We Are Not a Clubhouse.
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10)
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur stood a lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and with no thought for themselves, went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many people who had been rescued, and also others from the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and to give their time, money, and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The lifesaving station grew. In time some of the crew became concerned that the station was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more spacious place should be provided as the first refuge of those snatched from the sea. The uncomfortable emergency cots were replaced with beds with soft cushions, and better furniture was purchased for the enlarged building.
The station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely. Fewer members were now interested in leaving the plush station to go to sea on lifesaving missions. So they hired surrogates to do that work. However, they retained the lifesaving motif in the club’s decorations, and a ceremonial lifeboat lay in the room where club initiations were held. The club would hold weekly meetings and would often sing rousing lifesaving songs that they had learned from the generations of lifesavers who had come before them. Speakers would often come to their weekly meetings talking about great lifesavers from the past and they would show slides and tell stories from the lifesavers technical manual. When you became a member of the lifesaving club, you were normally given a copy of the lifesavers manual. People would normally carry their manual to the club meetings, but hardly anyone actually read their manual. Everyone liked to be perceived as being a lifesaver. They would even wear lifesaver’s clothing and t-shirts, but few had actually done any real lifesaving. Most club members felt that it was a job for the professionals who were trained for it.
One dark stormy night a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and obviously from distant shores. Most of the people in the lifesaving club couldn’t understand the language the rescued spoke and club members felt a little uncomfortable around these strange people. The station was soon in chaos. A dispute soon followed at one of the club’s meetings. People started arguing and some complained that the carpet had been permanently stained in one of their club’s main rooms. One person even stood up and said he and his family would go find another club if this is what things were going to be like around here. “We’ve got to protect our investment! We can’t have these people coming in here and messing up our buildings!” shouted one member. “This is going to cost us money! Who is going to pay for this?” shouted another. “Nobody even asked me for permission to see if they were allowed to do this,” said the caretaker of the property. Others stood up and pointed out that rescuing drowning people was the very reason they existed and the mess was unavoidable as they fulfilled that mission. At that point, somebody got out an old book that contained club guidelines, “The Response for Uniform Lifesaving Encounters Supplement” – better known as the R.U.L.E.S. book. The rest of the evening was lost in arguing back and forth about which rules applied to the situation.
The event was so traumatic that the people contracted for different out buildings to be constructed so future shipwrecks could be processed with less disruption. Eventually a rift developed in the station. Most of the members wanted to discontinue the station’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to their normal operating procedures. “We haven’t done things like this in years,” they argued. Others insisted, however, that rescue was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But the latter were ignored and told that if they wanted to keep lifesaving as their primary purpose, they could begin their own station down the coast, which they did of course. A group split off and went to the next town and formed a new lifesaving station. They recruited new members for their club. They saved up enough money to put up a modest but finely decorated clubhouse. But over time those individuals fell prey to the same temptations as the first group, coming to care more about comforting one another and protecting and beautifying their clubs than rescuing the perishing. After a while a few, remembering their real purpose, split off of that club to establish yet another lifesaving station. And on and on it went. Today if you visit that seacoast, you will find a number of impressive lifesaving stations up and down the coastline. Sadly, shipwrecks still occur in those dangerous waters, but most drowning people are lost because the lifesavers are too preoccupied with their clubs.
Now I’m sure that you’ve caught on by this point that I’m not really talking about clubhouses and club-membership. The story really is a parable about what happens to most churches. It seems like churches are so prone to making the same mistakes over and over again. Every church understands in the beginning that the mission is to rescue the perishing. But inch by inch they slip into a protective, careful mentality - more concerned about the “club” than those being pounded by the high waves.
Jesus said – “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10) That’s a very simple purpose statement that does not need an awful lot of explaining. Jesus said the reason He came was:
* To seek – meaning to aggressively engage in searching - not a passive activity.
* And save – meaning to bring to safety – to pull someone back from the point of disaster.
* What was lost – meaning without intervening action, people are going to perish.
The Church is not a clubhouse where we get together to have our ears tickled for a few moments, enjoy a few laughs, and go on our merry way. The Church is a group of people who are on a mission. We are people who must constantly recognize that we would have drowned in our sin if Jesus had not reached down and saved us by sacrificing Himself at Calvary. Our lives are to be so radically altered by the fact of our salvation, that every aspect of our life is centered around bringing others in from the deep waters. We are a life-saving station. Nothing more. Nothing less. May God’s Spirit remind each of us of our high calling to be a lifesaver.
Live the Victorious Life,
PT
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur stood a lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and with no thought for themselves, went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many people who had been rescued, and also others from the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and to give their time, money, and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The lifesaving station grew. In time some of the crew became concerned that the station was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more spacious place should be provided as the first refuge of those snatched from the sea. The uncomfortable emergency cots were replaced with beds with soft cushions, and better furniture was purchased for the enlarged building.
The station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely. Fewer members were now interested in leaving the plush station to go to sea on lifesaving missions. So they hired surrogates to do that work. However, they retained the lifesaving motif in the club’s decorations, and a ceremonial lifeboat lay in the room where club initiations were held. The club would hold weekly meetings and would often sing rousing lifesaving songs that they had learned from the generations of lifesavers who had come before them. Speakers would often come to their weekly meetings talking about great lifesavers from the past and they would show slides and tell stories from the lifesavers technical manual. When you became a member of the lifesaving club, you were normally given a copy of the lifesavers manual. People would normally carry their manual to the club meetings, but hardly anyone actually read their manual. Everyone liked to be perceived as being a lifesaver. They would even wear lifesaver’s clothing and t-shirts, but few had actually done any real lifesaving. Most club members felt that it was a job for the professionals who were trained for it.
One dark stormy night a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and obviously from distant shores. Most of the people in the lifesaving club couldn’t understand the language the rescued spoke and club members felt a little uncomfortable around these strange people. The station was soon in chaos. A dispute soon followed at one of the club’s meetings. People started arguing and some complained that the carpet had been permanently stained in one of their club’s main rooms. One person even stood up and said he and his family would go find another club if this is what things were going to be like around here. “We’ve got to protect our investment! We can’t have these people coming in here and messing up our buildings!” shouted one member. “This is going to cost us money! Who is going to pay for this?” shouted another. “Nobody even asked me for permission to see if they were allowed to do this,” said the caretaker of the property. Others stood up and pointed out that rescuing drowning people was the very reason they existed and the mess was unavoidable as they fulfilled that mission. At that point, somebody got out an old book that contained club guidelines, “The Response for Uniform Lifesaving Encounters Supplement” – better known as the R.U.L.E.S. book. The rest of the evening was lost in arguing back and forth about which rules applied to the situation.
The event was so traumatic that the people contracted for different out buildings to be constructed so future shipwrecks could be processed with less disruption. Eventually a rift developed in the station. Most of the members wanted to discontinue the station’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to their normal operating procedures. “We haven’t done things like this in years,” they argued. Others insisted, however, that rescue was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But the latter were ignored and told that if they wanted to keep lifesaving as their primary purpose, they could begin their own station down the coast, which they did of course. A group split off and went to the next town and formed a new lifesaving station. They recruited new members for their club. They saved up enough money to put up a modest but finely decorated clubhouse. But over time those individuals fell prey to the same temptations as the first group, coming to care more about comforting one another and protecting and beautifying their clubs than rescuing the perishing. After a while a few, remembering their real purpose, split off of that club to establish yet another lifesaving station. And on and on it went. Today if you visit that seacoast, you will find a number of impressive lifesaving stations up and down the coastline. Sadly, shipwrecks still occur in those dangerous waters, but most drowning people are lost because the lifesavers are too preoccupied with their clubs.
Now I’m sure that you’ve caught on by this point that I’m not really talking about clubhouses and club-membership. The story really is a parable about what happens to most churches. It seems like churches are so prone to making the same mistakes over and over again. Every church understands in the beginning that the mission is to rescue the perishing. But inch by inch they slip into a protective, careful mentality - more concerned about the “club” than those being pounded by the high waves.
Jesus said – “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10) That’s a very simple purpose statement that does not need an awful lot of explaining. Jesus said the reason He came was:
* To seek – meaning to aggressively engage in searching - not a passive activity.
* And save – meaning to bring to safety – to pull someone back from the point of disaster.
* What was lost – meaning without intervening action, people are going to perish.
The Church is not a clubhouse where we get together to have our ears tickled for a few moments, enjoy a few laughs, and go on our merry way. The Church is a group of people who are on a mission. We are people who must constantly recognize that we would have drowned in our sin if Jesus had not reached down and saved us by sacrificing Himself at Calvary. Our lives are to be so radically altered by the fact of our salvation, that every aspect of our life is centered around bringing others in from the deep waters. We are a life-saving station. Nothing more. Nothing less. May God’s Spirit remind each of us of our high calling to be a lifesaver.
Live the Victorious Life,
PT
posted by Larry | 10:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home