Over the past several months I have studied the New Testament letter to the Colossians fairly extensively. It has emerged as my favorite of Paul’s letters, and I find myself reading at least a passage of it (usually from the third chapter) nearly every day. I am preparing to produce an audio devotional series based on Colossians, and may even make a meager attempt at a devotional book some time down the line, but before I do that, I wanted to take some times to simply reflect on whatever the text of this jewel of a letter brings to mind. So then, periodically over the course of the next month or two, I will devote a post to my reflections on certain texts in Colossians. I won’t be using commentaries, Bible dictionaries, New Testament introductions, or anything of the sort (that will come later), I’m simply going to talk about my own reaction to the text itself, for better or for worse.
Colossians 1:3-4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.”
I have used those verses (or the several like them found in other NT letters) in countless devotionals, Bible studies, mentoring groups, and sermons over the course of the last several years, and yet I am still struck by them every time I read them. Paul is likely hundreds of miles away from the church is Colossae, and what has he heard about them? He has heard about their sweet sound system and their pastor who tells funny stories. He has heard about how pristine their lobby is and how well their $20 million building campaign is going. He has heard about how the church is a hip cool scene where people have, like, tattoos and piercings and stuff. Or he has heard none of those things. He has heard that the people in the church have faith in Jesus and they have love for one another. That was what most struck whoever brought the report to Paul.
Passages like this always make me ask myself, “what do you want to be known for?” The reality is that I want to be known for a lot of things. Many of which really don’t matter that much. On a corporate level, we can ask “what do we want our church to be known for?” And again, if we’re honest we admit that there are a lot of things that we want our church to be known for. One thing I appreciate about my church is our professed desire to be a church that is a good neighbor to its community. In a world where, more often than not, churches have become eye sores and inconveniences to the unbelieving world, I can’t help but wonder how the public reputation of the church was that it was a place where people had faith in Jesus and truly loved each other.
I’m reminded of a quote from Cardinal Avery Dulles in his brilliant little book (with an admittedly boring title), Models of the Church. In it he writes, “In the early centuries, the Church expanded not so much because of concerted missionary efforts as through its power of attraction as a contrast society. Seeing the mutual love and support of Christians, and the high moral standards they observed, the pagans sought entrance into the Church. If the same is not happening today, this is largely because the Church no longer appears conspicuously as the community of the disciples, transformed by its participation in the new creation.” (italics mine…it also bears mentioning that ‘pagan’ is not meant to be a derogatory term, it simply means non-Christian and non-Jew)
In other words, it was the reputation of the church, not its cool buildings, not its consumer products full of pictures of beautiful and trendy people, not even its amazing missions program, that gave the church its vitality in its early years.
I think about that and then I think about Seven24. The way we teach, the things we emphasize, the way our worship services are designed. And of course that causes me to wonder if people would speak of our community in the same way that whoever was informing Paul spoke of the church at Colossae. The answer is most certainly no. That’s not to say that we don’t have faith in Christ (we do), and it’s certainly not to say there isn’t a deep sense of community (there is), but I do believe we still have room to grow in those areas.
I am challenged by texts like this to work towards making our community one with that sort of reputation. I should say that I don’t really like that last sentence, as it seems to imply that I consider this to be something entirely up to me, or entirely under my control, which I don’t. The real issue it seems is being willing to ask the question, “what kind of people are we becoming?”, because the reality is that our actions reflect our values and produce our reputation. What would it look like for the church, any church, to be laser focused on having faith- not just professed faith, not just the sing-worship-songs faith, but I’m-really-going-to- wholeheartedly-follow-the-radical-way-of-Jesus faith- and truly genuinely loving one another?
The reputation would be different. That much is sure.
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