Seeing the Whole Picture (Friday Devotional)

 

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

- 1 Corinthians 12:13

I’ve been wearing glasses or contact lenses since elementary school, when a vision test determined that I was nearsighted. What that means is that, without the aid of a vision enhancer, I can see things up close without a problem, but struggle to make things out from a distance.

When I was fitted for glasses, what I remember vividly is the drive home. Suddenly I could count the branches on the trees I’d previously only seen as blurry blobs. I could not only see the red octagon of a stop sign, but also read the letters. All the things I’d once just been vaguely aware of were now crystal clear—because while before I’d only been able to see what was right in front of me, I was now seeing the whole picture.

The past week has provided me that kind of eye-opening experience as I’ve attended the Baptist World Alliance’s annual gathering in Birmingham, AL. Over the course of the week, I’ve heard Scripture read and hymns sung in a variety of different languages. I’ve heard reports from the Middle East, Africa, and Ukraine about how Baptist churches are sharing the gospel and meeting people’s needs. I’ve seen just how global our faith really is.

It’s all been eye-opening because I, like most of us, have a provincial faith. So often my understanding of the church is limited to what I see in my own country, my own region, and my own local church. When I think about how church should work—how we should worship, what our polity should be, how we should engage the world—I base my thoughts strictly on what I’ve seen around me. When I analyze where Christ’s church is succeeding and failing, I limit my analysis to my own experiences.

But the truth is greater than what my nearsighted eyes could see. If you think the church is declining in the wake of an increasingly secular culture, I have good news for you: the family of God is not shrinking, just moving. There are more Christians now than 20 years ago, and there are projected to be even more 20 years from today; it’s just that the evangelism model we’ve always known—sending missionaries “from the West to the rest”—is going to have to change, as the vast majority of Christians are now found in the Global South (Africa, South America, and Latin America) rather than in North America and Europe.

If you think the church has no impact on the world, I would love to tell you the stories of Ukrainian families who have found temporary shelter in church buildings, meals provided by congregations, and even new homes in other countries because of the compassion of brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t even speak their language. I would love for you to see how the denominations we sometimes see as outdated and useless are in fact homes to crucially trusted institutions in times of crisis. If you think hymnody is irrelevant in the 21^st century, I would love for you to hear hundreds of Christians singing “How Great Thou Art” in their native tongues.

God has given us the local church so that we will have an immediate spiritual family with which to celebrate, mourn, worship, and serve in Jesus’ name. But Christ’s church is bigger than your church; the kingdom of God is far more glorious than the sanctuary in which you worship week after week. If your vision of the church is nearsighted, may God give you eyes to see that the promise Jesus made so many years still endures: even the gates of hell will not prevail against the church our Lord has built.