A BODY WITHOUT A HEAD

“He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.” Colossians 1:18

Some years ago, a Baptist church here in Spring Branch found a decapitated head in the church dumpster. The pastor said to me, "Spring Branch is a decapitated society and this is a symbol of it!"

The years have passed and that church, so fashionable in the 1970's, no longer exists. It went out of business because Spring Branch was at that very moment changing from being an all white middle class community to an immigrant town.

At the same time the head appeared in the dumpster, the fashionable buildings that held a body of Christ lost its mandate from the Head. Plying their "programs" for the "Like Us" people, they did not listen to the Savior of the World who had come to seek and to save the lost.

The death of that congregation was impacted by that severed head, the head of a Korean. Many families instantly left the church for a location safer for their family. The abandonment of Spring Branch by that church triggered sales of homes as the residents moved to the suburbs.

Then I saw a Lutheran church with mouth watering property in an area of Houston which had been invaded by the Chinese. I tried my best to persuade the pastor that the harvest of immigrant Chinese could transform the use of the property and triple its membership. But neither he nor the caucasian members had Christ as Head and so they sold the property and moved to the suburbs. Every time I see the apartments that now occupy that land I shake my head in disgust.

Now expand this thought beyond a community like Spring Branch or a city like Houston to a nation: the United States. With a few exceptions, the American church society is no longer directed by Christ. It is a consumer oriented structure presided over by a clergy system that protects itself as much as the politicians, who are more interested in re-election than in meeting the needs of the society around them.

How will all this end?

Your response would greatly interest me!