I agree with Ken Myers:
And I’m convinced that individualism is one of the most corrosive and destructive forces of modernity. The Christian answer to individualism is recovering the centrality of the life of the body of Christ. Our salvation involves us in a covenantal community. Paul says we’re given gifts for building up the body; that seems to me to counter modern individualism. But churches now tend to be configured as providers of religious goods and services, and are often told to think of themselves that way. That’s a commercial model, rather than a communal model.
My thought: God makes bricks with a building in mind.
Four bricks hide behind my tool shed. The shed sits on the edge of the woods so leaves hide the bricks. If you weren’t looking, you wouldn’t notice them: just a few bricks settling into moist, black soil under brown oak leaves.
If I picked up one of those bricks, brushed the leaves off it, and asked it what it is doing, I wonder what it would say. I know that bricks can’t talk. Bear with me for the sake of the thing. A brick disconnected from any building, lying behind my tool shed, how would it explain itself?
It might be a little defensive. Can’t you just hear the brick bristling when asked why it is not in a building?
“Look, I am a brick! I assure you that I am a brick. Are you implying that I am not a brick?”
I would probe gently. “No, I’m just wondering why you aren’t part of one sort of building or another? Just curious.”
The defense would continue. “Look, I don’t have to be in a building in order to be a brick. I can be a brick all on my own.”
Read the whole thing here.
We tend to ask, “What’s in it for me?” instead of, “What’s in it for us?”