Some churches are busy in the best sense. They offer services on Sunday, groups through the week, youth nights, outreach events, prayer ministry and classes for new believers. People give their evenings and weekends to serve, and a great deal of good is done. Yet a leader can look at the people in the middle of all that activity and wonder how much they are actually being changed by it.
Activity is good, and God uses it. But being busy with Christian activity and being formed into the likeness of Christ are not the same thing. One can serve the other, and often does. They can also drift apart without anyone intending it, because activity has a momentum of its own. It can keep a church full and busy whether or not it is helping people carry God’s truth into the rest of their lives.
What Activity Is For
The church in Corinth was full of activity. Its members had real spiritual gifts and used them eagerly. Paul wrote to them:
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:1–3, NLT
Paul names some of the most valuable things a believer could do: speaking for God, understanding His purposes, great faith, costly generosity. He values them. A few lines later he tells the same church, “Let love be your highest goal! But you should also desire the special abilities the Spirit gives” (1 Corinthians 14:1, NLT). What he makes clear is what all of it is for. The measure is love: the patient, kind, humble love Paul goes on to describe, which is the character of Christ formed in His people.
How Activity Drifts From Its Purpose
Most church activity begins with that purpose clearly in view. Over time, the activity can take on a life of its own. The calendar fills because last year’s events worked. A ministry runs because it has always run. Leaders measure a good season by whether things happened as planned. Much of that is faithful work. But it is possible for a church to keep all of it going smoothly while rarely asking whether it is helping people become more like Christ in the places where they actually live.
The same can happen for individuals. Someone can be at church three nights a week, serving faithfully, and still find that the truths they hear rarely reach the impatience at home, the worry at work or the habit they have carried for years. Their week is full of good things. Very little of it is helping them bring God’s Word into those particular places.
A Better Question to Ask of Activity
What helps is a clearer purpose for the activity a church already has. Leaders can put one simple question to each part of church life: is this helping our people carry God’s truth into their daily lives and grow in love?
That question changes what an activity can be. A study group can discuss a passage and also make room for members to bring it into their own week. Serving can become a place to practice the patience and kindness Scripture describes, not only a task to complete. Teaching, reflection, conversation and practice can be connected instead of left to happen separately. The activity stays. Its purpose comes back into view.
The Next Question
Underneath the question of activity is a larger one. Why can sincere, active believers know and value God’s truth, and still find it has not yet reached how they live? The Gap looks at that distance directly: what it is, where it shows up in ordinary life and why Scripture treats it honestly, without condemning those who feel it.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
