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Message from Pastor Bill – November 2009
The Chipping of the Church
A divided church is no church; it is like an assortment of isolated computer chips with no connectivity, or a cell phone with no network.
Dear Saints:
Guess what! You've been "chipped."
You already have a computer chip in your car and your stereo and your rice cooker and your phone [hold up a cell phone]. It's in there: a small, silent sliver of silicon—a tiny chip of embedded thought. Someday you'll have one in your soup can, light switch, shirt hem, drill press and even your basketball. There are 10 trillion objects manufactured in the world each year, and the day will come when each one of them will carry a silicon chip.
Soon we will all have car keys with chips on them. Some of us already do. To get a duplicate of this key, one needs to go to the dealer or manufacturer to get the chip programmed.
The whole world is becoming chipped, at an astounding rate. Some of these are dumb chips, like the chip in your car's brakes. This is no notebook computer chip, sophisticated enough to do word processing, floating-point math, spreadsheets or video games...no, it's a dumb chip, devoid of intelligence except for the wit needed to stop your car on a dime. And hey, that's okay with us, right? When we're about to rear-end someone, we want our brakes to prevent disaster, not produce a document.
Like it or not, we're being invaded—invaded by computer chips. "First, we'll put jelly bean chips into high-tech appliances," says Kelly, "then later into all tools, and then eventually into all objects. If current rates continue, there'll be some 10 billion tiny grains of silicon chips embedded into our environment by 2005." The world is rapidly becoming chipped, and these silicon slivers are going to be with us for a long time, opening doors, moving money, tracking packages, stopping cars, and making rice. We can welcome them or resist them, but we can't escape them.
Something similar was happening in the first-century church, as the Christians of Corinth discovered their spiritual gifts. "Now there are varieties of gifts," writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, just as there are varieties of computer chips. "To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy..." (12:8-10). Here God is "chipping the church" by giving individual members a variety of amazing gifts, gifts that are as new and remarkable as the variety of silicon slivers that are entering our society today. Through the power of these spiritual gifts, the church is equipped to do some magnificent ministry in the world.
But Paul is concerned about this innovation, just as we might be concerned about the sudden "chipping" of products around us. The apostle is worried that neophyte Christians may still be under the influence of pagan spiritual sensations, ecstatic experiences that are intensely personal, and do not connect the adherent to the larger body of believers. In pagan spirituality, the diversity of the private experience is stressed at the expense of the unity of the communal sharing of the spiritual gift. This, to Paul, is thoroughly unacceptable in the Christian community.
Throughout his letter, Paul emphasizes that the purpose of a spiritual gift is for the upbuilding of the church, the Christ-body. The Spirit, while manifesting itself in different ways, draws everybody together into a unified community.
To Paul, a divided church is no church; it is like an assortment of isolated computer chips with no connectivity, or a cell phone with no network. "Putting a dot of intelligence into every object we make at first gives us a billion dimwitted artifacts," writes Kevin Kelly. In the same way, putting a gift of the Spirit into every Christian at first gives us a billion slightly spiritual Christians. Truly great things cannot happen until these gifts are somehow linked.
In the chipping of the church, as in the chipping of our modern world, connectivity is the key. There is something mysterious that happens when we take large numbers of little things and connect them all together.
When we take the dumb chip in each cash register in a store and link them, we have something more than dumb: We have real-time buying patterns that can manage inventory.
If we take the dumb chips that regulate the guts of an automobile engine, and let them communicate an engine's performance to a mechanic, those dumb chips can smartly cut expensive car repairs.
In the same way, when we take the spiritual gift in each member of a church and link them in a congregation, we have something more than a group of spiritual people. We have a teaching/healing/miracle-working/spirit-discerning organism that can minister powerfully to the community at large. Connectivity is of supreme importance. The message of Paul is that the Christ-body needs to be both chipped and connected, a process that can change the world.
Note that what is linked in the church is a variety of gifts. Each of us has been chipped in a different way even in our sexuality, so uniformity is not to be expected or forced. In fact, if each of us were the same sliver of silicon, we would not be able to perform the multitudinous ministries required of a church in a complex and chaotic society. Diversity can be valued, since each of our gifts comes from the same Spirit, and each is directed toward the upbuilding of the same body of Christ. Every believer has a gift to offer the church, a gift that has a distinct and definite role to play in ministry, so there should be no rivalry, discontent or feelings of superiority in the community of faith. As Paul says to the Corinthians, there are "varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (12:6-7).
When these gifts are linked together in the church, something mysterious happens. Large numbers of people with a variety of gifts come together to produce an explosive effect not otherwise possible. In other words, the sum is greater than the parts. Once again, in the church as in computer chips, connectivity is key. When Christians are linked by the Spirit into a community of faith, their individual spiritual gifts create a fabulous power called the body of Christ.
Peace and Power,
Pastor Bill
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