I don’t know about you but when I was learning math I had a difficult time trying to remember if I needed the least common denominator or the greatest common factor. Luck for both of us is this is not what I’m going to talk about today. I am thinking about where we put our focus. What are the least or the greatest things we have in common?
For some, the idea is that a church should be a place for everyone, and in some ways that is exactly true. However, in the church are we focusing on what is the least or the greatest? For some, it seems to me (this is my post after all), that they want to focus on the least. The ideas that I see in the modern church, in the least category are; we all believe in a God, we want to feel good about ourselves, we want social change (for either side of the debates), etc. These may be good things but is this what a church should focus on? I don’t think so.
The church that Jesus established was to be focused on Him and it was seen in the apostles (Acts 4:13). This church’s greatest common factor was Jesus himself, his life, his teaching, and his promise not just to save us from sin but to transform us into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18). We may not all agree on some of the minor details (food, holidays, etc) according to Paul but we all need to agree that the purpose of the church is to teach the life-transforming message of Jesus. If we aren’t doing as Jesus said, “making disciples”(Matthew 28:19-20) then are we really part of Jesus’ church?
I understand that people in the church aren’t perfect. The church as an institution has made mistakes, however, are we now trying to be what Christ wants us to be? First as individuals and then once we deal with that (get the beam out of your own eye, Matthew 5:7), then we need to ask ourselves, how do we help our church be a place where Jesus’s mission is being carried out?
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