Is Your Church Marbles or Grapes?

Even a quick glance through the pages of the New Testament will make it clear that the early church had problems, but that they were more often found working together and unifying than drifting apart. Christ had said that the love displayed by His followers would be proof of their discipleship.

Too many Christians, though, feel that as long as they are “in the building” with a few dozen or few hundred other people, that it shows the unity and togetherness of the church. Certainly, gathering is required (cf. Hebrews 10:25), but just showing up is not enough to really impact one another.

Christians need to impact each other’s lives. Worship is serious and solemn, but coming together in worship can become so formal that we fail to take the time to impact each other’s lives. We need to remember that the early church was involved in fellowship, but the same verse teaches us that they were “devoted” to that concept (Acts 2:42). This was not just walking by someone and having the all-too-typical “how are you doing,” “fine” conversation!

Many congregations look too much like a bag of marbles. We roll around and bump into one another, but we rarely make a real impact. When two marbles bump into each other, they might change direction, but they do not change each other. They simply bounce off and go elsewhere. Sadly, that’s the way many Christians are. They come to worship and are in the building, but when they leave, they might have “bumped into” a lot of other people, but no life-changing impact has been made.

Instead, as Anne Ortlund suggests in her book Up With Worship, we need to be more like grapes. Grapes cluster together for a long time, and then they work together to form into one great unit, sometimes juice, sometimes jelly, sometimes jam, and sometimes just a snack. But each grape has been changed by the grapes clustered around it. They are very difficult to tell apart.

Is that not what we should be striving for as the people of God? When we come together in worship, and when we meet outside the building during the week, we need to be “devoted to fellowship.” That includes making sure we are faithful in trying to impact one another’s lives, and that we are focused intently on truly becoming one. It means that, when someone looks at one Christian, they really see a host of believers, because we all are alike in our devotion and faith.

Is your congregation a bag of marbles or a cluster of grapes?

NOTE: The idea for this post came from the book When God Builds a Church, page 196.

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AUTHOR: Adam Faughn

Photo background credit: tribp on Creative Commons