The Glory of the Church

These are my reflections on chapter 1 of Batsell Barrett Baxter's book, The Family of God, available from the Gospel Advocate bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee, and online at http://stores.homestead.com/GospelAdvocateCompany/StoreFront.bok.  If you are in Cairo and are thinking of joining us for this first class, I hope you get a chance to read over these thoughts.  Lord willing, we will discuss this lesson on Sunday morning, April 11.


Baxter first mentions a striking social trend in Japan, in which students had an intense curiosity about all things Jesus, yet had no interest in the church.  I have had a similar experience.  One of my roommates in Statesboro always kept a tapestry of Christ over his bed.  When I asked him about it, he said he thought Jesus was the greatest person who ever lived, but he didn't want any kind of involvement that usually goes with learning about Jesus and the church.

If we take time to discover what is in the Bible, we soon realize that there can be no separation or compartmentalized treatment of Jesus and the church.  He founded it.  He made the supreme sacrifice to allow its existence.  He is its pioneer and perfecter.

Baxter points to division among religious groups and disparity (a practice gap) between what Jesus taught and what various groups teach, as major turn-offs when thinking about church, even though people might appreciate and even say they would like to somehow follow Jesus.

I work in the library profession, a dynamic and vital service with an incredibly powerful potential to enhance the lives of its users with lifelong learning.  Yet, far too many times, I encounter someone whose last experience with a library was in fifth grade.  Their image of what we do is a spastic, irrelevant stereotype of what a library might have once been but certainly is not now.

That doesn't get people excited about coming in to use a thriving twenty-first century library, but it is not because of an inherent problem with the library.  We would never want to be disrespectful of anyone who comes to us, but we see these things.  Also, we try to keep in mind that, if there is any kind of problem with the library, we need to be sure to take care of it and make the library as we envision it.

Often I encounter people with an equally useless perception of what the church is all about.  Such unfortunate ideas have the actual physical strength to stop someone from getting in their car and coming to church to find out what the rewards can be.  The mental and spiritual barriers give rise to things that lead people into apathy and negative responses.  Throughout His ministry, Jesus pointed out how people's limited perception kept them from appreciating the true glory of what He called God's kingdom, meaning his family, the church.

That's why Baxter suggests that we dwell on the wonder, the greatness, the glory of the church.  He poses an interesting question:  Has it escaped us?  Maybe we didn't know this glory was something we should chase after.  Yet, if we can ever really let it in and catch a decent glimpse of it, we would trade everything we have for it.

There are eight reasons put forward in this lesson to show us why the church is the most glorious institution ever to exist on the planet.  Its origin, foundation, beginning, relationship, universality, work, simplicity, and destiny are all shown in scripture to be the underpinning of an environment that is so utterly magnificent that it passes all understanding.  We will be discussing these things in class.

Baxter finishes this lesson by saying that the church (as it really is, not as we might wrongly imagine it) is more important than any government, business, home, fraternal order, or anything else in the whole world.  When people give themselves to Christ, that is the same thing as agreeing to work and worship in the church.  There is no separation, no difference.

Baxter's last statement should be particularly encouraging to anyone who is already on the Lord's side.  He observes that we enter the church in this life, and we remain in it beyond death and into eternity.  So, whatever we do here is only the beginning!  I'd say that has a glorious ring to it!