Saved to Serve, Not Saved to Sit

Usually I fall asleep to the random ramblings I have going on in my mind, but not tonight. I simply cannot fall asleep and my rambling turned into me preaching to myself. So I thought I would write it down and maybe then I could sleep.

The pastor at the church I interned at in college had this saying; he would often say “we are saved to serve, not saved to sit.” This is so very true. I have seen churches, and groups who were once thriving shrink and some of them completely fall apart. As I began to wonder how this happened, I continually went back to Kent’s (the pastor from my church) words.

There was a time, and there are still some who think this way, where many Christians believed that the purpose of being a Christian was to get to heaven. That is the goal, heaven. This mentality feeds the sitting many Christians are doing. I have often heard the phrase “I am not of this world” and “I am waiting to go ‘home’” with this attitude there is no drive to change the world. If being a Christian is all about getting to heaven then we have no need to concern ourselves with helping the poor, and social justice, because in the end we are saved, this world will pass and everything will be peachy king jelly bean. We have taught, and been taught, to be saved and then sit. Many churches then filled up with sitting Christians, and maybe someone would walk by and we would share the gospel and tell them how to get to heaven, and some would sit and join the waiting party. While there were others who saw/see the social injustices, they see the poor, starving, addicts and are serving them and when a sitting Christian tells them about God they do not want to join in the sitting because the sitting is not helping the hurting.

So if being a Christian is not about getting in to heaven then what is it about? I believe it is about working with God to bring Christ’s kingdom here, now. Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a prayer of action, not only for God to act but that we as followers will act to. If we are wanting Christ’s kingdom to be here on earth as it is in heaven this means that the Church, that Christians must help the poor, feed the hungry, live life with the addicts and allow God to bring healing through our obedience and action, this means that we must stand against social injustice, this means that we were saved to serve not saved to sit. When those who are not Christians see the Church active, serving, and living what they preach then they are more open to hearing what we have to say.

Church is not about glitz and glamor. It is not a place where we go on Sunday because that is what we are supposed to do. Church is not about us being entertained. It is about the body coming together to worship the creator. It is about living life together. I do not know, or want to even think about, what this world will look like if those who claim to be followers of Jesus continue to sit in their Sunday pews and not serve. Jesus didn’t sit and wait, neither did the disciples, the apostles, and for those of us who stem theologically from Luther, John Wesley, Phineas Breese, and Anna Hanscome did not sit around, they served. They were active and they changed the world. So what are you going to do? You who claim to be a follower of the living God? Will you continue being a Saturday sinner and a Sunday saint? Will you sit and wait to be taken to heaven, or will you live into what it means to be a follower of Christ? Will you get up and serve, living in step with the Holy Spirit striving to bring The Kingdom here on earth now as it is in heaven?