Recently, a young man at our church experienced a very long bout of severe abdominal pain.  Many of us had grown quite concerned - especially when we found out that surgery was imminent. 

One evening, whilst picking up my youngest daughter from a youth group meeting, my cell phone rang.  I answered and promptly received an update, from this fellow's father-in-law, informing me that a ruptured appendix was one of the things surgeons were about to explore for.  I passed the news to the present youth sponsors and then began the drive home.  Along the way my daughter asked me what an appendix did.  I replied that I did not know.  Her response was, ?It must be one of those parts that God put in our bodies to make us more complicated.?

I don't know if God puts parts in our physical bodies to make them more complicated, but I'm pretty sure that He does in a different body ? the body of Christ (the church).  I know this to be true for two reasons.  First of all, the Bible tells me so.  Paul explained in 1st Corinthians, ?. . . But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it (chapter 12:24).

My second reason to believe that God has put complicated parts in the body of Christ is the evidence of that truth I see in every church.  Without exception, every church that exists has people in it who are best described as ?a bit out there?, ?a different kind of duck?, or even as ?high maintenance?.  They are the people who make pastors brace themselves when they speak at business meetings, elders cringe when they volunteer to lead a ministry, and mothers nervous when they talk to their daughters.  Without a doubt God has put them there to complicate church. 

Why you ask?  The answer is in verse 25 of the same chapter quoted above, ?. . .so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.?  God puts some people in churches so everyone will slow down from their busyness and have to make the effort to love each other.

So, the next time you are at church and see someone complicated and you are tempted to wish they would just leave and not come back, beware!  They are the appendix of Christ.

Pastor Tim Davis, Copyright 2004
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Pastor Tim has retired from pastoring local churches and is now working alongside his wife to help refugees and persecuted Christians.

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