ReIMAGINING CHURCH

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!

Pastor at Large,

Andrew

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THUS SAITH THE LORD!

Has God spoken to us in His written Word? We trust that He has! Nearly everything we do is built on trust. When we eat we trust that we will not be poisoned by the cook. When we go for a walk we trust that other walkers will not bump us out of their way. When someone tells us something we trust that they are telling us the truth. In fact, there is hardly anything we do in our everyday lives that does not involve trust. While we generally trust those we have come to know, we readily trust some people whom we do not know if they are people possessing appropriate authority such as a policeman, or a medical doctor or an airline pilot. The right authority invites and engenders trust. Christians trust the Bible because it derives from the highest authority – >God. In fact, Christians have good reasons for believing that the Bible is divinely inspired and the only infallible and authoritative written Word of God. The Bible is not the only ‘book’ that God has given mankind. Christians believe that God has given two ‘books’ to mankind – the written, authoritative Word of God, and the ‘book of nature’ – and that by either a person may come to know the Creator. But Article 2 of the Belgic Confession (originally written in 1559) states why it is only the Bible which is authoritative:

We know him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith, Romans 1:20. All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse. Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.

 

HOW THE BIBLE WAS COMPOSED

Christians believe that the Bible was composed as a result of God superintending certain people, whom He at times: (i) commanded to write His words (Exod. 17:14); or (ii) directed them to record certain historic accounts from their perspective (Num. 33:2); or (iii) guided them to record their prayers and devotional reflections (eg. Psalm 48); or (iv) had them document their verbalised worship of God which could be sung by others (eg. Ps. 9:2); or (v) write letters to address errors and wrong practices among certain believers (eg. Paul’s epistles to churches); or, (vi) write down certain visions they may have received from the Lord (eg. Daniel 10:8ff; Rev. 1:11ff). God also used editors and compilers to produce and preserve parts of His Word (eg. First and Second Kings). For example, king Hezekiah’s scribes had access to some of king Solomon’s proverbs which they compiled together. “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied” (Prov. 25:1). It also believed that the five books comprising the Psalms, which originated after the Jews return from their exile, was compiled by Ezra who contributed two of the one hundred fifty psalms (Psalm 1 and 119).

 

HOW THE BIBLE WAS DIVINELY INSPIRED

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a written statement of belief formulated by more than 200 evangelical leaders at a conference convened by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and held in Chicago in October 1978. These theologians and church leaders formulated a statement of 19 declarations. 

“Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit,
is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed,
as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires;
embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises”
(The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Shorter Statement Article 2).

The Bible was composed by God’s superintending of its composition. Having noted that this included God directly revealing His Word to some whom He then commanded to write it down (eg. Rev. 1:11; 14:13; 19:9), we also noted that God directed, led, guided, and moved (2 Pet. 1:21) certain others to write His Word to mankind. This was done by His Holy Spirit “breathing” upon these writers. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It therefore appears that some of those used by God to write His Word were aware that this would be result. “The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now…But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Dan. 8:26; 12:4). While others may not have been aware of this. “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her” (1 Cor. 7:12).

The mystery of how God inspired His Word extends to biblical writers sharing their lack of knowledge of certain events and the Holy Spirit ensuring that this inability to recall was recorded accurately and honestly. For example, “(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else)” (1 Cor. 1:16). At other times, it is even the same author who is not aware that they are writing what the Spirit has said, but what they are writing comes from the omniscient mind of God! “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. 4:1-3).

 

HOW THE BIBLE IS INFALLIBLE

Christians do not consider that the Bible was divinely mechanically dictated to its writers (unlike Muslims who claim this about their Qur’an). Rather, the Bible’s intended meaning was divinely inspired and infallible (incapable of being wrong) in a way that it is not entirely dependent upon a precise series of words. This feature of the Bible’s divine inspiration has enabled it to be translated into any language from its original source languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek). Translators strive for precision in what the original autographs resembled by doing textual criticism (comparing all the known ancient manuscripts of the Biblical documents to ascertain where scribes and copyists had made errors) and incorporating any new discoveries of more ancient and reliable manuscripts.

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching,
no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history,
and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.
(The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Shorter Statement, Article 4)

As our scientific knowledge of the natural world increases, and confirmation of historic events described in the Bible based on archaeological discoveries including discoveries of ancient near eastern (ANE) writings (sometimes recorded on earthenware pottery and tablets) have silenced the criticisms of the Bible’s reliability from yesteryear. For example, the Bible’s scientific claims – such as the creation of the world out of nothing, now referred to scientifically as the Big Bang, was once mocked by critics such as Sir Fred Hoyle (professor of astronomy, Cambridge University) prior to the mid-twentieth century before Edwin Hubble’s discovery of “red shift” was confirmed that the universe must have indeed had a beginning.

In recent times, critics of the Bible have mocked its sexual ethics, particularly its prohibitions against homosexuality and formication, as being out-of-date and written by ‘unenlightened’ people. Some, who claim to be Christians and who affirm that the Bible is indeed God’s Word, yet practice homosexuality, often assert that those parts of the Bible which condemn homosexuality are not divinely inspired. The problem these “gay Christians” have is the irreconcilable words of Christ about gender, sexuality, and marriage in Matthew 15:19-20, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone” and Matthew 19:4-6, “He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Many ‘gay Christians’ such as activist Matthew Vines now admit that the Bible can not be used to make their case for the compatibility of homosexuality and Christianity.

The Bible’s infallibility is also frequently challenged by those responding to faulty interpretations of the Scriptures, rather than what the Bible actually teaches. For example, as Prof. Daniel Graetzer (Professor of Natural Science and Mathematics, Northwest University, Kirkland Washington) points out, there are things assumed by some Christians which are not stated in the Bible (such as the age of the universe, or the age of our planet, or the date of when homo sapiens appeared on earth) yet are declared as if it does. He notes, “A significant minority of scientists hold this view…The YEC [Young Earth Creation] view is also popular among laypersons who vary in their grasp of the scientific issues involved” (Studies in Human Biology, p. 34).

Often the criticisms of the Bible made by its opponents are based on an interpretation of what it says rather than what it actually says. This is why it is important to understand the principles of hermeneutics – the art and science of interpreting literature – which accommodates how we understand poetry, metaphors, similes, and hyperboles. For example, no one believes that Jesus was claiming He had door-frame hinges just because He said He was a “door”! “So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7).

 

WHY THE BIBLE IS AUTHORITATIVE

The Bible is authoritative because it claims to be the Word of God. “This God—His way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him” (Psa. 18:30). The prophets whom God used to write His Word specifically describe these moments of divine inspiration with the expression, “Then the word of the Lord came to me” (for eg. Jer. 42:7; 43:8; Ezek. 1:3; 3:16; 6:1; 7:1; 11:14; 12:1;13:1; 14:2). Jesus described the record of these divinely inspired messages as “the word of God” (Matt. 15:6) and referred to it as “Scripture” (‘the writings’) and declared that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). Jesus also stated that the “Scripture must be fulfilled” in Him (Luke 22:37; John 13:18; Acts 1:16).

In the New Testament epistles we have internal references to the teaching of the apostles recorded in the Bible as Scripture which the writer of Second Peter states, “Our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:15b-16).

We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historicaI exegesis,
taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it
that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizlng, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.
(The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Shorter Statement, Article XVIII)

Within the sixty-six books of Scriptures we have a unified and coherent revelation from God about His identity as the Creator, the Law-giver, the Redeemer, the Saviour, and the Final Judge. Its sixty-six books tell one story – God’s plan of redemption and conquest over and ultimate vanquishing of evil. Within the Scripture is the revelation of how to be reconciled to God by having our sins forgiven through Christ. It is the Scriptures which assure us that we have one mediator between us and God the Father – Jesus the Christ (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 9:15; 12:24) through whom we can directly appeal. It is within the Scriptures that we find the commands of God for how we are to live, conduct our lives, order our affairs, treat others, and prioritise our worship of God. Thus, we are not permitted to just be “hearers” of God’s Word, we are to accept its authority and be compliant with its commands and imperatives (Rom. 2:13; 1 Tim. 4:16; James 1:22-23) – because it is the Word of God. Has God spoken to us in His written Word? We trust that He has! Does the world know what it says? I doubt it. This is why we need to tell them and declare, “Thus saith the Lord!”

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.