Your Church and How you Serve in it

[Amethystic]

I run the tech stuff.


...Because women are unfit to do anything that requires any kind of competence.


Actually, we tested some teenage girls in the sound room once. They FAILED. I think they just sat around and texted or something.

That's because the GUYS are the ones who keep getting trained to do it! And because some girls are just unable to focus.

I'm actually the most technologically competent person in my class.

[Pseudonym]

We're actually teaching some pre-teen girl to run the sound board now. We're trying to indoctrinate her in our ways before she hits the full-blown adolescent phase so that she will be able to actually sit still and concentrate. Time will tell if our preventative policy will succeed.

[Baragon]

I did the tech stuff for a short while right before I moved to Ohio... It was fun, and I enjoyed it, but I didn't last long enough for me to really catch onto it.

[Macnut]

I attend a relatively smallish church, roughly 200 people, and I've been really active there since I was in middle school. My main involvement is tech stuff and serving with the youth. My church doesn't have its own facility so my dad, brother and I setup, run and tear down the whole sound system every week. I also help with various other tech stuff. I help with our youth ministries, teaching 1st-3rd grade Sunday school, serving in nursery, facilitating a high school girls' Bible study and helping with youth group meetings. It sure does sound like a lot when I list it all...unfortunately, the length of my little list really doesn't mean a thing when my motives are wrong.

My advise would be to focus on your heart and wanting to serve and glorify God through your gifts and talents. If your hearts right, God will most definitely use you to strengthen and grow his Church.

If you're interested in doing some reading, I'd recommend looking into Josh Harris' book called Stop Dating The Church. He discusses everything from "church shopping" to properly caring for the church and her needs.

[Jennifer Doyle]

I used to help with the slides/computer aspect while my dad was the sound guy. It was neat. Now I sing on the praise team, though I wish I was actually a musician because I feel rather incompetent with my voice just floating around (at least in a choir I sing a skilled part! haha)

Ok, well, more questions:

If you aren't in a church, WHY NOT? Do you think it's important to, if not attend a church building, commune with mature believers, to grow and be taught, to serve, to study the word?

I think we are in trouble because there's a lot of articles, etc about how college age students "leave the church"...I think it could be we don't feel we have a place to belong, or we haven't adequately taken to heart the teaching of the Bible on tithing, preaching, service, christian community, etc.

[Macnut]

Oh...and I wanted to reply to this:

What is a church, from a perspective based on God's revealed truth?

First of all, I will likely go off topic here so if a mod wants to move/remove this...that's okay...

First - I'm assuming you mean the visible church and not the invisible church, correct? If that's what you mean, my church defines it as, "the local church, consisting of a company of believers in Jesus Christ, baptized on a credible profession of faith, and associated for worship, ministry and fellowship. We believe that God has laid upon the members of the local church the primary task of giving the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world."

There is some awesome stuff about this in chapters 18 and 19 of John Frame's book Salvation Belongs to the Lord. Frame argues, and I agree, that "the church is all of God's elect, the one, holy, universal, and apostolic people of God, gathered together in a visible organization."

There are a boat load of reasons why one should be plugged into a church rather than skipping from one church to another or trying to exist outside the church. I believe that you and I were never made to exist without the church and yet rugged individualism has marred the true nature of community living. There are things that simply do not properly exist outside the church...things christians are called to be a part of, such as, the preaching of the Word, giving and receiving of the sacraments, church discipline, community and accountability, worship in song with brothers and sisters in Christ, etc.

So, that kinda summarizes my view of the visible church and why it is essential to any christian...I'd go as far as to say that not being a member of a church (or seeking membership) is a sin...although that might get me in a little trouble, I believe it is...

Sorry for the length of this. I'm kinda passionate about this stuff.

[Amethystic]

I agree that church is important, but sometimes there just isn't a church that you agree with enough to attend. In my family's case, there just isn't a church that meets our needs spiritually. I guess you could think of it as home church: instead of learning at set times on set days, my dad just teaches me stuff throughout the week. Plus, I go to Christian school and go to youth group with my friends from time to time, so I haven't lost fellowship completely.

And, no offense, but this thread isn't supposed to be a deep discussion. If we want to talk about the spiritual necessity of church, can we start a seperate thread?

[Pseudonym]

My family gave up trying to find a perfect church a long time ago. As long as the core doctrine is right, I would say it's better than no church.

[Oba-rai]

I'm a female and I can outsmart the pants off any guy who comes in and does tech work at our church.

Okay not, more because I haven't been through any formal training, but I do tech work and I'm fairly invaluable.

I work with kids sometimes, I do (aforementioned) tech support, design work, projection, technical directing (cameras, etc).

[Macnut]

And, no offense, but this thread isn't supposed to be a deep discussion. If we want to talk about the spiritual necessity of church, can we start a seperate thread?

No offense taken. I did begin my post by acknowledging that it was off topic...

And since it is, I won't continue to debate this with you here but I still believe that not being a involved in a church, for whatever reason, is wrong and completely unbiblical. Anywho...I'll save it for another thread.

[Jennifer Doyle]

And, no offense, but this thread isn't supposed to be a deep discussion. If we want to talk about the spiritual necessity of church, can we start a seperate thread?

Who says? It can go as deep as we want, it doesn't have to be a flame-on debate...I don't really think there is anything to debate about. "Church" as in, being connected to the family of God is a necessity, not an option. I don't believe we were created to live out our faith totally alone. Whether that means small house churches, or a family studying, having fellowship etc together, we need Christian community.

I have a friend who does not "attend church" in that they drive to a separate building and meet with a certain number of people, they study and worship as a family on Sunday mornings. That's great and I believe Biblical. Consider countries where Christianity is illegal, it's not like they have the option of getting a few hundred people together.

But I would argue that if a Christian has "nothing" and doesn't see the problem, I'd encourage him/her to find a group, Christian community to learn from, worship with, etc. How else do we expect to grow?

In the same way, if we attend a church building and expect to be fed and taken care of, but do nothing to grow, serve, etc how are we really a part of the church at all?

It's been very frustrating to church float, while I was at university, and just see tons of college students pouring into churches on sunday morning (and the services cater to that age group almost exclusively) but a very small percentage actually do any sort of service within a church, few are members, etc.

[Amethystic]

Um, what if we actually want to simply hear what other people do in their churches to help out? Spiritual conversations are important and all, but can't we just have a light-hearted conversation? You could just start a whole other thread...

[Jennifer Doyle]

Well, I started THIS thread . . . and if we're talking about church involvement, talking about NOT being involved in "the church" is not off topic. And it's not, like I said, some super debate.