My father’s office in his home has a nautical theme to it.  The walls are painted a dark blue color.  There are pictures of sailing ships and lighthouses.  There is a basket full of sea shells.  There are also bright brass ship’s instruments on the walls.  These give the room the appearance of being part of an actual vessel which is pretty awesome.  Someday I hope to be able to outfit an office of my own in a similar style.  There is one object though in this nautical room which never fails to capture my attention.  It is a model ship inside of a glass bottle.

Looking at the ship inside the bottle, I often had wondered how much time and effort went into the creation of this boat in a bottle.  I did some internet research on how ships in bottles are created and it was a fascinating study.  There are no shortcuts in this model shipbuilding.  The modeler must painstakingly craft each separate piece of the model to the correct scale.  Each piece must be created to be an exact miniature of the original ship in order to keep the ship looking correctly.  Then the modeler has to place them through the neck and into the bottle.  This means working with "mechanical fingers" that stretch eight inches or more away from the hands.  It requires patience and a steady hand.  It is not something to be undertaken lightly.

Yet with all the time and effort that goes into building these model ships what really was accomplished?  Sure it looks nice on the mantle piece or as part of the décor in a room. But what other purpose does it accomplish?  As a boat it should be able to carry cargo, but it cannot.  As a ship it should be able to carry passengers, but it cannot.  As a boat it should be able to voyage to distant places but again it cannot.  In fact its construction is so delicate that a model ship from inside a bottle could not even float in the smallest amount of water.  It would sink to the bottom because it has not been created watertight.  It has the shape of a boat.  It has the parts of a boat.  But is it truly a boat? 

Webster’s dictionary defines a boat like this “a vessel for transport by water, constructed to provide buoyancy by excluding water and shaped to give stability and permit propulsion.”  Does this boat in a bottle live up to the definition?  No it does not.  It is not constructed for transport by water.  It is not constructed to provide buoyancy.  It is not constructed to exclude water.  Finally it is not constructed to give stability or permit propulsion.  In every sense of the word a boat in a bottle is not really a boat.

Some Apostolics are like boats in a bottle.  They spend all of their time finely crafting a miniature Christianity in their life.  They create very small things which are exactly to a smaller scale of what an Apostolic life should be.  They read their Bible very little.  They don’t pray very often.  They come to church when they feel like it.  They are involved in very few if any ministries of the church.  Consequently, they have built themselves a model of Christianity.  It has the shape of an Apostolic life, it has the parts of an Apostolic life, it may even look like an Apostolic life from a distance, but it is not functional.  It can never withstand the storms of this world.  It does not match the definition of what an Apostolic is really supposed to be.  When it is inspected closely, one can see that the Apostolic life that they claim to have, is not built the way that it should be.

Some churches are like boats in bottles.  If you think about the shape of a church, it is usually kind of bottle shaped.  The mouth of the bottle is usually very small but then it expands to include the rest of the bottle.  The doors at the back are the mouth of the bottle.  From the back doors, the church expands to include the sanctuary and platform, just like the shape of a bottle.  But it seems like the church spends all of its time working on the people inside the church, instead of being out among the community reaching for new souls.  We spend our time tending to our own needs and not helping others with their needs.  We never sail the seas of this world.  We stay inside our bottle, inside the church never reaching out or helping to carry someone to a place where they can find salvation.  Is a church really a church if it is not reaching the lost? 

Apostolics, it is not time for saints or churches to build their lives inside the bottles of fear or self absorption.  It is time for the church to be the church.  We call ourselves Apostolic, we should be Apostolic.  We do not create ourselves in miniature fashion but we craft our lives to full scale.  Our prayer life is deep.  Our Bible time is emphasized.  Our church attendance is a priority.  Our involvement in the church ministries is mandatory.  Churches, it is time to leave the walls of our buildings behind.  It is time to take your ship outside of the bottle.  There is a world that needs you to bring them the cargo of the salvation message.  It is time to be the church, not just in name or in looks, but also in words and deeds.  Let us all, set sail on the ship of salvation and let the winds of the Holy Ghost carry us through the seas of this world.  We are created to sail, not to sit on a shelf.

In His Service,