For the last couple of years, I have been trying to restore my physical health. Honestly, I’m not sure I can actually say “restore,” since I have never been measurably healthy by any reliable standards. I have been obese since grade school, and since I graduated high school, I have spent a large portion of every day sitting, usually to listen, read, write, drive, or relax. When most of every day is spent mostly motionless, everyday health dwindles quickly until it is nearly nonexistent.
In the last year or so, I lost about 100 pounds. While I’m proud of that, the bigger accomplishment is that I actually did what I have known for years needed to be done. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t like it much. Still, it had to be done, and I’ve got more to do. However, even though I know that what I did was successful and doable, just because it was so difficult I often just don’t want to do it again. I’ll admit that it’s kind of scary to know the truth but avoid it because it’s difficult. For whatever reason, there seems to be a disconnect between what we know we ought to do and what we want to do. It’s true with our health, our finances, our relationships, and it’s true with the church.
Unfortunately, the needed changes must be prompted by some hard conversations, so let me be frank: the Athens Church of Christ is not healthy. I state that with respect to this body’s past and with a great deal of personal regret for my part in our condition. While a lot of good has been done throughout this body’s life, the common measures of success – attendance, activities, and accounts – have distracted this body from recognizing its long-term poor health. As someone who at one time weighed nearly 400 pounds, I can attest that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean healthier. In the same way, busyness does not necessarily translate to healthiness. While healthy churches can do a lot of activities when they are healthy, unhealthy churches expect those things to make them healthy, like a fad diet. They might “work” for a while, but they mask unhealthiness that won’t become apparent until there’s a traumatic event or the body withers away.
The harsh reality is that we are withering away. It’s not for lack of desire to be healthy, but wanting to be healthy won’t make it so. It’s not for lack of effort, either, but erratic effort is ineffective. Erratic effort is evidence of confusion, disunity, and immaturity, which Paul described as being “infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Ephesians 4:14). Paul redirected the church toward a single goal, writing in Ephesians 4:15-16:
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Our goal must be to become mature in Christ as we do the work of Christ, not simply to fill the seats in our building.
I hope that it is clear that I am “speaking the truth in love.” Restoring health is hard work, and sometimes the effort hurts. Those who have gone through surgery or treatments to restore their health know this to be true. That’s why my theme for preaching, teaching, and writing into 2024 will be “Re-mission.” Together we’re going to work on getting healthy by focusing on our mission, being disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus. Please pray for each other, pray for our leaders, as we work together, trusting God to transform us, “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).