Pete Gall's Pulp Theology

“The rest of the church is just so lame by comparison.”

I hear it with nearly every church, ministry, non-profit or recovery client or friend. Some aspect of life, or some gathering, some ministry, some men’s group, some cause – some thing has grabbed the attention of a portion of the Body and become so engrossing and so life-giving that people who aren’t into the same exciting function look like they couldn’t be believers at all.

You’ve known the same people, I’m sure. Sometimes they’re rabid end-time people. Sometimes it’s prayer. In youth it’s often social causes or environmental stuff. Election years generate all sorts of crossover from faith to cause. Suddenly ordinary Sunday morning church, or even a robust congregational life, looks watery and weak.

And it’s not just groups within churches. The same thing happens with parachurch groups, ecumenical gatherings, and movements.

And it also happens for individual congregations within denominations or just the Body at large.

When a specific ministry or fellowship generates scorn among its members towards the larger Body of Christ, it functions much more like a tumor than a muscle or body part.

Tumors feed on the body, but are contained and do not make the body function better.

I’ve been involved with groups that I’ve come to recognize as tumors.

At the time, I felt like the fault rested squarely on the shoulders of church leadership. The very existence of the group proved, I thought, that people within the church were ready for more challenging material – were ready to go from milk to meat. I saw churches and church leaders who didn’t push people into deeper water as an impediment to what Christ could do in this world. To me it made sense that the ministries or groups would step over the church people and keep going.

At the very least, I wanted church leaders to step up and draw congregations into more robust faith. And I wanted denominational leaders to draw congregations of congregations into more robust faith.

The tools for healing exist. Same with marriage salvage. Same with recovery of all sorts. Same with knowing God in intimate, personal and miraculous ways. But the tools seem to be left to collect dust by all but a few people, and those people have a bad habit of getting radical to such an extent that they work like tumors – feeding on the Body and disfiguring it – rather than muscles within it.

And the people who feed on the Body, who create tumors that draw from the Body and cause the Body shame, also weaken the Body.

And a tumor dies without a host.

Do your choices, allegiances and passions serve the Body, or do you – like I have done – relish the “stick-it-to-em” feeling of having your pet passion make some other portion of the Body look lame by comparison?

What if, as we learn our strength, we also insist on loyalty to the Body? What if, as we practice the use of the tools that excite us, we insist on using them within the Body, to strengthen the Body and to honor the One who puts the fire within us?

What if we choose to acknowledge that the face of Christianity is shaped by how we honor its Head?