the Good Question

I just read the following article, written by Neil Cole (author of "Organic Church," "Cultivating a Life for God," and the new "Search & Rescue: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference") in this month's "Tools & Trainings for Organic Church Movements" e-newsletter from CMA Resources. I thought I'd pass it on to you. Good thoughts, Neil.

As the world looks at our churches, particularly in the West, it sees only what people have done or what programs they are doing. The world is not impressed. In response, we scheme and plot and plan, "What can we do to make our church more appealing to the people in our community?" This is, once again, the wrong question. It's as if we we're trying to boost God's approval ratings. It is God's name that is at risk, not ours, and we are not responsible for protecting His reputation. He can handle that, by Himself, just fine.

A better question is, "Where is Jesus seen at work in our midst?" Where do we see lives changing, and communities transforming simply by the power of the Gospel? Where do we see fathers restored to a life of holiness and responsibility? Where do we see daughters reconciling with fathers? Where do we see addicts who no longer live under the bondage of chemical dependency? Where are wealthy businessmen making restitution for past crimes that went unnoticed? These are the questions that lead people to recognize the living presence of Jesus, loving and governing people's lives as their King. When people encounter Jesus, alive and present as King, they get a taste of God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

If Jesus is missing in our understanding of church, He will likely be missing in our expression of church as well.

I have come to understand church as this: the presence of Jesus among His people called out as a spiritual family to pursue His mission on this planet. That's what a church is....simply Jesus Followed.

Pressing on,

Neil Cole

Labels: church, churchplanting, community, first-century thinking, house church, organic church, radical change, simple church, The Upside-Down Way

Last week, I posted an article entitled "Organic Community in Hebrews 10:25," which was a continuation of a discussion I have been a part of that began on Maggie's blog, Alternative Church, and has centered around Jeff Rhodes blog, Chaordic Journey. (Maggie has since commented on the discussion via "Striking a Chord.")

My article last week was largely a direct quote of my comments on Jeff's first post in the discussion, and what follows is a revised version of my comments from his second post.

Jeff said,

I feel that much of what is done in institutional churches is shrouded in so much tradition and formalism that Jesus can and has often been snuffed out. This may not be the case in all situations, but I feel that it IS so in MOST cases. Quite often, many of the activities, programs, systems, structures, etc. only serve as a distraction from intimacy in our "one another" relationships and our relationship with Jesus....

This does not mean the same thing can’t or doesn’t happen in "house" churches. In fact, it does. The location of the gathering is quite irrelevant to me. What defines an "organic" church is not the location or even the size of the gathering, but rather what happens in the gathering and in the lives of those who gather every other moment they live.

In other words, "organic" church is not so much about meetings as it is a way of living everyday as a part of a dynamic community of believers who seek to passionately follow the Way of Jesus in all that they do.... It is about the life and vitality of Jesus breaking into our reality everyday. It is about God’s will and activity in heaven coming into our world through us and in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think maybe the best place in Scripture which captivates the idea of "organic" church is Hebrews 10:23-25.

All of this gets us thinking about two questions: "What makes a particular community of believers organic?" and "How can an organization or group of people become an organic community?" I choose to answer those questions by reflecting on what I call "the Central Formative Principle¹ of an organization."

Labels: church, churchplanting, community, first-century thinking, house church, ministry, organic church, Organic Community Life series, radical change, simple church

I've recently been following an interesting discussion (here, here, and here) on organic church and community over at my friend Jeff Rhodes' blog: Chaordic Journey.

It all started with a couple of posts (here and here) on Hebrews 10:25 by Maggie (a.k.a. "Mudsy") over at Alternate Church. [UPDATE: Maggie has also since mused over the discussion thus-far with her article "Striking a Chord."]

Maggie said,

I began to study Hebrews 10:25 with passion. What first hit me was what it did not say:

• It didn’t say be sure to go to church every Sunday
• It didn’t say be sure that you gather in a specially designed building
• It didn’t say be sure you join an institution
• It didn’t say gather in one place around one primary leader
• It didn’t say make sure you hear a 1-hour sermon every week (or a 40-minute one, or a 30-minute one)
• It didn’t even say how often to meet.

Labels: accountability, church, churchplanting, community, discipling, first-century thinking, house church, ministry, organic church, Organic Community Life series, radical change, simple church

Again—and for the final time in this series—let’s ask ourselves, "What observations may we make, from the New Testament and church history, about the operation of churches in the first one-hundred-or-so years of the existence of the institution of the local church?" and "How might persecution alter the way our churches operate or the way we perceive what things are important?"

In light of the fact that the world had very few copies of the Scriptures, and that the first printing press was yet to be invented for another several hundreds of years, what teaching methods were employed by the pioneering Christians of the first century? There was no curriculum. Very few people in the world owned a personal copy of any substantial portion of the Bible. How much emphasis was placed upon Scripture reading, repetition, meditation, and memorization? What might this teach us about the value of community in Bible reading and discussion?

How geared were church meetings toward lost people? How sensitive were church meetings, ministries, and programs toward potential church members? In cases of persecution, church meetings were most certainly not public knowledge. So, in what ways did they assimilate new members?

Were public offerings made, or were the regular offerings secretly received? Did they take Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6 to apply to the local church?

How frequently did they practice the Lord’s Supper? Did it coincided with the Passover? Was it a weekly event? Was it scheduled, or was it observed as needed?

How did they conduct church business? Do we have Scripture to prove that they always voted before making decisions? If so, how were children’s opinions weighed against those of adults? Did they set aside a particular meeting for the purpose of handling business? Rather, did they tackle each item of business as it presented itself? Were certain sorts of business left to the wisdom of the overseers, deacons, and other leaders? If a particular church were organized in a “house-to-house” manner, how might their business be performed?

How much commitment was expected of members? How significant of a lifestyle change was expected of new Christians uniting with a church?

When “the church” was mentioned, did their minds automatically picture a building or a programmed-service? Did people come as they might come to an entertainment hall?

Did they ever have an “altar call”? Did they have an “altar” at all? Did they play music during the invitation? We must always respond to God’s Word in some manner, but how were these responses manifested?

Did they “dedicate” babies? Did they have a sort of “chapel church”? Were young children baptized?

Did they just baptize people because they wanted more church members? Or, was church membership seen as a benefit of being baptized and not its purpose? Was baptism itself considered solely to be a means to an end, and not also an end in itself? Was their view that the only ultimate purpose for church membership is to help the local church fulfill Great Commission of Christ?

As we compare our way of doing things with what we know of theirs, then we find that some of our practices are ill-founded—perhaps even ridiculous—, and that others are simply left to our discretion and, within reason, dependent on culture and circumstance, it makes no difference how we do them. Simply put, there are things to which we must hold, but there are also many things over which we have great freedom. Some hills are worth dieing on, and some are only worth looking at as we pass them. We hold some things in an open hand and some things in a closed hand.

I think this is a healthy exercise. It helps us to reassess our priorities. It helps us to remember what is strictly biblical, what is unbiblical, and what is neither. It helps to stretch our minds beyond the confines of our cultures, traditions, and preconceptions. It helps to prevent us from becoming legalistic cults or libertine social clubs. I hope you have found the above questions and observations interesting. There are many other questions which could be asked, and, of course, many other observations made, but these should stimulate your mind to think “outside the box,” or, rather, “outside our box.”

I will leave it to you to think about these things more deeply.

Labels: church, churchplanting, culture, first-century thinking

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork in Part 1, let’s really dig into the application of our principle of first-century thinking. What observations may we make, from the New Testament and church history, about the operation of churches in the first one-hundred-or-so years of the existence of the institution of the local church? And how might persecution alter the way our churches operate or the way we perceive what things are important? Those are good questions. Let’s jump right in and see what answers they provoke.

In the Bible, God never really commands His churches when or how frequent their meeting times should be. While many in America would be quick to shake a finger at any church deciding to omit a Sunday-night service, we have no indication that the early Christian churches met for two different meetings on the same day. For that matter, Sunday was no day off for the people of the Greek world, and many of the Christians probably met either in the early morning hours before work or the evening hours after a day’s work. They knew that the Sabbath is fulfilled by resting in Christ (Hebrews 4). On the legal Sabbath, many would go to a synagogue and attempt to teach the Gospel of Christ, and they chose instead to meet together on the next day of the week, but we are not even restrained to coming together corporately on that day. Moreover, it is entirely possible that some of them met every single day, making our three-service tradition seem awful paltry.

The Bible never designates church roles other than “overseer” (today called “pastor”) and “servant” (“deacon”). We have the freedom to appoint a brother or sister to a particular role (such as ministry- or program-coordinator or teacher). It also seems that some first-century churches had several pastors. And there might not have been one man who led over them. If a church is in unity, with the leadership cooperating and led by the Spirit, and the church as-a-whole communicating and likeminded, then Jesus is at liberty to head His church. Can a church be a church without one man at the lead? Sure it can. In many cases, it might be wiser to have one “lead” pastor, but still we have freedom in this area, too.

Here is another thing: Did the New Testament churches ever send their pastors packing? Sure, in certain cases the churches were responsible to practice discipline, but did they play “pastoral chairs”—pastor swapping? I’m not sure that the way we do it is necessarily wrong, but is it really all that healthy as a norm? Shouldn’t indigenous leadership be the goal? Isn’t that what we require of our foreign missionaries, to establish indigenous leadership on the field? When a man is given a title, it is not the same thing as being given leadership. He earns leadership over an extended period of time. He grows into the title. Why don’t we focus on raising up men who will have already earned leadership in the local congregation by the time they are given the title, so that they don’t have to spend the first two years of their ministry in the local church trying desperately to earn the privilege to lead?

Did all of those ancient churches meet in full membership for each meeting? Or did they sometimes meet “from house to house”—a practice we call a “cell-group” or “multi-site” model today? If the necessary meeting space were not available (as the case might be for a large church under persecution), could a church operate without ever meeting in full quorum? There are ways for the church to still operate as a whole, govern itself as a whole, and provide for participation with the whole, without meeting in a single space as a whole.

For first-century churches, how were their meetings arranged? What was the content like? How did speakers address certain issues? How much of the meeting was devoted to prayer? How much was devoted to testimony? Was it a firm rule to sing during every meeting? Did people get up and sing “specials?” Did they have the same speaker for every meeting? Did they have Sunday School? Did they have any sort of class format? For that matter, were they ever separated by age group? If they had separate classes, how were teachers assigned? How centralized was the teaching? Did all teachers teach on the same subjects? Who chose what was taught? Was there just one sermon or lesson given during a meeting? How long were these meetings? How structured was the time they spent together? Were the meetings programmatically scheduled? How dynamic were the meetings? Where the meetings the same every single time. How interactive might their meetings have been? How much was the congregation treated as a passive audience?

Think about these things. Apply first-century thinking to your ministry and understanding of the Scriptures. Next time, I'll leave you with the third and final installment of First-Century Thinking. Until then, God bless.

Labels: church, churchplanting, culture, first-century thinking

When I hear the term "that old-time religion," I don't think of the way things were fifty years ago. I don't think of the two churches I grew up in—the city church with the huge pipe organ or the nearly two-century-old country church with the big picture of Jesus and Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb painted on the wall behind the pulpit. I do not think of the churches as they were when Billy Sunday preached his great crusades, or even of the days of the circuit preachers, of Edwards, and of Spurgeon. No. I think of the first century. I think of pure Christianity, before heresy and hypocrisy overcame Christ's fledgling churches. I think of simplicity—not that life was simple, just that they didn't have hundreds of years of tradition, pretense, and lethargy to keep them from their Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Once they understood that this thing—the church—was totally different from the religious systems to which they were accustomed, they were freed to shape their churches within the loose framework given in Scripture and progress in their purpose.

By "loose framework," I do not mean to say that there aren't rules. There are. That's why I used the word "framework." We have a framework for the operation of our churches. But it's not so meticulous that there is no room to adapt to changes in circumstance. It's a framework, but it's loose. Let me give you an initial example of what I mean by "loose," before we get into this further: the Bible is clear that a church must regularly meet together, but it never requires Christ's churches to meet in buildings (let alone own property). In the first century, Jesus personally led His church, which often met outdoors. In later times, church history tells us that some churches met in systems of cave-tombs, known as "catacombs," under Roman cities. If buildings are not even required for churches, then it follows that there must be no prerequisite architecture, decoration, ornamentation, or furnishing that is saddled upon the churches by the Lord Jesus Christ. Churches may meet in buildings, or they may not. If they choose to meet indoors, they may meet in rented facilities, living rooms, restaurant lounges, prison camps, or underground sewers. They may use pews, collapsible chairs, cots, bean bags, pillows, sofas, stools, or the floor—or they may choose to stand the whole time. They may choose to use a sign to identify to the public their meeting location, or they may not—this would certainly not be a good idea during times of serious persecution and martyrdom. They may choose to build a steeple on the peak of the roof of a building they own, or they may choose to use all available roof space for energy-collecting solar panels to save on their electric bill. There are a great many things that God simply leaves to our discretion, as guided by His wisdom. I often think of the first-century churches when I seek an answer concerning how a church should operate today. There is tremendous value in this exercise—something I call, "first-century thinking." Apart from the example given above, what other observations may we make, from the New Testament and church history, about the operation of churches in the first one-hundred-or-so years of the existence of the institution of the local church? How might persecution alter the way our churches operate or the way we perceive what things are important? If the claw of persecution were to clamp down upon your church tomorrow (as it did in the first century), how would things have to change, in order for your church to not only survive, but to continue pressing on in the Great Commission work?

I'll leave these three questions to you to ponder for a time. Give me your thoughts, if you wish, and look forward to "First-Century Thinking (part 2)."

Labels: church, churchplanting, culture, first-century thinking

Community is a central theme in the Bible. From the beginning, God has chosen to represent His infinite Being to us as a community we call "the Trinity." With the creation of the first human, God created a fellowship between God and humanity, and He communed with Adam in the Garden. Then God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18), and He made Eve, creating the institution of the family, a community. Roughly two-thousand years later, God established a nation, a spiritual community, a peculiar people to represent Himself to the nations. And another two-thousand years later, He founded a spiritual community that has multiplied itself and changed the world with the Gospel Message—the local church. And finally, God will unite His whole Kingdom in a great spiritual community for eternity.

From even before the authoring of the Old Testament, the Message of God was given in community. For over 6,000 years prior to the regularization of Bible printing and public distribution, no one but an extreme few had a personal copy of any substantial portion of the Scriptures. The Bible was read, taught, and memorized in community. Our practice of personal study time is a historically recent idea. It's a very good thing. But we cannot allow the privilege of personal Bible study to replace the necessity of Bible community.

Following the ignorance of our individual need for spiritual community, there has been a trend which has existed for only a short time in Christian history (and has now begun to wane) by which the work of the multiplication of churches is expected to be accomplished by lone men. This kind of solo ministry fails to follow the New Testament example of missionary work, while excuses for it remain primarily financial. I will not make my case for team ministry so that we might fit into some arbitrary church-planting model (though, certainly, the New Testament provides a model), but so that we might follow the crucial Biblical principle of spiritual community that lies behind that New Testament model.

Bible community is a discipling relationship. Discipling is as necessary for a growing Christian as parents are for a growing child. A child without parents may grow up to be a well-balanced, mature adult, contributing to society, but—to put it plainly—the chances are slim. The primary difference (and one to be noted) is that Christians never stop growing as children of God, unless they are diseased or malnourished. Therefore, Christians have a continual need for some sort of discipling. There are two basic discipling relationships: rabbinic discipling (of which Jesus & the Twelve, Paul & Timothy, and parenthood are examples) and mutual discipling (of which Paul & Barnabas and any other two peers are examples). Where the New Testament provides examples of church-planting work, we never see an instance of a missionary planting a church by himself. Not one. In fact, there are only a few occasions in which we even find that the apostle Paul is alone at all—when he journeyed into Arabia (Galatians 1:17), perhaps while in prison, and for a short commute on-foot between the Mysian cities of Troas and Assos (Acts 20:13). What we do see are those two discipling relationships as the model for church planting.

Can a man carry the enormous weights of ministry alone? Perhaps it's possible, but it's not what God has planned. How many good, capable men are swept into severe depression? How many burn out? How many fall into immorality because of a weakness that is not held accountable by a brother? How many quit? How many only remain because they see no other means of providing for their families, or out of pride? What happens when a man, standing alone in a vast valley, is attacked by the Enemy? What happens if there is no peer to pick him up? Should a man be able to overcome his obstacles, his sins, and his weaknesses on his own? I suppose he should. But God knows that none of us will. He has a better idea. "Two are better than one, in that their cooperative efforts yield this advantage: if one of them falls, the other will help his partner up—woe to him who is alone when he falls and has no one to help him up. Again, if two people sleep together, they keep each other warm; but how can one person be warm by himself? Moreover, an attacker may defeat someone who is alone, but two can resist him; and a three-stranded cord is not easily broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 "Complete Jewish Bible"). "Just as iron sharpens iron, a person sharpens the character of his friend" (Proverbs 27:17 CJB).

Bible community begets Bible community. If you want to start a church, you should start with a little church, a core group, a church-planting team. An individual man could start a church by himself, but a church that is started by an individual will likely become a church that is founded by that individual. Jesus is the true founder of the church—there is no other. And when a church is started by one man, the church will probably have an unhealthy attachment to him. He will become its foundation. This comes to light when he leaves and the church drops in attendance by half or searches for a pastor to replace him who is exactly like him, but no one measures up. More than that, he will build his weaknesses into the church he plants.

When Paul planted churches, he usually had with him several men, of whom were Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Titus, Luke, John Mark, Judas Barsabbas, Gaius, Aristarchus, Sopater, Secundus, Tychicus, Trophimus, Erastus, Onesimus, Epaphras, Demas, Crescens, and others. Paul was not the only one to provide us with an example of ministry through Bible community. Jesus sent out the Seventy in pairs (Luke 10:1). Barnabas, at one time, took John Mark with him (Acts 15:39), and Zenas and Apollos were doing missionary work together (Titus 3:13). If Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the other great men of the New Testament saw the need for such community in ministry, we have little excuse to neglect it.

So, maybe you do have the talent and leadership ability to start a church on your own, but that’s not a good reason to do it. Forget what you (or other people) think you are capable of. God will use you best when your ministry fits your character more than your ability. As for me, I don't want to ever do ministry by myself again. I know that I need to be a part of a team of at least one peer who will strengthen me where I am weak and to whom I can contribute my strengths, so that together we may plant a church that has all of our strengths, and none of our weaknesses (prayerfully). I need that mutual discipling in ministry community for me, for everyone around me, and for God.

You need to be a part of a Bible community that will provide accountability for you. If you have no vibrant level of accountability in your life, you have placed a very low cap on your spiritual growth, and thus on the ability of God to use you to change the world. So, what does this mean for you? What are some things you must change? Are there any decisions you should make? The sooner you get plugged into a vibrant Bible community, the better—whether you are a church planter, a working man, or a single mom.

"In the American church, the church will allow you to prostitute yourself, if you choose to. They will hire you based on your talent, overlooking all of your character, and then when you crash, they'll pretend they never saw the signs. And I think that we have to really step up to the challenge to run as fast as our character is deepening, and not as fast as our talent is expanding" (Erwin McManus).

Labels: accountability, churchplanting, community, discipling, ministry