ReThink - Imagine Our Reach by clbcommunications

Several weeks ago, I joined my youth group in a game of Jenga. It is a simple game that consists of 54 wooden rectangular blocks, every block identical in shape and size. The blocks are stacked in rows of three, with each row laid perpendicularly to the one below it, creating a tower that is initially 18 levels high. During the game, the players take turns removing blocks from the center of the tower, and placing them one by one on top. The tower grows in height and becomes increasingly unstable with every turn. As the tower gets taller, the pressure and importance placed on each individual piece is constantly changing. On one turn a piece might be critical to the structure’s stability, and on the next, that same piece might hold no weight at all.

Observing our tower, I thought about the Church, the body of Christ. I thought about the importance of each piece, each person, and how the Church is more than a building, more than a pastor. The Apostle Paul said, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (1 Corinthians 12:18-20). The Bible tells us that God created each one of us with unique gifts. Gifts given to us to bring him glory.

This being true, imagine our reach. God has gifted some of us to preach, some of us to build, some of us to engineer, some of us to teach, and the list goes on and on—all for his glory. Imagine the entire Church, the body of Christ, working together for one purpose, to bring the Father glory by proclaiming the Gospel of his Son in every aspect of our lives.

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, not only as something we receive in the age to come, but as something we can experience right now. He told us to seek and desire his Kingdom with all that we have. He told us to live for him. That’s terrifying, because when we live for him, we encounter resistance from the world, and the more we try to impact the world, the more unstable the Church feels. It often feels like we are one wrong move away from crumbling to the ground, but that’s the beauty of the Church. The tower might sway to the left, and to the right, but we are armed with a promise that not even the gates of hell can bring us down. The Church of Jesus Christ is the only structure in this world guaranteed not to fail. Because the strength of the Church, its stability, has never been in the individual pieces. The strength of the Church is in its foundation, Jesus Christ.

The world will resist us—God promises that, but in Christ we persevere. Together we move forward proclaiming his Gospel in our communities, and in the world, knowing that the God of all creation has sent us, and has promised to be our strength and foundation.

By Troy Tysdal

Troy Tysdal is Church Resource Coordinator for the Church of the Lutheran Brethren and serves as associate pastor at Stavanger Lutheran Church in Fergus Falls, MN.