Excitement, Butterflies, and Church Membership

I get excited about stuff.  The world is full of things to be interested in and excited about.  This summer I got excited about teaching one of my sons to play the guitar, and that excitement carried us through several weeks of spontaneous lessons.  Maybe you are like me in that getting excited about things is great for awhile, but it doesn't seem to have sustaining power.  Now I am trying to figure out how to schedule time to do lessons regularly, to commit to it, so that even on weeks when neither of us are excited about it, we do it anyway.  I know that in the long run, this will lead to the most reward for him in playing the guitar.  I have years and years of deep enjoyment from the guitar that came from excitement turning into commitment, leading to enjoyment and more excitement.

Marriage is this way too.  Romantic love is one of the most exciting things in the world, and it can sustain lots of activity, time, and devotion for a long time.  But even the butterflies of romantic love fly away some mornings, some winters.  Marriage is a way for the excitement to lead to commitment that lays the groundwork for years of deep enjoyment and more excitement.

A Christian's relationship with a church is this way too.  It is fun to get excited about a certain ministry, a certain type of preaching or mission, a certain group of people, or whatever.  And that excitement is good.  And that excitement is meant to lead to commitment to that local church, even when it doesn't feel exciting, even when it gets costly at times.  This is why we practice what we call church membership at Gospel Church.  To our culture it can feel overly formal and strange.  It can feel like an inauthentic element of true community.  But we believe that a solid, formal commitment to a specific community of people will in the long run lead to a deeper level of true community and enjoyment in that community.  Membership is an act of giving yourself to a community of Christians.  It is an act of committing to stay through seasons when the excitement wanes, to push through difficulties with people so that in the long run true community, deep connection, and seasons of great excitment sprout up.  If excitement is a butterfly, commitment is building the butterfly a home to return to year after year.