The ground has shifted, what now?
“Wait, wait a second. I didn’t move. But my church did.”
I have unfortunately heard some version of this conversation many times. This is how people who describe themselves as evangelical, conservative, orthodox, or traditional Christians have felt as mainline denominations marched toward the political left, and in some cases, become functional packs of a particular partisan political agenda.
Perhaps today you are a person whose local congregation went the other way and has become so aligned with some group or organization on the right that it has basically replaced your church as you knew it.
This is the time and the place where I would say you have a choice to make about how long God intends you to be planted in the context of that particular soil.
Local churches are of many varieties and I want you to be in a church where the gospel is preached, the Word of God is handled in such a way that God would recognize it as his own—not only his own words, but his own heart, his own marching orders for his people— and where you can be in real fellowship, where people really love one another in Christ and yes, where the kingdom of God is extended to more and more people.
So are you in that kind of worshiping community?
If you say to yourself, “No, that is not the kind of church I’m in.” Well, you have two options. You can recognize that the soil in which you are planted as a believer is no longer nourishing you in terms of a branch of the vine, and you might need to go be grafted into or planted in some other soil in another local congregation where those things are true, where the love of Christ can then flow through you in such a way that you bear good fruit, because that’s what God wants.
God wants fruitful people. He wants us to be living demonstrations of the gospel, living demonstrations of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of the kingdoms of this world. We have a project, we have a purpose, we have a mission! The mission was to us by Christ Himself— to go make disciples. And if you are not in the context of a local church that is helping you to do that, then you need to be in one that is or that will.
Then I would also say this—you don’t just draw from the resources of a local congregation, you contribute to the resources of a local congregation. And so it’s quite possible that the reason God has made you uncomfortable in a church you’re in is because he really needs you. He needs you, your gifts, your talents, your abilities, your ideas, your spirit, in another local congregation that is currently missing your part of the body. Maybe they don’t have a funny bone and that’s you and they need you. Maybe they need a prayer warrior. Maybe they need a mission coordinator. Maybe they need a worship leader. Maybe they need … You see my point? Maybe there’s a local congregation that needs you to bring your particular contribution of the body of Christ into their local worshiping community.
So, if you are in a local church that you feel like has left you in one direction or the other, you can either stay and be a positive, winsome, joyful influence seeking to literally change the soil where you’ve been planted. You can enrich the soil. You can do that.
The other option is you can go and be a part of another worshiping community where God really needs you.
So who does your church need? What are you lacking? And who’s out there in your community that has those gifts, talents, abilities, desires, and are you seeking them to come and join you in your local church?
