Manifesting Christ in and Through the Church
Author: Chris Castaldo, PhD
April 13, 2023
Nearly six years ago, Barnabas Piper, son of famous pastor and author John Piper, was searching for a new church. But Barnabas, a few months after a painful divorce was, in his own words, “spiritually exhausted and emotionally discouraged, uncertain of my future and uncomfortable in church.”
Barnabas walked into a certain church and sat down as unobtrusively as possible. The pastor welcomed everyone with these words:
To all who are weary and need rest;
To all who mourn and long for comfort;
To all who fail and need strength;
To all who sin and need a Savior;
The church opens wide her doors and her heart with a welcome from Jesus Christ.
Barnabas was skeptical, to say the least. “I didn’t think the pastor was lying, per se,” Piper says in his new book Belong: Loving Your Church by Reflecting Christ to One Another (The Good Book Company, 2023). “I just thought it was aspirational nonsense. In my experience churches usually declare what they want to be, not what they are.” Barnabas thought: If only a church actually welcomed people like that, I might find a home.
Over the next two years at Immanuel Church in Nashville, Barnabas did. His book describes what happened and what he learned as he allowed himself to become vulnerable in a church community intent on being the body of Christ.
Early Christians saw themselves as the manifestation of Christ in the world. During pandemics and plagues, as Romans fled their cities and towns, Christians remained to nurse the sick and feed the hungry. And they did this not only for their relatives and friends, but also for their pagan neighbors. You could have said of them, “If you want to know what God is like, look at Christians.”
The tangible faith of these godly men and women provides guidance for our current moment, when self-isolation is common and true friendship is on the wane. German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived during a time of political unrest, racial injustice, physical isolation, and palpable fear—a time eerily parallel to our own. In his classic work Life Together, Bonhoeffer identified the vital necessity of the gathered church: “The physical presence of other believers is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.”
Due to his involvement in the German resistance, Bonhoeffer knew the pain of involuntary isolation from his Christian brothers and sisters. He knew that the mere presence of other Christians has a fortifying effect on our souls, even if we don’t always recognize it consciously.
That’s one reason the Bible exhorts us to gather. We are Christ’s body, organically connected, the life and strength of Christ Himself flowing into us through one another (1 Cor. 12:27). Unlike any other community on earth, the church is the divinely given expression of Christ’s body. “Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize,” Bonhoeffer notes, “but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”
The English theologian and scholar John Henry Newman described university life in Athens during Plato’s day, a period when learning among mentors and role models was of central importance. Newman writes: “It was what the student gazed on, what he heard, what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not what he read, which was the education furnished by Athens.”
Such an education holds great power because, as Newman explains, “persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.” How beautiful. In other words, the personal gathering of God’s people is crucial, for godliness is caught as much as it is taught (1 Cor. 11:1).
So let us remember not only to connect, but to connect as brothers and sisters in the church. As Barnabas Piper concludes in his thought-provoking little book, Belong, “The purpose of the church is to proclaim and exhibit the reality of Jesus Christ to the world. It is where and how people encounter the real Jesus.”
Chris Castaldo, PhD, is lead pastor of New Covenant Church in Naperville and author of the forthcoming book, The Upside Down Kingdom, from Crossway.
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