God's Collective Will

by Michael T. Ramey                                                                                  Vol. VII, No. 1, January 1994

[Michael Ramey is Director of Music and Youth at Second Branch Baptist Church, Ches-terfield.]

As Christians, we often speak of seeking God's will for us and trying to be obedient to God's calling on our lives. I was discussing this with a fellow minister at VCU last week, and as we were talking, the Lord suddenly revealed to me a very important truth: "God's will" is collective.

God doesn't have one will for me, a separate will for Jerry Rankin, another for Billy Graham, and yet another for you. God has one will. Period. II Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is ... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." In other words, God's will is to see people won to Him through Jesus Christ.

And to think that all these years I thought God's will was for me to be a minister.

Oh, but that is God's will: that I should be a minister in order that "none should perish:.. " Likewise, another has been called to direct the Sunday School, toward that same end, and someone else is called to serve as church secretary for the very same purpose. And God has given that same purpose for you wherever you are, too. We have also been given distinct roles to play, unique positions to fill. But God's will is collective.

What does this mean for the local church? Well, for starters it means that every member has been called to serve in some capacity or other. Any Christian whose very purpose for living is anything other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ has missed the will of God. That's not to say everyone must be a pastor or youth director. There are millions of lost teenagers in our high schools, where youth directors can't go. There are millions more dying in the public work place – many of them at that desk right next to yours. "Career" and “purpose" are two different things: our purpose should be Christ, regardless of our profession.

Another significance for the local church is a need (and an ability) to be integrated. "Integrity" doesn't refer to "honesty," but to the combining of all the parts of a whole toward a common end. In essence, that is a form of honesty, since anything less would be hypocrisy, but "integrity" is more than speaking the truth. What the church of today needs and often lacks is basic integrity – all the parts working together for the furthering of the Gospel of Christ. Instead, we tend to be overrun with many separate ministries, each trying to meet a particular need, without a common vision on how to meet the full need, spiritual and physical, of the Body of Christ and the dying world we are called to win.

I see more and more each day the Lord's calling of the local church to be a beacon in the night, reaching the community around us. But your youth group can't do that alone, nor can the Sunday School, nor the WMU. As Dewey Bertolini, a distinguished author and expert on youth ministry, points out, "Youth ministry will only thrive in a church that is healthy overall." That is just as true of every other program we have. No one program will be the key to success in the local church.

As we face the next year together, let us strive toward true integrity within the Church – among individual members and congregations as well as among our programs and committees. Only by working together, all pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God (Phil. 3:14), can we begin as one body to reach the lost and the dying all around us. Pray with me that, with Christ as our Head and His perfect Gospel as our banner, we may do His saving will together