Church Biology

True story- I once wanted to be a doctor. A psychiatrist, to be exact, but that meant med school, which in turn meant getting my undergrad in science stuff. No biggie, I thought, having loved and excelled at science in high school.

My first semester at A&M, I took, and spectacularly failed at, Biology. And thus ends the illustrious medical career of Chad Lehrmann. The very foundation of life, the cells and other icky stuff at the microscopic level are what did me in. I was convinced that spending a semester on mitochondria and nuclei was not really the biology I was looking for or needed. Those parts were too small to worry with.

Flash forward to my discovery of 1 Corinthians 12. This is the chapter that informs us that no part of the body of Christ is any less essential than the others. Each body part (that would be us, by the way) has a role and function key to the survival of the body. Remove it, or make it ineffectual, and the whole body suffers its loss. In other words, no part is too small to worry with.

The problem is that too many churches and church leaders get in the habit of ignoring the smaller parts of the body. I'm not talking about the children, necessarily (Though there are churches that sadly neglect the children for the sake of preserving 'their' church.). No, I'm talking about the 'lesser' people, the ones that are the cool church people. The ones who are a little less apt to step forward and shine on their own. As churches, and the egos of those of us who lead them get bigger, we ignore those who don't match up to our image. If you're a church full of young, business type go-getters, you ignore the more blue-collar segment because they aren't the image you try to project. On the flip side, small town churches tend to hold up their dust of the earth types to the exclusion of those with more progressive views.

No church or leader is immune. I myself am aware that there are certain types of people that its harder for me to connect with. I have to work harder to not ignore them than I do with other groups. I shouldn't simply pass them off to another church member because they are better at dealing with them. Ultimately, they will connect with that person anyway, but that is no excuse for me to brush them off. They are a part of the same body that I am a part of. Without them, our body doesn't function to the best of its ability.

So, even if they are the mitochondria to my index finger, they are just as important to the church as you or I.