The complex Body of Christ cannot be measured in real-time

The body of Christ is a complex entity. It is growing more complex by the hour.

By analogy, the human body is also a complex entity–one we can hardly understand at any given point.

When the body is sick, we can go to a doctor. The doctor could have numerous tests run: blood tests, brain tests, MRIs, CTs, X-rays, and the like. All of these tests are expensive and time-consuming. Instead, wha ttypically happens: a doctor starts with some very basic heuristics that they use to diagnose issues. They’ll take your temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate. They’ll ask a set of simple diagnostic questions.

Then, they will (in my experience) try the thing that best supports your body’s complex systems to deal with whatever the sickness is, in the least invasive way. If it’s a virus (cold, flu, etc) they’ll generally just recommend rest and lots of fluids.

Knowing precisely what your body is doing at a cellular level to battle the sickness is impossible. All of the tests are broad ‘order of magnitude’ signals, but to do anything we have to “encourage” the various bodily symptoms to continue doing what they’re doing. (In some cases, for example, we might take an antibiotic, or we might take a fever reducer, or a pain reliever, etc. These may support, enhance, or control the body’s immune responses–but they don’t directly command the immune responses.)

Just as we can’t know what our body’s cells are doing, so we will never know what the whole of the Body of Christ is doing to spread the Kingdom and be a witness. This spread is at the “cellular” level of individual workers and churches. It can never be completely controlled from a “global” perspective. Trying to direct the functions of the individual cells would be akin to a doctor trying to control all the cells fighting off a particular disease.

We can get some general understanding of what’s going on - with the functional equivalent of “taking the temperature” (which I would liken to the work of Operation World, Joshua Project, and the World Christian Encyclopedia), or at great expense, we can “order some tests” for certain regions (when researchers help to do studies of particular peoples, cities, countries, etc). But I doubt we will ever have a 100% real-time global view of all that is happening.

We can use the vital signs and the occasional test, however, to encourage a sort of behavior. If we use these to envision people with opportunities and possibilities, we can promote Kingdom-spreading activities without trying to control them. The body helping the body is what we should be about.