EXERCISE?

I go there three times a week. The Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center. It has everything—pool, spa, myriad machines and weights to enthrall and engage (and entrap) every muscle, ligament, and tendon of your body, ball courts, well-appointed locker rooms, orange juice in the morning, ample supplies of fresh towels … everything! And I go there thrice a week.

Of course, all I do is sit on the exercise bike. Nothing else. I don’t care for the free orange juice. I don’t watch their innumerable TVs. I don’t plug my ears with music while doing the hamster thing on the bike. I read. And when I’m done with my magazine, I’m outta there! I read on the many sofas sprinkled on every floor. I read in their shower. My own world. Oblivious to the glories of Landry.

And I also enjoy watching some of my Dallas Seminary colleagues sweat their lives out. Well, those old guys really need it! As for me, I just read.

It’s true, as one of them astutely pointed out to me: “You could read at home, you know.” I do! I just need a change of scene. So I go to Landry. Three times a week. To read. On the bike.

I was thinking these deep thoughts the other day, rather morosely, ruing the fact that I’d gone to medical school. Ignorance would have been bliss and I could have avoided making the thrice-weekly guilt trip to BTLFC. Yeah, guilt! And high cholesterol. That’s what makes me go there.

I wonder how many of us go to church like I go to Landry.

Guilt? Or maybe you just want to read … or sleep? Or listen to some inoffensive music? Some of these church enterprises even provide a decent cup of java. And depending on the preacher, one could, if you were lucky, be entertained for a short bit. You know, a few movie clips, a joke or two, a rant on sin. Fun! And all this for a couple of quarters in the collection plate. Great deal. Keeps the guilt at bay … at least till next Sunday. Our own world.

I hope not.

For there is no Christianity without the church. Every believer is an integral part of the church, the body of Christ.

Now you are Christ's body,
and individually members of it.
1 Corinthians 12:27

If body, then body parts. And for a body to function as one healthy and united entity, all the individual body parts must be working optimally doing the work of the Lord together.

Therefore, my beloved brethren,
be steadfast, immovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord,
knowing that your toil
is not in vain in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:58

Well, if each believer is a body part, then each of us, as a body part, is called to be an active part of the body—not like me at Landry, in my own world, unconscious of all else, assuaging my guilt.

So then we pursue the things
which make for …
the building up of one another.
Romans 14:19

Prof. Howard Hendricks of DTS once said that folks going to church are either “pillars” holding up the church—active, functioning body parts—or they are “caterpillars” crawling in and out of each service—non-/dysfunctional body parts stricken by paralysis.

No more stupor. No more slumber. Let us move into action, functioning for the good of the body.

… let us consider how to
stimulate one another
to love and good deeds ….
Hebrews 10:24

Let’s get some exercise!