“The church is not like the posh Delta Sky Club lounge at the airport, feeding your spiritual hunger and giving you a place to put your feet up before another long week. . . . The church is the crucible that makes us disciples if we will let it. And sometimes the only way we can let it make us disciples is to stay when we want to bolt.”- Daniel Grothe
In Chapter 11 (“Stability in Church”) of The Power of Place, Daniel Grothe asserts that the church you attend should inconvenience you on a regular basis. Because, as we study the life of Jesus, we find His life riddled with inconveniences and littered with interruptions.
However, Pastor Grothe underscores, when you commit to and persevere through those inconveniences, you gain the greatest treasures. Thus, you gain the:
- treasure of deep relationships
- holy satisfaction of self-emptying love
- purity that emerges through the furnace of stability
- unquantifiable wealth of a life steeped in stability in place
Therefore, in the fifteenth century, Thomas a Kempis astutely stated:
“If you wish to keep peace and live in harmony with others, you must learn to abdicate your will in many things. It is no small matter to live in a monastery or congregation and abide there without complaint until death.”
In conclusion, Pastor Grothe introduces us to Jack and Rose Egan, faithful in weekly worship at Bethany Church in Wyckoff, New Jersey. For the last forty-one years. Furthermore, they’ve served as elders and given their all to preserve the saints gathered at Bethany. Certainly, Jack and Rose faced challenges and annoyances through the years. But they always desired to remain faithful to their people.
Above all, Pastor Grothe exhorts:
“True riches are found when people commit their lives to one another, when people do the hard work of staying when it would be easier to run. . . . So stop running. . . . Because there are compounding riches that can only be found on the other side of your fidelity in place.”
Today’s question: Do you approach your church as the Delta Sky Club lounge or a crucible? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “The jagged rocks of real life”
