Ships in the Harbor

Tim Keller, Lead Pastor

You don’t pull out the GPS for directions on how to get to your job, do you? You don’t need to stop and ask for help getting to your favorite restaurant, right?  Of course not.

What about the first day you worked there? What about the night you made your first trip to that Italian restaurant that would become your favorite? You had to think about it then, right?

Some things are just so natural that you don’t even have to think about them. You just do them, but it wasn’t always so easy. There was likely a time when it didn’t feel easy; it may have even felt awkward or frightening.

When a group of people living in the same region do the same thing collectively it’s called a “culture.”

The “culture” in State College, Pennsylvania is decidedly centered on a certain college football team who wear blue jerseys. More than 100,000 people gather to view a typical Penn State football game (making State College on game day the third largest city in Pennsylvania). People plan their day around the game and the traffic and expect a ton of guests in RV’s and blue jerseys to show up in town and stay at their hotels. It’s the culture.

The “culture” of a Middle School is all about classrooms, teachers, students, activities, book bags, relational connections and breakups, as well as drugs, grades and lockers. Looking for a library to do research for your Master’s degree? You probably won’t find it at Lamberton Middle School. Why? That’s not part of the culture.

Churches have cultures as well. They are ways of doing things that probably aren’t written down, but everybody just assumes it is the way things are done. Who makes the decisions, how long the services last, what night of the week is bad for scheduling a meeting, and what time the Christmas Eve service begins are all reflections of each individual congregation’s culture.

Recently I was sitting in on Daniel Friess’ Sunday School class on church discipline. During his teaching I was struck by the biblical idea that we should be so involved in one another’s lives that we actually call one another out for behavior that is sinful or rebellious and at times even disassociate from those who will not hear such a word of loving discipline.

While I appreciate the accurate depiction of the Bible’s message that Daniel delivered, I couldn’t help but make the silent observation that obedience to this specific series of commands is not a part of our church’s culture. In other words, that may be what God wants us to do, but around here we just don’t do that.

Our church “culture” is more designed to tolerate such behavior in the name of mercy and avoid the prospect of conflict that could potentially come if we said to a young man that his lewd jokes were not appropriate for the DNA he was in, or that the member of the youth staff who is perpetually late for meetings is being insensitive to the rest of the team. While these are fictional examples, I’m sure you could conjure up similar situations where you saw questionable behavior go unchallenged in the name of kindness.

If CAC is going to move in the direction we are being taught in obedience to Scripture, we’re going to have to re-evaluate our responses in situations where people are refusing to hear godly counsel and prayerfully repent of their actions.

At first it may require us to “feel” our way and experience the awkwardness of doing something for the first time. Eventually obedience will feel natural and right.

At present we’re more like a ship that is content to remain in the harbor in safety, instead of launching out to the deep waters of obedience, but ships weren’t created to stay in the harbor.