“Power to the People”!

Once a month at our church we have Social Sunday. Instead of the normal worship service we have a socially connecting time by eating together around tables. But it’s not just socialising, it’s also a time for group discussion. Yesterday we discussed ‘maturing as a church’. The focus was not on individual spiritual maturity but maturity as a group together.

As people who live in a western individualistic culture, we naturally are self-reliant and self-focused. Our culture teaches us this is how we are to live. When we read the Bible we naturally read it through individualistic eyes and attempt to apply it to our own life in the same way. However, the writers of Scriptures understood life from a  ‘collectivist’ rather than an ‘individualistic’ cultural perspective. In a collectivist culture the group takes priority over the individual. This doesn’t mean the individual is unimportant, but instead, a person in a collectivist culture is very aware (unconsciously so) of the implications their personal decisions have on the whole group, not just themselves. This has important implications for our Christian lives.

Something you might not have realised -  most of the Bible is written to groups of people not individuals. Therefore, many of the teaching we try to apply to our personal-individual lives are teachings directed to the whole church community not just us individually. This seems strange to those of us from a western culture like Australia. That’s because when we think of our experience of the world, we naturally think our ourselves at the very centre - it is all about us! This our identity. In contrast, those from a collectivist culture, their identity is much more strongly connected to the ethnic and/or cultural group they are part of. When they think of themselves, they also naturally think of their group. Therefore, at least at a rational level, a lot more of the Bible will make sense if we interpret it with a collectivist way of thinking rather than an individualist. Easier said than done for us Westerners!

However, this collectivist identity has much deeper and profound relevance to Christians than rationally understanding Scriptures and the world of the Biblical writers. This collectivist way of thinking also reflects our identities as Christians, because the new spiritual reality of our lives is described as being in Christ. In other words, it’s not Jesus and me, but rather Jesus and me and other Christians. Our identity as a Christian is a now a group identity!

A lot could be said about our new identity in Christ, but I want to make one really practical point regarding this and our life together as a church:

We need each other much more than we realise!

Paul makes this point explicitly in 1 Cor 12. When we read this passage, we often focus on the specific gifts of the Spirit that have been given for the building up of the church (1 Cor 14:12). However, from an individualist’s point of view we often miss Paul’s main point here: we all need each other!

Paul is saying this: 

God has given the church his power, but it has been distributed among the whole church. No one person in the church has been given all the gifts of the power of the Spirit and no one person has been given all the revelation knowledge of the Spirit.

If we want to experience the whole power of the Spirit available to the church, we need to recognise and receive the Spirit’s gifts from all the parts of Christ’s body.

“As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” Or again, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”

(1 Corinthians 12:20–21, CSB)

The implications of this are obvious - we should humbly care and receive from the whole of the church, Christ’s body.

Unfortunately, those of us with individualistic and competitive attitudes shaped by western culture, valuing all members of the church, humbly receiving from them, and caring for them is an ongoing challenge. We don’t want to need all other people in the church. We have our personal preferences, those we like and receive from those and those we don’t like and are unwilling to receive from. We are competitive, experience jealously, feel threatened and are insecure. So often our identities are so deeply rooted in self-reliance and individual performance, that to admit to needing all other members of the church feels like our personal failure. Our broken individualistic identity scream within us,

 “They need to know I am important”

“They need to know I am a success”

“They need to know I am the expert”

“They need to know I am ….…………”

If we are to experience the deeper life of being in Christ we need to embrace our need for all others in the church. For some of us this will mean considering if the church culture we find ourselves part of is compatible with our identity formation into Christ. This is confronting and painful to consider. If we a leader in a church, this cultural identity formation needs to be considered as central to discipleship (Gal 2:20, Col 3:3, Gal 4:19). We receive the power of the Spirit’s gifts through all others not because we feel we need them, but because God has revealed this to be our new spiritual reality – our new identity (2 Cor 5:17). Those in Christ are called to live into their new spiritual identity. This new identity in Christ doesn’t eliminate all the pre-Christian aspects of our identity (such as ethnicity, sex and personality), however, it does require us to identify those aspects of our cultural identity that are incompatible with being in Christ and humbly submit and conform ourselves to the new way of being (Rom 12:2, 1 Peter 1:14, Eph 4:20-24). Our new collective identity ‘in Christ’ can only grow as our old broken self-centred and self-reliant identity dies. These is no “faking it until you make it” or “the laying on of hands” for identity formation -  it is a long journey of cultivating self-awareness, renewing of our thinking with spiritual understanding and humbly (sometimes humiliatingly so) dying to our old self (John 12:24-25).

To put it practically, the more humbly reliant we are on each other in the church the more spiritually mature we become. This is polar opposite to the thinking of our western culture, that views self-reliance as a sign of maturity. The formation of our Christian identity is shaped by what we think and what we do. To become spiritually mature we need to discard worldly thinking and renew our mind and behaviour to God’s ways.

We need the power of God in our life,

and it is accessed through the whole body of Christ.

Here are some questions to think about:

Do I believe I need all others in the church?

Do I see and value the gifts of God in others in the church that are different from my own?

Am I willing to humbly receive from God through all others in the church?

Do I see and value the gifts of God in my life that has been given to me to serve others?