The Church of Christ Miracle

The title on these thoughts might seem a bit ridiculous but I grew up in this fellowship and was taught the age of miracles was over when the apostles were gone. Through the ages I believe the Holy Spirit has continued to work miracles for God’s people. This has happened even though our leaders and those writing commentaries on the Bible have declared otherwise to those of us with less understanding than themselves.

I was sitting in a chapel gathering of our students recently when this title came into my thoughts and the prompt came from watching the young children, who were being trained to lead a small short worship time to God. Watching the little boys get up to read from the Bible or lead a prayer, I suddenly realized my fellowship has always been this way. I even had a flashback to an email I received recently describing how our young men led a short devotional service for the chapel honoring our seniors.

When I think back on the years I’ve experienced growing up in the Churches of Christ, I can remember programs and special classes to train the young boys to be Christian men and eventually grow into church leaders capable of preaching, praying, leading songs, distributing communion trays, etc. Basically, as I look back, they were being taught how to “run/rule” the church organization. Some might think I’ve forgotten the little girls but with the little girls, the miracle is realized and mentioned shortly.

In every case I’ve known, the instructions to the boys dealt with the mechanics of what I now consider “artificial” worship, much like what was taking place in the time of Amos and focused on getting things right. To lead a prayer, the young man was instructed to include comments regarding care of the sick, the ability or leadership of the elders, thankfulness for Jesus, thankfulness for those meeting “at this place,” and other suggestions. We were also reminded to ask for the forgiveness of sins and officially close the prayer with, “in Jesus name, Amen.”

I’m surprised the thoughts I have now never entered my mind because there have been several occasions when hearing someone pray, I think something like, “ I wish I could pray like that, or wow, it is easy to tell they have a real relationship with God.”

Having written these words, I am convinced our efforts in the church to train our children up, have possibly been more heavily influenced by the “father of lies” instead of the God we believe sent His son for us. We have been teaching the mechanics of man made traditions of worship and passing them off as the true nature of what God wants from us.  We have been teaching a system of worship void of the heart where we place our trust in the confidence of doing things right.

When my fellowship took the time to teach our young girls, a different approach was taken. They were not taught the “proper” way to lead a prayer, singing or communion. They were not taught to organize their thoughts for a great message preached to the masses. Our young girls were taught to be SUBMISSIVE. They were taught to see others as more important than themselves (meaning men) but becoming a trait in most relationships. They were taught to be caregivers, kindly helping those in need. Our girls were taught to sacrifice their desires for others. There was a constant reminder on the need to control their behavior and to value purity.

When I began placing these thoughts on paper (yes pencil and paper because I like to review my rough draft when going to computer), I was only thinking of the irony we face trying to do God’s will as we work through the design of men. We want our children to grow up and become men and women of god and yet we use our traditional view of what this looks like in their training. In the beginning of this writing, I started by thinking the Church of Christ Miracle was how our women often grow up to be the most God like in their relationship with God and doing so without all of the training and opportunities given to our young boys. They learn to develop an intense and real relationship with God completely from the heart and many of the “trained” men simply develop a superficial relationship of serving God through various acts of man-made worship on Sunday. The miracle I considered was how the Holy Spirit used our concept of training proper “Church of Christ Women” to actually become women of God.

My question coming to mind now, is should we not throw out the gender based boy/girl roles WE created and teach our young men the lessons we traditionally teach the young girls? Then, it may be possible to grow up a generation of men and women of God. The true Church of Christ miracle is not what I started with but, instead, the reality of any young man growing up and developing a true, from the heart, relationship with God. What a wonderful miracle that we have any Men of God!