A much beloved pastor made brief mention of a discussion that has been going on for ages, the “believe, behave, belong” debate. There is a wealth of information available about this subject on the internet, from all sides of the discussion, some who I agree with and some I don’t. Here’s a few links, and here and here.
I can’t fix the whole world, (although I do think we should tidy the place up a bit before His return) so I shall just focus on myself and the nature of the area where I live. Me, I totally believe, I believe so powerfully that I sometimes think of myself as a Doubting Thomas, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” John 20:29. I have so, so seen. How could I not believe?
So I do very well on the “believe” aspect and “behave” too, although I have stumbled about a bit like a drunken toddler who has consumed too much milk, but God has always been right there. All in good fun here, but since I am nothing but trouble, it is probably a good thing I am in His hands, the best hands of all.
Which brings us to the “belonging” part or as some have put it, don’t you know how to win friends and influence people? Which always compels me to quip, wait, is that important?? Well, yes and no. When one is truly convicted, justified, sanctified, claimed by Jesus Christ, one belongs to the body, to the church. We are the church, the church is not a building, a particular denomination, or a handful of believers somewhere. We are the church. Given the circumstances that could mean all twelve of us…or two or more.
The belonging part is challenging for me. That comes from having learned the hard way not to seek the approval of men (people) because without fail they will let me down. I come from some pretty militant atheism, if I had gone about seeking the approval of men all my life rather than listening to God, I wouldn’t be a believer at all. I must say however, that somehow, someway God has always placed a handful of believers in front of me. I take these words seriously, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.“ Hebrews 10:25
So absolutely I believe in the church and that is where you will find me at least once a week, if not more. In a church or a bible study somewhere.
There are many others however, who struggle with the belonging part far more than I do, the unchurched church, and that is where my heart often lies, with those who have rejected the church, those outside the church, many powerful believers who love Christ, but for whatever reason struggle with His people, with accepting His church. There are still others who have lost their faith entirely. I empathize with some of them, I understand. I have had no problem loving Jesus Christ, but when He pointed out that it meant I also had to love His people, I about panicked. No so easy. And they aren’t all nice either!
I realize I sometimes offend people, that some are hurt by my words that do not always portray all Christians in a positive light, that dare to suggest that some of the unchurched church have valid reasons for walling themselves off, that some non believers even have rational reasons for pulling away, that not all Christian virtue is rooted in well, virtue.
I ask hard questions. I have to. It’s necessary to speak the truth. So those who are offended, I invite you to come alongside me instead. I’ve actually learned a few things in this walk and I’ve had the best Teacher.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Ah, one of my favorite topics-the value and importance of church! I’ve blogged about it many times in our posts about our divorce and re-marriage. Here is a link to one of my favorites:
https://thetumblelees.me/2011/08/06/what-destroys-marriages-or-at-least-destroyed-ours/
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Beautiful, Debbie! I loved that post.
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We’re so grateful to God for our restoration!
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Hi IB
You know I adore you right? LOL. It must be my not totally agree with IB day today. I do get that the church is not a building, and all of that. On the other hand, you are talking to the most hardcore of local church guys. What can I say? We don’t even speak the words universal church from fears of state controlled religion as we saw from the time of Constantine onward.
We do believe that the church is a local, visible assembly of believers whose purpose is to carry out the Great Commission issued by Jesus Christ Himself. Where that occurs? Well, not sure that matters really. It certainly does not have to a a brick and mortar building.
It gladdens my heart that you make it to God’s house often, and I know it is a blessing for you, and very likely the other people there do as well.
I feel so burdened for those who feel cut off from this local assembly….sort of. I know there are many reason why some don’t participate in the church as formed by Jesus on the shores of Galilee. I get it, I really do. And when the church has messed up, it should reach out. On the other hand, there is a growing movement afoot to pronounce that the church as a local assembly of believers is passe. In fact, the very concept of the local church is spit out of people’s mouths sometimes as if it was a curse word.
All I can say to that is: since Jesus Himself formed his first church during his time here on earth, we should be careful before we pronounce it dead and irrelevant. And by the way that last part wasn’t directed your way,
Just my two cents.
🙂
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“On the other hand, there is a growing movement afoot to pronounce that the church as a local assembly of believers is passe. In fact, the very concept of the local church is spit out of people’s mouths sometimes as if it was a curse word.”
I hear you Wally, but people often forget where I live. Second highest number of non believers in the country. I want to rebuild the idea of the local church here, not destroy it. That can be very challenging when even many Christians want nothing to do with one another. So I talk to some of them, I try to figure out why.
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Good point IB. I feel such a burden for people in your situation, and am shocked to find that true. The truth is, if I parted fellowship with my church, there are at least 4 more of like practice and faith within no more than and extra 1o minutes driving. Expand that to a half hour and I would lose count. It breaks my heart to hear of that, and I can’t imagine how you must feel. What a shame, though. Here we have believers like you who pine for a true church, and I am surrounded by people who have it all and don’t avail themselves of it.
I believe God’s Word tells us the answer for that as well. Not only does the church exist locally, but it is the job of that local church to send men out to the unchurched to preach the gospel. Ha, maybe we need to send a missionary that way. And that’s not a joke by the way, some of the mission fields right here in our own country are tougher than the overseas ones.
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“And that’s not a joke by the way, some of the mission fields right here in our own country are tougher than the overseas ones.”
Yep. No, it’s not a joke at all. It’s very true.
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I spent a couple of weeks working in Austin a while back. Two and a half million people, and I had a hard time finding a place to attend church while I was there working. We had one church there, and it was struggling to even stay alive. We had one that actually ultimately failed. It’s crazy.
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I wonder if I must live somewhere in between the most struggling church areas and the most abundant. I try to assemble with and participate with spiritually strong groups, however big or small they may be, who really teach the truth which in my area feels fairly rare to me. But I’m considering (and hoping and praying about it) moving to a new area soon after I get to a point where I am legally free to do so. I feel a great need to be around some true strength as well as truth and love and grace in addition to sound teaching. I do get it some here and now. I have some amazing spiritual support right now. And there’s no reality in it if I accidentally make it look like I don’t or that what I need to survive spiritually is that times a factor of 50 more people doing it for me. And as far as actually showing up at the church building for formal assembly ot structured Bible class (if I can Name those things in those ways) every time, I end up receiving something I know I needed in that perfect moment to receive it. God truly does give us what we need! It’s hard to describe why I want to move so badly. But maybe the reality enters into it, in realizing there are other factors in my decision to move besides the strength or size of church congregations. Anyway the geographical area I’m targeting is an area where I know of some strong groups and have realistic hopes to not drive so far to get to assemble.
…And it’s an area where my seasonal affective disorder will be effectively and naturally treated with sunshine.
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If you Rainbow/New Age Churchianity among ‘unbelievers’ our area would likely rank at the top of ‘unchurched’. As typical, the Northwest logic works in reverse—the churches here try very hard to bring in anybody except Christians.
Specimen of PNW piety and religious devotion:
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Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
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Thank you 🙂
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You’re very welcome!
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First the meme: Safe in the harbor (as a suggested detraction) does not describe the local church. We don’t actually go live in the church and never come out; the church is where we go to be equipped by the Holy Spirit via our brothers and sisters. List of outreach ministries available upon request.
The church is where we go because we’ve chosen to invest in one another face-to-face, on a personal basis. It’s very risky and it demands we put aside our turfs, dedicating ourselves to building relationships and staying committed. It’s very much like a marriage, is church commitment/membership. Not to be taken lightly, to be abandoned over personal preference issues.
This is how God has chosen to equip us. This is how God has chosen to equip us. This is how God has chosen to equip us.
Not on our own and Scripture is crystal clear about that.
This will be an unpopular view, but here goes. I have literally never known someone to leave a decent church for reasons which were the fault of the church. People leave church–almost every time–because they aren’t liking what they hear, the Sunday school class is too small for their extra-special child, the church wasn’t fulfilling the role of their non-attending husband. The youth group didn’t give a party people wanted to come to or couldn’t hire a youth pastor, the pastor actually preached one Sunday that we ought to give money!
For goodness sake, unbelievers killed the perfect Christian for being a perfect Christian. If they don’t come to church it might mean we’re doing it RIGHT.
If I’m living in an environment which is full of unbelievers, I am sure not going to be effective in reaching them alone! Why wouldn’t I find the biggest group of believers and join the ranks?
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I have no idea why you would think my ship in a harbor was a detraction describing the local church? In fact, your whole comment feels like a lecture, as if I have somehow personally attacked your very own church? Since we don’t live anywhere near each other, you must realize that this post could not possibly be about you? Also, that is a whole lot of projection regarding issues I never even mentioned. What extra special child, what youth ministry, what?
“I have literally never known someone to leave a decent church for reasons which were the fault of the church.”
Okay, but I literally have. I also live in an area where that isn’t true.
It’s kind of sad, but very educational. Since I started blogging I have said over and over again, “So those who are offended, I invite you to come alongside me instead,” just as I wrote in this very post. Many have, many have been kind, but still many others have leaped to conclusions and attacked me. A bit humorous if you ask me, here I am “face to face” on the ground, telling people that Christians are kind, how important the church is…..while getting relentlessly beat down on the internet by Christians who always seem to think I’m doing it all wrong.
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IB, I was not talking about you, and I certainly wasn’t accusing you. I’m puzzled that you react so defensively. I was responding to the very popular (I have no idea why) thought that goes around in churches and outside too, that we in the church must be to blame for people who choose not to join us in church.
I mean obviously, people don’t join church because they don’t want to be held accountable, they don’t want to stop their favorite sin, they don’t want to be seen with those lame-os. They especially don’t join themselves to good churches because they know what they’re going to face–people who are going to call them to do better. Unfortunately they also shut out the very people who will probably love the heck out of them and really share their burdens.
We are all naturally self-directed and don’t want to go near anyone who’s going to try and other-direct us. It’s human.
I know that my tone was blunt and may have seemed like a lecture, and I apologize for the way I expressed it. But the substance of what I said was no attack and I stand by it.
How exactly could I “come alongside you”? We are not in a church together and IB, this exchange is not face-to-face. God works through people who have laid down their defenses and joined with one another in love. Read the “one-anothers” in the NT. You simply don’t get that kind of community outside of a group of people being that obedient usually gathering in a building of some kind and calling it a church. Our church is tiny, nondenominational, independent but we are known around the world for being a sending church. We also are rather successful at building relationships in our area with what looks on the surface like unlike people and churches. We all share the one important element.
I’m not sure what else the meme could have meant?
What special child, what youth ministry? I was referring to the reasons people typically give for church-hopping when the real reason is that they’re not willing to join, join from the heart and with the will. Church is an investment and people are in it for what they can get out. It’s our nature. It took me a looong time to get that and join in.
You do talk about the kindness of Christians, etc, indeed. But then you seem to be saying that we can minister to the “unchurched church” better if we’re kinda loners who understand them better. The truth is we all came from the loner place and we can help them best when we do church the way God designed it.
This was no attack, and I didn’t expect one in return. We have been in agreement for a long time here in blogland. As soon as I disagree with you, I get shunted to the “against” line?
This exchange is a great illustration of the ineffectiveness, the impotence of ministry through blog!
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IB, I SO appreciate your candor. My soon to be ex left the church a few months before he left me in a state of anger and resentment. He was wrong in his attitude and conclusion but he was right in the particular issue that had set him off towards his bitterness. Someone else was wrong and sinned against him and never even halfway apologized. I think her sin came from too much of an ivory tower thing that some people are trying to paste over top of God’s church. Some people don’t want to admit that the sins the Bible teaches on are actually all temptations to someone out there (maybe many) and that even if it’s not a temptation you would ever face it needs to be openly taught. There are no parts of the bible that says well you should go into a closet to read this part; this can never be taught to the assembly. But that ivory tower thing and attempts to sort of partially censor scripture are quite common. The preacher tried to help, by trying to help my husband have sympathy for her and think about diplomacy and smoothing it over, because …you know, preachers are totally used to getting screamed at and accepting other people’s weakness and sin…and still esteeming them. Then he found out in the process that there was at least one other person who agreed with her…ugh. We’d had a similar problem but much worse several years earlier with people who ought to know better just sinning blatantly but they were sort of the like false prophets getting to lead and drag a whole group down with them and we’d faced it together and moved on to find a stronger group,,a group less in danger of having their lamp stand removed to assemble with. I hate that. But It was or seemed necessary even with much prayer and the Bible addresses those sorts of issues in order to provide a way for such struggling groups to be able to right themselves eventually. I tried to bolster him and share my thought that you can’t find a perfect local congregation because the church is made up of humans and we are all fatally flawed and in need of Jesus to redeem us. We all need forgiveness! But somehow he had never gotten over the hurt of the first incidence (well neither had I, losing spiritual family was nearly as bad as losing him is turning out to be) and the second so much smaller thing was like the straw that broke…
And I totally understood and sympathized. I didn’t agree with giving in to anger and bitterness. But I totally understood the temptation and had my own struggle with how can we possibly… Anyway, I still do struggle with the screaming harridan woman who doesn’t want the whole word or all the sinners to pollute her ivory tower, the problem of the woman (and the group) who never owned and corrected her own faults (their faults) and to this day doesn’t feel any responsibility for making herself (themselves) a stumbling block to another soul.
in my experience most groups either struggle with a bit of the ivory-tower so don’t convince our sins one to another or don’t teach the parts the whole group isn’t struggling with just the milk of the word and a few other bits or they struggle with a bit of the truth-doesn’t-matter-at-all and so can barely teach any part of it…or a lot of one or the other. Grace and truth. God knows the perfect balance. But we sinners struggle with wisdom and balance and love and grace and truth and love of truth.
I want to whole package no matter how difficult for my human self. And I pray that God will correct me where I need correction. I pray that he’ll do the same for the ivory tower woman and entire groups making the same mistake. I pray that he’ll do it for the grace only crowd out there effectively preaching to the world to sin some more that grace may abound.
And hope others are praying for me too! Pray that I can have grace and understanding toward the woman like so many preachers have learned how to still esteem others better than themselves. Pray that the devil doesn’t get ahold of me in wanting my ex to be OK even though I know he’s not. I think I’m safe. I think I can see very clearly how wrong his anger is and how badly he’s mangled his thoughts and feelings and put human faults between himself and God’s perfect plans. But in the wild emotions of this worst time of life stuff and the with the nature of ongoing waves of emotion that come while living through it and processing the enormity of it I certainly have some bad moments, enormous and terrifying in retrospect bad moments.
Pray for my ex. He’s lost and wandering and at least sometimes thinking he can mold God to his new philosophies and should maybe go find a group that will talk warm fuzzies and never call him to repentance. The devil is a roaring lion. I know God can teach him whatever lessons he needs to face and guide him back into both grace and truth even if he has earthly consequences to live with. So I hope and pray that it’s not forever road blocked by his freewill. Even now that I’ve accepted his hatred, anger and bitterness toward me and decided to move on with the freedom Matthew 19 affords me, I pray he won’t face the last day in this state and end up with the eternal consequences of rejecting God.
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Ugh. Sorry I have so many typos so often. I must just write way too quickly…
Not “don’t convince our sins…”
“So don’t CONFESS our sins one to another…”
And of course the devil is a roving lion. But sometimes he roars in triumph or threat too, doesn’t he?!
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Great Post 👍
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Amen.. 🙂
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Among the majority of people in the English-speaking world today, Money and Power are the only true gods; conformity and instant gratification are the only real virtues. Actually, I see things as the other way around: it’s not that people today are alienated from the Church; but that the Church has been alienated from Society.
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“…the church has been alienated from society..”
That’s a good point, Eric. A few years back I really found myself living a double life, simply going along to get along because it was easier to walk that way within the culture. Many people will say they are tolerant…..just as long as you pray in your closet and keep that stuff in your churches on Sunday. The problem is faith is a way of life, it is who and what I am, it is not a hat I can put on and take off. It is also an important cornerstone of our culture, of our democracy. Nobody demands forced faith in a free country, but it is still Christian values that have shaped us all. You really cannot separate the two, although we are certainly trying.
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Last spring I posted about my best friend and his rotten wife. I want to spend time with him, but he insists that I include his wife in our time together. I want to give him gifts, but everything I give him goes to her. She is guilty at times of greed, of lying, and even of abusive behavior, but he still loves her. Sometimes she seems to ignore him and go her own direction, but he always brings her home again.
My best friend is Jesus Christ and his Bride is the Church. The Church consists of sinners, but he daily and richly forgives those sinners. We don’t get to choose Jesus-without-Church because he says so. And, if he can forgive all those sinners, there is hope for me as well. J.
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This is the first time I’ve ever heard of “believe, behave, belong”, I had no idea there was any debate!
I’m always a little uncomfortable with the idea that the course of faith must conform to a particular path. Believe, behave, belong – or any configuration thereof – where does that leave those who can’t get any further than “believe”? For some, believe, believe, believe may be as far as they ever make it. It is God Himself who apportions to each believer a measure of saving faith – who am I to say that “believe, believe, believe” is insufficient? Its like saying that those who can only muster up enough faith for the believe part are somehow second-class Christians.
The danger, I think, is that those whose faith does not conform to a predictable course will become disheartened and give up entirely.
I too, have a heart for my orphaned Brothers and Sisters, who, for whatever reason are cut off from the community of other believers. At its best, the communion of saints can and should be a place to grow in grace and truth, each at his own pace according to the faith apportioned to him; without judgement, without fear of comparison or that we have to “measure up” (ie. “behave”) according to a particular – and often arbitrary – set of standards.
It takes an awful lot of grace to live harmoniously with other believers within the church, populated, as it is, by ordinary sinners. I have nothing but love and compassion for those whose trust in God doesn’t extend to His people. That is simply where their faith is at, so that is where I meet them. I refuse to shame them for simply being where they are.
At the other end of the spectrum of course, is the danger of pride. Those who have climbed the ladder, so to speak, who have “progressed” beyond simple saving faith to the so-called higher reaches of “behaving” and “belonging” are in danger of placing their faith in, well, *their faith*. Developing faith becomes a good work. We begin to look inwards at self, at our internal spiritual progress, as evidence of God’s favour.
No. Our favour with God is found in the Cross.
You are absolutely correct, WE are the church, the church everlasting, not because we hold membership at a particular time in a particular place, but because God has called us by faith and sanctified us by His Holy Spirit to our place in the Body. We are a part of the Body because God has made it so, apart from anything we do or don’t do. That includes our separated Brethren and we shouldn’t be imposing our own walk with God on anyone else. That is for each of us to work out.
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Oh, amen! I love your words and what you have said here.
“Believe” is certainly the first step, or the foundational step, but even in that there is still, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”
I think this is so critical to remember, “Our favour with God is found in the Cross.”
Our salvation belongs to Him, it is Christ who paid our ransom. It is not dependent on our sometimes wavering belief, or even our behavior, or our belonging. It is Him. So these ideas are simply tools we can use to help get us on the right path. How blessed we are when we can have all 3, but how careful we must be about thinking there is some kind of recipe we must follow, as if Salvation is somehow in our own hands.
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IB, I’m not sure what happened here. I surely bypassed the more even tone I should have used, softening prefaces too, in order to get right to my points, that is true. But I really don’t understand why my comment was singled out for such anger and offense. Gee whiz, you treat people kinder who really hate and ridicule you then go back to their own blogs and tear you to shreds.
We’ve had a very congenial relationship here in blog world and as I re-read my comment, I’m scratching my head at what could have been totally unacceptable to a blog career which is characterized by sparring with those who disagree.
Surely we can disagree on points and show the kind of love that we in the church are supposed to be marked by and show the world.
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I seldom take offense and I’m not angry.
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