An important part of every worship service at Recovery Worship is the "Time for Sharing." I will toss out a question based on the Scripture reading for the day, and, I hope, somehow directed at recovery. One thing I hear from people is how Recovery Worship has "saved my life." These are powerful words indeed. I have heard a lot of people from other congregations say a lot of things about their church, claiming that their "church had saved their life," is not one of them.
Several years ago when I was in the Navy I was deployed to Atlanta, GA for a few days. The first day at our hotel I noticed all of these men walking around in suite and ties, very clean and proper, each wearing a tag that had a number printed on it, in big bold, black letters. In smaller letters just above the number were the words, "Souls Saved." In the elevator I asked one of the men what the tag meant. "Well," the man said, "I am a Baptist pastor and this number represents the number of baptisms that I did last year." I just kind of smiled and said, "That's nice," hoping that he would not ask me if I had been baptized.
Like so many notches in a gun slingers pistol grip, this man was taking credit for the salvation of those whom he had baptized. I can think of a dozen questions that I would have liked to have asked that pastor today. How many of these "souls" remained active in his church? How many were truly healthy and living out their baptism? Or, was all of this simply a matter of numbers, like yearly sales figures, an effort to avoid being embarrassed with a small number on his tag at the annual church convention.
I have a lot of problems with this idea of soul saving. We Lutheran's believe that in Baptism, God is doing the action. For Baptists, Baptism is what we do. There isn't a lot of support in Scripture for this individual "soul saving", a brief statement in the Book of James, and of course we all know what Lutherans think about James. Is it the mission of the church to save souls? I know a lot of people will turn blue and say, "of course", but what if the church focused more on saving lives then saving souls? I ponder, is it easier to have someone's (I refuse to take credit for anyone's soul being saved) soul saved if their life is saved first? When I hear these heart tugging stories of recovery and how Recovery Worship has played a critical role in that story, I am filled with wonder.
I would suggest that the church of the future pay more attention to saving lives, the Holy Spirit will take care of the souls.
See you next Sunday!
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