Is your church healthy?
There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. Is the Word of God regularly preached? Is it gospel-centered? Does it affirm the historical truths of Christianity? All good, necessary questions.
But let me throw out a church health question that you might not think about? Is your church full of messy people?
When the gospel is truly preached, sinners get truly saved. Jesus saves drug addicts. Jesus saves homosexuals. Jesus saves wealthy, self-righteous entrepreneurs. Jesus saves struggling couples. Jesus invades the darkness and rescues helpless sinners.
When these folks get saved, they bring their struggles into the church. This makes the church messy. In fact, the church is full of people who are being transformed from sinful messes into the image of Christ.
If the church isn’t messy, it probably means one of two things. Either, the gospel is being preached and sinners aren’t being saved, or people aren’t being honest about their sin.
Because when the gospel is preached, things are going to get messy. Wonderfully messy.
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)
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Best sermon on this if from Toby Kurth at Christ Church San Francisco http://www.gracechurchfrisco.org/our-sermon-audio...
Yes, it's easy to jump into a local church that looks just like I do. I won't get into a rant here (though I so easily could), but I think "messy" might be as simple as multiple age groups in the same services and so on.
It's human nature to want to separate and build around those like us, but from observing the church Christ built, it sure seems like it's meant to be, as you said, messy.
Thanks, Stephen… I love that description.
-Marshall Jones Jr.