How can a church be the Church?

Last Sunday, in a sermon that I preached, I talked a little bit about how we grow as people and as a church.  One of the things I said was this:

"Relationships involve a growing trust which leads us to be more and more personal and vulnerable with Christ, allowing Him to gently confront us with ever deeper truths about ourselves, without judgment, from which we can grow and find new strengths.  Let us help one another to build relationships like that with Jesus Christ, and with one another, because that is the only way the Church will grow."

Today I read, from William Barclay's commentary on Galatians:

"A Christian Church cannot continue to be a Christian Church if in it there are any kind of class distinctions. The labels which men wear amongst men are irrelevant in the presence of God. In the presence of God a man is neither Jew nor Gentile, noble or base, rich or poor; he is a sinner for whom Christ died. if men shared in a common sonship they must be brothers; they have a new kinship which cuts across all earthly barriers because they are now sons of the one Father, even God."

I believe that one of the biggest problems that the Church faces today, in terms of its decline, is that the church is no longer the Church. If the Church (note the capital 'C') is to be the Body of Christ, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, then it seems to me that we are missing some very important and necessary first steps toward achieving that goal. We are not a church, we are a Church, and we must be the Church by actively pursuing growth individually and by supporting and encouraging others to grow as well. We must learn to let go of our preconceived judgments about people whose differences from us make us uncomfortable, and we must learn to open our minds to new ideas and perspectives.

The church (note the lowercase 'c') has become a social club; it seems to exist today mostly to serve a consumer-driven society that is largely interested in what it can get, not what it can give.

As a newlywed, I've been learning a lot about the differences between married life and single life. As a single person for 36 years, I only really needed to be concerned about myself and my own well-being and growth. Now, as a married person, I must also consider the well-being and growth of my family. Of course, I cannot do that unless I am health first, but the interconnectedness of family dynamics means that a part of making me healthier is to contribute to their health.

Our relationships with Christ is a lot like a marriage. Christ serves us in much the same way that we serve our spouse. And we can and must serve Christ, not because he needs us to, but because we need to. By serving Him we serve ourselves.

Expanding this idea into the family dynamics of a church, we find much the same thing. We grow by helping others to grow. This is how the church becomes the Church; this is how churches grow.

Just a thought.