The Christian's Responsibility to His Church

“But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  (1 Corinthians 12:18  NIV)

   As the verse above says, God has assembled the parts in every church, and if He assembled them, they must be right.  Now it is our part to make them work.  It’s time to find out what our roles are in the local church, and then it’s time to get to work in those roles.  It may be hard to believe, but God does have a particular job for you to do in your church.   

   God does require one thing of each of us.  In Hebrews 13:17 we are told, “Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.”   Our pastors have an awesome responsibility for the spiritual life of the church, and we should be doing all we can to support them.  They need to know that we trust and appreciate the Word that they preach.

   Malachi 3:10 gives us another responsibility that we have toward our local church.  “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”  In the verse before Malachi 3:10, the Word says that the whole nation of Israel had been robbing God by not giving the tithe.  Financial responsibility is, indeed, one of our responsibilities to the local church.

   Paul encourages the church in Thessalonica by complimenting them on encouraging each other, and then exhorts them to continue encouraging each other.  He says it a little differently in Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (NIV).  We all need encouragement sometimes, and we all need to give encouragement at times.

   We are all given a specific gift to use within our church, and there are also responsibilities that we all share.  The church works better and God is glorified more when we all work together.  

   I didn’t mean to get long-winded, but the Church is God’s tool in this world, and the local church is at the center of the Church.  So it is of prime importance that we all work together to represent our Lord well through our local churches.