GLEANINGS — January 26, A.D. 2014                                                                                                               "Consumeranity"
It's not really a word, but CONSUMER is. Whether it involves goods or services, in the commercial realm there are those who provide (sell) and those who purchase (consume). The person who seeks out and purchases goods or services is called the consumer.

For example, one is a consumer who goes to an auto dealership, haggles for a good deal with a salesman, and buys a car. A person in the soup aisle in the supermarket who chooses out his favorite brand of split pea, tomato, or cream of mushroom is a consumer. A cell phone user who just chose the contract plan of XYZ Mobile is a consumer about to consume new apps...

Some people take a consumer-like approach to God's Church. Like a prospective car buyer visiting various showrooms and lots, they "test drive" preachers until they find one who says what they like to hear. Like a cell phone user waiting for his two year contract to expire, they half-heartedly show up when the congregation meets, until they can find a church filled with loving, whole-hearted people who meet their needs for meaningful, encouraging fellowship.

A particular congregation of Christ is not one of many possible providers which a believer investigates as a consumer. It is not a place to which a disciple goes, to see what it has to offer him. A congregation of Christ is an organic unity – a body, to use the figure which Scripture frequently uses – in which individual Christians as members of that body serve one another.

A particular congregation is one branch of the great, eternal family of God. An Earthly family is formed when one man and one woman marry and have a child or children. Ordinarily, those offspring grow up and leave their family of origin to begin new families. The parents eventually go the way of all the Earth, and that family of origin is (hopefully) an happy memory for the descendants. 

But what a tragedy when in combat or through a horrible accident, a person loses an arm or a leg! And how sad when a young son or daughter runs away away from home, essentially "quitting" his or her family! 

Since a congregation of Christ is a body, is it any less tragic when one of its spiritual limbs is suddenly cut off? Is it any less sorrowful when a member of a congregation abruptly quits his or her spiritual family when some squabble or trouble arises as we live in this fallen world?

The well known phrase, "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder" is uttered at the end of ceremonies solemnizing holy matrimony. Without lessening the holiness and gravity of wedding vows, we reasonably can compare church membership vows to them. Even as God permits divorce only when certain specific acts of treachery have been committed, so each Christian should consider his or her church membership vows as sacred before the Lord, only to be annulled for very specific and valid reasons.