Team Spirit

This was the magazine editorial in the parish magazine for September 2008.

Did you watch any of the Beijing Olympics? While I was watching some of it on the television I thought about how people from all the nations gather together in one place for the games. And I thought about how many different types of people you see among the competitors. Athletes are as different from each other as people can get. You have the height of the basketball players, the bulk and strength of the weightlifters, the speed of the sprinters, the endurance of the long distance runners and cyclists, the grace of the gymnasts, the skill of the archers and shooters. All very different and yet all coming together in one place for a specific purpose – in the name of sport.

I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between the Olympics and the Church. The Church is also made up of people from every nation and it includes all kinds of different people, different talents, different personalities, but different people who all come together with a common purpose: to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and to love and live for him in this world.

That’s both a comforting and a challenging thought isn’t it? The comfort is that no matter who you are or what you are like, Jesus is calling you to come and follow him as one of his disciples. No matter who you are, you can have a place in Christ’s royal family through faith in him. He said himself: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” (John 6:37)

But there’s a huge challenge for us to consider too. The challenge is that Christ wants every member of his church to use their gifts and talents to play their part. There are no passengers on the ship of faith, only crew members. Problems start when some members don’t play the part Christ wants them to play and think the church is a cruise ship where they only need to be entertained as spectators. Actually the church is more like a warship in enemy waters and everyone should be at battle stations. Where some members don’t play their part in the life and witness of the church, this leads to other members doing more than they should or things that should be happening not getting done. That isn’t right and it isn’t healthy.

Paul describes the church as being like a body sometimes. In Romans 12:4-6 he says:

“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given
us.”

If parts of your body stop doing the job they should, you will either not be able to do all the things you could do if they were working, or you will get sick, or in the case of vital organs stopping working, you will die.

I honestly believe that the same dangers are facing our church now. I think we are all deeply concerned by the need for our church to grow. How many of us have looked forward ten years and wondered if things keep going as they are now, will there still be enough members to keep the church going? Today we have 96 members, most of whom are over 60 years of age and many of whom are over 70 years of age. Even if all are spared, how many will not be physically able to do the work that needs to be done over the next decade?

If we want to see our church grow we need to have a healthy body. We need everyone to play their part. And we need to do more to encourage more young adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s to come to church.

That is a huge and magnificent challenge. If we meet it, we all deserve gold medals. But that’s what God wants to give us:

“To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 9:22-25).