As some of you know we are involved in a six week emphasis on what it means to be a church member. One of the things we have learned is that church membership is like being a part of the human body. Paul described this well in I Corinthians 12. He reminded us that the function of the church and the human body have lots in common, in particular that the parts must all function together for the body to be healthy.
Certainly we are aware that the parts of the body are diverse. Hands, eyes, lungs, stomach, heart and feet are not interchangeable. God designed the church to function with diverse parts also. As church members, we are gifted by God to function in different ways bringing our backgrounds, experiences and talents together to make the body whole. A church isn’t just any collection of body parts any more than a human body. After all, a body isn’t made up of a whole bunch of tongues, or feet, or hands, or eyes or ears but instead it’s made up of a combination of each of the parts of the body, one this, a couple of these and some of those. God designs parts of a body which can function together to do His will for that church. Diversity isn’t an accidental part of the nature of the church any more than the human body.
As members of the body of Christ, we can be compared to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has protrusions and indentations. The protrusions represent our strengths (gifts, talents, abilities), and the indentations represent our weaknesses (limitations, shortcomings, undeveloped areas). But the neat thing is that the pieces complement one another and produce a beautiful whole. Just as each piece of a puzzle is important, so each member of the body of Christ is important. Just as, when one piece is missing from the puzzle, its absence is very obvious and damages the picture, so also is the whole weakened when we are absent from the body of Christ.
God never intended or equipped any one of us to do everything. But we should also note that God desires every one of us to do something in His church. If you have read this and have not found your place in the Eastern Hills fellowship or would like to talk about how you can become a vital part of what God is doing in our church, please touch base with me or one of our ministry team. We would love to take a moment and talk through this. There is more to do and more ways to serve than you probably ever imagined.