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| All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. |
| —Colossians 1:6b |
“No matter what we do, no matter what we say, we will never belong!”
The frustrated words of my dear friend, Jerry, cut through the song on the radio as we drove out of the parking lot at work on our way to lunch. The nature of our jobs at the insurance company where we worked often put us on the “other side” of various issues from many of the individuals with whom we worked.
As fire protection engineers, our job required us to evaluate the relative hazards at each insured property. Sometimes our assessments prevented eager underwriters from writing the insurance on a particular facility. And, for those facilities already on the books, our recommendations sometimes forced the underwriters to approach the existing insureds with some mandatory new requirements.
We had become “buzzkills” before that word even existed in the vocabulary. As a result of our profession, even within our own company, most colleagues treated us as outcasts. No one wants to become an outcast. Everyone wants to belong.
Have you ever thought about the fact that Christians—literally “Christ’s-ones”—belong to an enormous group of individuals that reaches back in history more than 2,000 years? If you identify with the Lord Jesus Christ and accept the truth that He died for you on Calvary’s cross, so the shedding of His blood would pay the penalty for your sins, and if you accept the truth that His resurrection from the dead has secured your place for all eternity in heaven, then you belong to a worldwide fellowship of likeminded believers.
The question for this fellowship—and for each individual gathering of believers in a local church—derives from the Apostle Paul’s statement in the Scripture passage at the beginning of this blog post. Of the church in Colosse, Paul declares:
“All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you...”
The question each one of us, and our churches, must ask: “Are we bearing fruit and growing?”
Some years ago, an individual, who at that time was a priest in the Anglican Church of North America, wrote these prescient words:
I firmly believe that the heart of pastoral ministry is Spiritual Formation—exhibiting, encouraging, and enabling Christlikeness in people’s lives. Moreover, and perhaps more pertinently, as a pastor at this stage of my own pilgrimage, I am committed to the idea of the church as both the agent of the Kingdom of God and as a compassionate community in which people feel loved and accepted and where they are enabled to heal and encouraged to grow.
Herein, the writer of those words displays a critically important emphasis on “Spiritual Formation”— or what some call “Christian Formation.” I submit that a key element of personal spiritual fruitfulness and growth rests in each individual’s efforts at “exhibiting, encouraging, and enabling Christlikeness” in himself or herself and in others.
So, how are we doing? Are we taking steps to exhibit, encourage, and enable our own Christlikeness? Or, are we simply marking time? And, what about our churches? Does the gathering of believers to which we belong—and to which we give our support—exhibit, encourage, and enable Christlikeness in its members? Do our churches reach out to a lost and dying world with the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ in an effective and life-transforming way? Or, are our churches marking time—standing still with little or no forward motion on behalf of Christ and His Kingdom?
If we consistently spend more time talking about our favorite sports team, our favorite television program, our favorite movie, our favorite restaurant, our favorite vacation spot, or any other worldly distraction than we spend talking about the amazing things God does in our lives, then perhaps we need to make an adjustment. Likewise, if our churches spend more time dealing with internal issues where our pastors, or governing boards, or members draw battle lines against other members they do not favor, perhaps our churches need to make an adjustment.
After all, we belong to a worldwide fellowship. We need to seek and find individual spiritual fruit. And, we need to seek and find local, national, and global spiritual fruit. Both as individuals and as a worldwide body of believers, we are either “growing” or “going.”
What shall we do? Shall we continue to mark time? I say, “Let’s grow! Let’s bear fruit!”
