ReIMAGINING CHURCH

 ¶ For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body,

though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
First Corinthians 12:12

After Christ ascended back to His Father, He then sent His Spirit into the world on the Day of Pentecost to construct His body, His bride, the Church, throughout the earth. Jesus Christ had already revealed to His apostles that He had come not just to save the lost but also to gather the saved into what He called: the Church. Clearly, Christ thought the Church was one of the centrepieces of His plan to save and teach the lost. But what did the original apostles imagine that Jesus meant? Almost certainly they imagined that Jesus meant something like the synagogues that they were already used to. This would explain why all of the earliest churches that the apostles commenced were structured in exactly the same way as a synagogue’s leadership was structured. But as the Church grew and spread across the Empire, the way each church was organised was reimagined. Then over the following centuries as churches spread across and beyond the Empire, it was reimagined again. History reveals that what some church leaders imagined for the Church was far from what Jesus would have approved of. Despite this, in the final revelation that Christ gave to the last surviving of His apostles (“The Book of Revelation”) He presented John with a vision of a glorious, victorious, enormous church, to deliver to seven of the persecuted churches of Asia Minor. Yet there seems to be a huge gap between what the Church became, and perhaps is, and what this revelation declared it would one day be! The lessons from this gap between history of the Church and this ultimate vision of Christ for His Church described in parts of the Book of Revelation should cause us to realise that we need to reimagine how our church can be what Christ imagined it will become and to do what we can in our generation to close that gap!

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God,
who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God
might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 3:8-10

INFORMING OUR REiMAGINATION OF THE CHURCH 

To reimagine what Christ and the apostles thought of “church” we have to get a glimpse of what the church is described as doing in the New Testament.

Firstly, we can see that the church met each Sunday as their priority (1Cor. 16:2).

We can see that it was organised with and led by gifted and called leaders (Eph. 4:11-12; 1Tim. 3). These gifted and called leaders were trained to care and minister to people’s needs accordingly.

We see that when the church met they fellowshipped together over food and drink and often ate meals together (Acts 2:46).

Their meetings were both small and large, in that, they all met together and they met in smaller groups within each others’ homes (Acts 2:46-47; 20:20).

We see that it conducted its gatherings in an orderly manner under the oversight of these leaders (1Cor. 14:40).

Prayers were offered to God for [1] their rulers and leaders, [2] the needs within their church, and [3] for people to be saved (Col. 4:2; 1Tim. 2:1-4).

They sang their worship to God together (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16).

The Word of God was read and then explained through preaching and teaching (1Cor. 15:2; 2Tim 4:2).

An offering was taken up when they met (1Cor. 16:1-2; Phil. 4:18; 1Tim. 5:17).

They had a formal membership process and roll (“the right hand of fellowship” Gal 2:9; 1Tim. 5:9-11).

They baptised new believers (Acts 2:41; Rom. 6:1-5).

The Lord’s Supper was regularly celebrated to commemorate Christ’s atoning death (1Cor. 11:26-29). 

They exercised the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit to minister God’s grace and edify each other (1Cor. 12:4-11; 1Peter 4:10-11).

While this is how the church functioned for the first few hundred years of its existence, the historic record shows that it ceased doing many of these Christ ordained functions. Let us consider some of the glimpses in the Book of Revelation of how Jesus foresaw what His Church would ultimately become.

 

A VISION OF A GLORIOUS, VICTORIOUS, ENORMOUS CHURCH

¶ After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10

¶ Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude,
like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder,
crying out,“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult
and give Him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and His Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
¶ for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
Revelation 19:6-8

The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.
This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection!
Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ,
and they will reign with Him for a thousand years.
Revelation 20:5-6

 

OUR REiMAGINATION OF THE CHURCH 

Having looked at what the earliest churches uniformly did, and what Christ revealed it would one day become, let us now reimagine how these aspects of those churches’ activities might be done today.

Early Christians recognised that the significance of the Jewish sabbath as a day of rest from normal activity to come together with God’s people to worship, receive God’s Word, and pray, was transferred to Sunday (the first day of the week 1Cor. 16:2). This was at a time when the Greco-Roman world did not have “weekends” where either Saturday or Sunday was set aside for either Jews or Christians to worship! Thus, coming together on Sunday to worship, fellowship, and even eat a meal together, would have been especially special for those Christians who were slaves! These slaves could come together with wealthy people and be treated as an equal because of what Christ had done by saving them too. We now live in a world where diverse people rarely have a time and place to meet together as equals — but our church can be that for people today!

We live in a world where leaders are often susceptible to corruption and pathological behaviour (that is, they don’t really care about others). But our church can model servant-hearted leadership to the oppressed, downtrodden, despised, depressed, and demonised. While a few of our leaders will be paid a modest wage, the vast majority of our leaders will serve as volunteers without expecting anything in return – with the exception of an occasional thank you – but ultimately, the longing that one day they will hear our Master say, “Well done good and faithful servant!” (Matt. 25:21).

Much of the music that our culture enjoys today is focused on the self and contain lots of pronouns such as me, my, I, mine. The music and lyrics we use in our contemporary worship is not performed by celebrity musicians or performers. When we worship together we are not focusing on ourselves. On the contrary, we are worshiping by focusing on GOD, our Heavenly Father and His Christ, and we do so by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Our time of singing our worship together is a crucial antidote to the world’s toxic  obsession with the individual and the self. While the Church has produced many hundreds of hymns in generations gone by, we can cultivate fresh sounds and lyrics to declare timeless truths about GOD.

In a world that has its priorities all messed up, our church can be a place and people where priorities are realigned to accord with the priorities that make for peace and good mental health (Matt. 6:33). This is why we should buck against the cultural trend to view Sunday as just another day and take a stand to treat it as the the Lord’s day (Rev. 1:10). But we can also create sacred spaces and times to provide doorways and bridges for those unable to join with us in our Sunday morning Worship and Word services. This is why our livestream is proving so invaluable to many people who are not able to be present with us on a Sunday.

The world likes to segment and put people into boxes – often generational boxes – but we can reimagine our church to be a place where people of all ages meet together and interact. This can give people a rare opportunity to mingle together as a multigenerational clan.

Let’s reimagine church in other ways too – not by abandoning what the Scripture describes are those Christ-ordained aspects of our various functions which I have listed earlier, but by reimagining how they might be done today. And may we increasingly know the love of God the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship with the Holy Sprit, as we do so!

Your Pastor,

Andrew

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