By Matt Friedeman, PhD
March 3, 2005

(AgapePress) - The late Clarence Jordan once noted that "to spread one's energies over many activities will weaken and finally destroy one's effectiveness and power."

Take dynamite. Powerful, all the stuff they put into that stick. But truth is, in order for its power to be released, it must be confined. Spread the contents out -- no power.

Ditto, gasoline. It generates power to move your car's wheels only when it is confined within the engine. River works the same way -- stay within the channel and it is capable of bearing mighty weights or capable of generating electricity. Spread it out, out, out and you end up not with a river, but with a muddy mess.

The old Methodist missionary Stanley Jones remarked that Paul said "this one thing I do" while we say "these forty things I dabble in." "He was a river, we are swamps." Therein lies the difference.

All of this reminds me a bit of the local church. There are many things that compete with that local expression of Christ in our evangelical culture today. Television preachers are often far more entertaining than the ones filling our local pulpits. Books sold in our bookstores contain more insightful perspectives than our Sunday School teachers. Singers on tape can make local church soloists pale in comparison. And on it goes.

But the local church is God's primary method to channel holiness to the world. In Scripture, points out New Church Specialties executive director Larry McKain, "the word 'church' is used two ways. First, it is used to refer to every Christian that has ever lived in time. This is the church 'universal,' and the word church is used this way in the Bible about four times. The other 110 times it is used it refers to a visible, local body of believers. The church at Philippi, at Corinth, at Colossae, at Thessalonica, etc.

"In early church teaching," says McKain, "it is inconceivable that someone could be a Christian and not be a vital part of a visible, local body of Christ. Dozens of commands given to Christians in the NT cannot be obeyed unless we are an active part of a visible church. Every week we attend church we need to remind ourselves ... we love her."

It is in the local church where numerical growth takes place and the membership of the church universal rises or falls. It is in the local church where new converts are "built up in that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord" through love and discipline and accountability. It is in the local church that members live and grow, learn and fellowship, serve and suffer, nurture one another, and launch themselves into the world to serve the present age. The local congregation is the particular manifestation of the church universal.

Perfect? The local church is no more perfect now than it was in Paul's day (check, for instance, I and II Corinthians). But when I am a bit depressed about my own gathering of imperfect people trying to draw closer to God with only occasional success, I am helped by Quaker Elton Trueblood who once wrote that while very conscious of the many inadequacies of the local church, "I can never see such a place without a sense of wonder, aware as I am of the sacrifice on the part of so many, which has made the place possible, I can never join in the fashionable depreciation of 'place.' The value of the place is not in itself, for that would entail idolatry, but rather in the recognition that there is no available power unless it emanates from a center."

Indeed, "It was necessary, Christ said, for the Apostles to gather at Jerusalem before they could be effective witnesses in the world."

Gathered, confined, channeled, moving together ... from a center. This is the dynamic of the local church. And amidst the bookstores and contemporary musicians, the para-church organizations, the media attempts to capture our attention -- Christian influence will be more like a swamp than a river if our attention is diverted from a primary orientation to the local Church, the localized Body of Christ.

Fall in love with that local church body, today.