Kneading something?

Many years ago, in a state far away, I knew a family who received an automatic bread maker for Christmas. It was an exciting surprise, so they wasted no time putting it to work.

A fun family project, they read aloud through the list of ingredients and dutifully added each one in order to the deep baking pan.

Someone hit the start button, and they went back to opening their Christmas presents, imagining that soon enough the spiced holiday air would be infused with the aroma of freshly baked bread and butter. Mmmmm.

The bell on the machine sounded, and they rushed to the kitchen to find the mostly dried ingredients much as they had last seen them. Confident they had missed something, they emptied the mess, read the directions again, and started fresh with new ingredients.

Three hours or so later, when they discovered the same unbaked but overcooked mass of ingredients, their nineteen year old got curious and checked the growing pile of Christmas wrapping paper and discarded boxes. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up the kneading paddle.

There probably are many lessons here, but I’ll skip the more obvious ones to make one simple observation: Regardless of the recipe, there must be a mixing of the ingredients. Perfect ingredients in themselves are one dimensional until they are combined with others to become something greater than the sum of their parts.

Likewise, an assortment of God’s people, wonderful enough in themselves, when combined with others, can do amazing things for God by becoming greater than the sum of their gifts.

The result is what we call “a church.”

But many assume that church works almost by magic, much like the folks in the bread machine story. They assume that if they just put the ingredients, people, together in a row of seats or pews, Voila!, good things will happen. Not so.

Groups of people do things all the time without being mutually transformed by the experience. We go to movies, concerts, or plays with others and share an experience without any follow-up with our fellow-spectators. We sit in school for years with others, and after graduation, go our separate ways, meeting only for the class reunion.

Churches do not thrive because the pews are filled or there is good “up front” entertainment like an exciting speaker or talented musicians. What makes a church a church is the sharing of a common life (Jesus) with common purposes (building up one another in love and getting the gospel to the nations) moved by a common energy (the Holy Spirit).

Folks today wander from church to church much like they move from Giant to Acme, depending upon what is on sale. When they are disappointed by the selection, they are off to the next store.

The “one-anothers” of the New Testament don’t “work” in some mysterious way, but in the real-life, hard-hitting, sometimes joyful, sometimes painful, prayerful interactions of believers who share one another’s lives.

Mixing and kneading definitely required.

“Instead, speaking the truth in love,
we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
From him the whole body,
joined and held together by every supporting ligament,
grows and builds itself up in love,
as each part does its work.”
Ephesians 4:15–16


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