assembly is one unit but it is anticipated to have many organs all working for the good of the one unit.
As the local church grows so should the structures and quality of personnel that are serving in that church. It would for instance wrong to have a church of more than 700 hundred people and the church has no medical department; what happens when the kids are playing outside and one faints or gets a deep cut or even goes into a convulsion.
Paul says that the whole body cannot be an eye or a leg or a hand equally the whole church cannot be pastor or the pastoral team. There must emerge other systems, structures and departments to co-function and run the body, the church.
We have quite a number of examples in scripture where wisdom was extended to leaders to delegate duties to others so as to make the work easier and effective,
In Exodus 18:1-27, Moses’ Father-in-law visited him and saw the difficulty Moses had in overseeing the assembly of God’s people.
Moses was working morning till evening alone in attending to the people. Jethro advised him to … “select capable men from all the people – men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain- and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens . Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; simple cases the can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you.” Vs21-vs22
Paul writes to Titus in Titus 1: 5-9 that ,
“The reason I left you in Crete was that you may straighten out what was left unfinished and APPOINT ELDERS in every towns as I directed you.”
In 1timothy 3:1-13, Paul writes to Timothy about the qualification of deacons and overseers.
When you look at Nehemiah’s wall-building project in Nehemiah 3:1-32, you see that every gate and section was given to a specific set of people. It was not all people working on all the wall; it was specific people working on a particular area.
The Local church finds strength when the individual members find space to contribute their unique strengths, gifting and life skills to the operation of the church. This should be taught and encouraged.
The pastor must encourage the congregants to find at least one department In the church where they can serve.
The local church minister should be on the frontline in identifying which departments are needed in the church and to keep increasing them or aligning them as the dynamics in the church change.
Church departments should not just be offices to be occupied but reverently regarded as ministry opportunities to minister to the body.
Those who join church departments whether it is ushering, sanitation, media, praise and worship, women’s fellowship, men’s fellowship, Children’s department, youth departments, compassion department, protocol, security and others need to be trained. The trained should be in the word but also sometimes professional.
It may be necessary for the ministry to outsource training from professional persons even if they are not part of that local church to equip their teams.
It is necessary that competitions and infighting, rebellion and division are discouraged at all times; service to Christ and advancing kingdom agenda should remain the primary goals for wanting to serve in any department.
The departmental heads must not just be chosen because of family relationship to the pastor but based on their capacity and the leading of the Holy spirit.
The pastor would need to have frequent meetings with the team leaders so that he is well informed of the issues he or she could not pick at his or her level and also to keep the leaders inspired and aligned to the vision of the ministry.
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