Using the Manufacturer's Parts

I will continue my posts on kingship next week. I have something else to share today.

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My mower was back to 100% today. I purchased the mower 3 years ago in the spring. During the winter after the first year, the blades rusted up (something that happens every year but I did not know that at the time). When I started the mower the following spring, the belt quickly smoked up and snapped. Now I know to loosen the blades by hand prior to starting it for the first time every year.

At that time, I looked into buying a replacement belt. The manufacturer's belt would have ran me $30. I decided against that and looked for ways to save money. I went to a local farmer's hardware and they sold me an industrial quality belt for $20. It was quicker to arrive than if I ordered the manufacturer's belt and cheaper too. It worked pretty well. The only problem was that the first few speed gears quit working, but overall it could do everything that my mower could do before.

Earlier this year, I mowed over a big stick. The stick got caught in the belt and ruined it. Goodbye industrial mower belt. I then proceeded to buy an even cheaper belt that ran me $12 at the local hardware. I got what I paid for. My mower would stall in tall grass if I took a week off mowing (something I do quite frequently - I am allowed this since I live in the country and only have bean fields as my neighbors).

I went on vacation. The grass was too tall when I returned for my cheap belt to get more than ten feet without stalling. Remembering how good my mower was when I first bought it, I went to the local hardware and ordered the manufacturer's belt. After paying $40 (it went up since it broke the first time) and spending a half hour installing it (which is incredible time for me), I now have the manufacturer's belt installed on my mower. This morning, my mower ran just like new. It cut through three weeks of growth and never showed a sign of stalling. It almost made me enjoy mowing.

While riding the mower, I thought about the church. In Acts 2, we see that the church lived in a life sharing the Apostle's teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. If you looked around at churches today, I do not know if we could honestly describe them as sharing in those things. Churches all over the place focus on other things rather than these, and I think it is to their detriment. Churches can still prosper and keep going without focusing on these things; however, for optimal discipleship, they do need to live practicing the four pillars of the early church life.

For me, I used alternative belts because I wanted to save money and . For the church, it seems like we push the four pillars of church life to the side because we want to be more appealing, they are out of fashion, or they just seem irrelevant. It might creep in slowly. It did with my mower. First, I saved a little money and time. Then I saved even more money and my mower became useless. I actually did not even save the $12 on the final belt; it was wasted money. I was left needing a new belt for my mower or to just let my yard grow.

There is no such thing as cheap Christian community. It is costly. Each person involved needs to live sacrifically towards one another. We need to share meals together, to pray together, to share in the apostle's teachings together, and to be in fellowship with one another. Those are the belts of the church.

I think the church would be much more effective if we still used the manufacturer's parts. My mower is.