The Organic Church

By Anthony McMillian

This book is a commentary on the state of Christian devotion and our collective commitment to our mission. We want to cause each reader to refocus and in some instances reconnect to reaching and teaching the masses how to embrace salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728323077

Anthony McMillian

Reverend Anthony O McMillian is the associate Minister at New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, in Wilmington North Carolina. He is married to Minster Althea Anderson McMillian, and father to two Children. He is the Christian Education Director for his congregation and is committed to empowering people for true Christian service. He believes that the people of God need to be prepared to stand on the Word of God, and be ready to defend challenges to the faith. This work is an attempt to further that goal.

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© 2019 Anthony McMillian. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  08/13/2019

KJV

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Public Domain

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2308-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2307-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019911699

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Preface

In the Beginning

The Inner Conflict

Can these dry bones live?

Carnal Christians (Rom 8:6)

The real people of God must stand

The Commitment

The Organic nature

Many members one body

Differing gifts and talents

No qualification criteria

Not spiritually significant

Focused on growth in numbers not quality of service

Very Benign Social Impact

Too politically motivated

Only what we do for Christ will last (endure)

No idea who they are

Offered to everyone, everywhere

Are we OK?

The work of an evangelist

Political affiliation over spiritual dictates

What they do, not what they say

Walking in the steps of the scorned

Self evaluation hurts

How to work on the flaws

Serve without the need to be served

Cary themselves very worldly

Those things you do

Honor him with their lips

Come let us reason together

Let Him do it

To thine own self be true

Think on these things

Without an entourage

God sees all sin, as Sin!

Transformation is not a bad thing

Put away childish things

All things become new

Off with mortal on with immortality

I need you to survive

While letting go

Don’t diss- me

Denominational Loyalty

Living among the dead

Drawn by the light

Who are we really?

PREFACE

I make only one claim as to what compelled me to write this book. This is an attempt to sound the alarm about the deteriorating condition of the earthly body of Christ.

Having been nurtured at the paps of Christian discipleship from my youth, I have observed a troubling metamorphosis within the body of believers who regularly attend church, and within our leadership in the faith community. Though this slide in our collective Christian standards has been gradual, it appears to be gaining momentum as our ability to influence its rate of decline diminishes. Our desire to turn the tide of its corrosive advance, or even stall its progress is in serious doubt, because we seem to lack the collective will to halt our march toward dysfunction. Standards and ritual, that are the basic foundations of our faith, and are the pillars that undergird all our regular worship, are changing in ways that make the love bond between fellow Christians weak and ineffective.

This work started as a way to capture my observations of the evolution of the Christian journey and its many twists and turns. Not long after I started, I began to notice many unsettling trends. The ties that bind us together were becoming harder to detect. The genuine love in our relationships, our compassion toward one another and our empathy for the plight of other people is shrinking. The desire to be associated with a particular collection of church folk has replaced our need to assimilate into a body of believers in Christ. The change has made the overall strength of the faith dangerously weak. Please read this work with the knowledge that I do not believe that the current state of the Church is terminal. But it is time for us to awake and change course.

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IN THE BEGINNING

When early man dwelled in the Garden called Eden, we had the kind of relationship with God that allowed us face-to-face access to Him and the privilege of fellowship through some quality time together in the garden He had prepared for us. This was mutually satisfying for both God and the man who was made in His image and likeness. In the cool of the evening beneath the shadows of the sustenance giving trees, man walked with God in unity and peace, having total trust with nothing hidden between them that would threaten to corrupt their relationship. Man had dominion over all other creatures in the earth and all creation was in harmony.

At least one of God’s created beings hated this relationship and despised the new apple of the Father’s eye (no pun intended). He was especially envious of the preeminent position that God had given these interesting yet inferior beings. The desire of this angry creature was to be seen as the one most revered among his peers and as such, highly favored above everyone else. His desire was that he would be seen as one glorious enough to be at equal status with God Himself.

With the goal of causing doubt and suspicion to creep into the fabric of this perfect harmony enjoyed between the first men and their God, the serpent (angry creature), convinced the female man that God was not forthright and honest with them. He convinced her to rely on her own senses and to rationalize that God was keeping the best things for himself. He insinuated that God was a dealer in half truths and deceptive words to sway men away from a full knowledge of their own true potential. After she was deceived, she presented this new ideology to her husband. He in turn allowed himself to be swayed by the way things sounded and in his own judgment used his free will option to disobey God. He chose to defy God and eat of the fruit that was forbidden to him. This demonstrated a lack of trust in the words of the very same God that communed with him on a daily basis.

This act of disobedience caused the separation from God that makes it necessary for a sacrifice of blood on our behalf in order to maintain our now tenuous relationship with the Father. Without this blood covering of our sins, we had no hope of restoration to our original right standing with our Creator.

God still wants to have unrestricted access to us and his desire is to allow us that same level of access to himself. Adam and Eve had this kind of relationship with God before the great fall from favor took place. This act of disobedience that caused the fall of mankind from innocence is the very reason for the redemptive process we are now going trough. This process is necessary in order for us to have any level of relationship after the fall. It is this redemptive process that made necessary the sacrifice of a perfect offering to atone for the past present and future sins of man.

The first phase of our redemptive process would require a surrogate to shed blood for the remission of our sins. This transfer of our sins to the sacrifice allowed us to stay in contact with a God who loves us dearly but cannot abide our sin. This arrangement was a good first step but does not cover our future sins. Because of this, many sacrifices were necessary to maintain the relationship. The only way to make this remission process mature to the level that brought about the pardoning of sin on a permanent basis was to provide a pure and perfect sacrifice that once made would cover all sins past, present, and future. Absent any living creature being able to fulfill this requirement, God allowed a part of himself in the person of Jesus the Christ, His only begotten Son, to be this perfect sacrifice. Because the sire of Jesus was God (via the Holy Spirit), He was truly God and truly man in one perfect package. This unique lineage gave him legal claim to all authority and the ability to command everything created by the Godhead, while voluntarily submitting himself to all the limitations of being mortal. His living life in a mortal body and enduring all the limitations and temptations of men, without sin, allowed him to reclaim the innocent relationship we forfeited by the actions of our ancestors in Eden. When we accept the free offering of salvation by accepting Jesus as our redeemer, we complete the second phase of the process. The third and final phase of the process will occur when we reside with the Father for all eternity after the dispensation of His final judgment of our sins.

Those of us who have been redeemed by this process are compelled to present this plan of salvation to the masses through:

• Sharing the word of God and His plan of salvation

• Our life example of living holy and walking in love

• Giving personal testimony to the victory won through this relationship

To borrow a phrase we are to practice what we preach!

Those of us who are saved by this grace covenant are to function in the world as one magnificent organism that loves and cares for its individual constituents while allowing that same love to spill over onto everyone we come in contact with to the extent that they choose to embrace that same relationship for themselves. Our lives then represent shining beams of light into the personal darkness of those who live outside the protection of this grace we hold so dear. It should always be our goal that every action or inaction we take will reflect favorably on the character of the God we represent. The truth of the matter is that we are the most tangible representation of God here on earth that most people will ever see.

Considering these statements as fact, it is vital that this organism that is the church (the body of Christ in this world), functions as a healthy synergistic unit with vitality and vibrancy. It is also essential that the church places every other consideration or agenda below its mandate to do the will of God.

This organic unit that we collectively strive to be, because of the fallibility of its individual members, has been proven to be very susceptible to being conscripted into something less God like and reprogrammed to focus on more worldly pursuits. This motive change might as a consequence cause what was once an alive and potent symbiotic body to become a loosely affiliated group only bound together by an organizational structure. This change of our Organic Church into a pseudo Christian organization is generally directed by Christians with very worldly agendas. Their worldly goals and agendas represent a serious threat to the future health of our body of believers in Christ.

My aim in this book is to make the case for living holy and to show that there is a substantial difference between being a good church member, in contrast to becoming a true Christian disciple. These two entities are not the same if the goal we want to realize is being a functional member in the body of Christ, and a member of the universal church. We will establish what a Carnal Christian (fleshly, worldly, sensual) is, and how to identify when we are operating in that mode. We will explore what pleases God in the life of a believer and how to go about the development of these traits in our daily walk. Our aim is to make the need of humble submission to the will of God very apparent to the reader while prompting them to examine the state of their own commitment to doing God’s will. We shall also focus on the attributes of a vibrant living church organism in order for us to evaluate whether we are operating in that capacity, or if our organization needs to have a transformation from within to restore our collective hearts of flesh.

We need to ask ourselves some probing questions about our commitment to Gods service and be willing to address those areas where we fall short. If we as a body of believers were to be examined for our physical health, in the same way a medical professional might examine us (an organic body) for signs of good health, our collective heart rhythm might be an indicator that our blood was flowing and giving life to the body. Our collective reaction to outside stimuli would indicate our ability to perceive what is going on around us, and our response to his voice would tell how well we are able to comprehend what he is communicating. Our spiritual status can be gauged using these same metrics.

Restore in us a heart of flesh Oh lord and renew our vigor while we strive to live for you, Amen.

THE INNER CONFLICT

Why do I sometimes get so much pleasure in doing things I know that I should not do, and find it so burdensome to do the things I should? My mind tells me what course of action should be taken for the proper outcome; however, within me is a contrary nature that desires only what it wants in order to feel satisfied. Often when faced with a choice between what is the right thing to do and what is the thing that would be more socially acceptable, I make the wrong choice. I have a mind to do right but am also strongly compelled to do something else contrary to that mindset. What is good to do and what feels good to do is often not the same thing. Temptation, vanity, ambition, and pride have all at one time or another influenced my actions, even though these emotional drivers frequently yielded flawed results, I still pursue them. In the bible, Paul addressed this conflict of wills in the following scripture:

Rom 7:21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 7:22 For I delight in the law of God after (that of) the inward man: