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The Relationally Surrendered Church
Brian Mashburn
October 8, 2006
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The Relationally Surrendered Church
The church described in the New Testament was a thoroughly relational church. They had no buildings to mistakenly call "the church", their gatherings with fellow followers was never titled "going to church", and the word "church" always, always, always brought images of actual people, actual faces, and actual relationships.
The "worship services" or "corporate gatherings" of the New Testament church are always, always, always spoken of in terms of fueling the relationships between the individual members of the church, and that for the ultimate purpose of fueling their relationships with God.
Many modern church scholars and Bible students, in an honest attempt to make their church's Sunday morning worship gatherings "Biblical", have scoured the Scriptures to find a list of "elements" that should be involved in the corporate gatherings. And even though there are some, by approaching the Bible in this way, their minds and eyes fly right past the text's obvious relational instructions and emphasis. They only pay attention to texts that have a direct command, example, or inference of certain "outward elements" that our first century brothers and sisters had in their gatherings. And then, by trying to put together a "worship service" based on these outward elements, rather than on the relational purposes behind them, it becomes possible for modern day church gathering to be completely and totally devoid of any truly relational elements at all. Members of modern churches can actually leave their gatherings without offering anything relational at all (personal prayer, confession, telling the truth in love, asking questions, etc). So much so, that it is possible to attend some church gatherings and not even be talked to or noticed or touched in any personal way.
In a Biblical church gathering, every member is given a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ, to be employed by every member, for the benefit of every other member, every time we gather (1 Cor 12:7-11). The relationships are so real and thick that when one person in it suffers or is honored, everyone in that church literally feels it (1 Cor 12:26). Everything that a church does when it meets together is centered on hearing from God, and that, through its individual members (1 Cor 14:26). God put each member in each church on purpose and for a purpose (1 Cor 12:18), and when that person doesn't show up or doesn't perform his relational, Spirit-manifested role the whole church suffers. He designed His church to be a strictly relational institution, made out of relationship, for relationship.
Twenty-first century church gatherings will only resemble first century church gatherings when their church gatherings are as relationally focused as the New Testament describes. Are ours?