What is Church? part 2
I anticipated the mess as seen in my post Let's define Church! I did that on purpose.
Sometimes you gotta say radical things to get to the heart of the issue here. Of course I have a method to my madness. I just want answers. Answers matter here.
A friend at SimpleChurch said, "Our first challenge in grasping what God intends the church to be, is to stop looking at it through the lens of our background and through the lens of 2,000 years of "church" as a formal institution."
Dee Hock says: "The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it."
What is Church? That is the question. How Church is expressed is NOT the question.
Now can we have some sanity here?
What is Church? How we define Church carries serious ramifications on how she is Expressed. How she is expressed is a secondary question. Now you know the rules, lets answer the question, What is Church?
posted by Bob Carder @ 12:33 PM
21 comments
21 Comments:
Plainly put, the Church is the Bride of Christ, the unified body of BELIVERS. The Church, in her purest form, flows organically, listening, seeking and obeying the voice of the Holy Spirit, knowing that a movement for Jesus CANNOT begin without a movement of the Spirit. when those are manufactured, we end up with things like the crusades and the inquisition.
But above all, THE LORD BUILDS HIS CHURCH! so often we think we do, but it is not us or by or strength or our cleverness or effort that the church is built. it is only by His working.
This is a difficult question, and i dont like asking these, but this one i must. To all the pastors who read this blog: how many goats are with your sheep? how many? Can you tell them apart? How many of them will be seperated for slaughter at judgement and will cry "but they told me i was a sheep!"? in short, are you witnessing GOD buliding His church? or are you witnessing the fruit of your own fleshly labor?
Alright Zack - you did real well. Zack is another disciple in our disciple line.
As you can see there is transformation and clear understanding here.
We don't give anyone in our disciple line a pass on not making disciples.
Now we are cookin up something great.
Wow Zack, I am so proud of you. The disciples in your disciple line are blessed to have you leading them on the straight and narrow.
Yeah, I agree. But I think you also have to go beyond that. You must also realize that any organism has an organization. Let's look at another analogy that I will borrow from St. Paul. The church is the Body of Christ. Zach, you said that. Great! But you forgot to show that a body has structures and form and parts and organization. You cannot have a living, breathing body without an organized way of keeping it all in line. The Church, too, must have such an organization, with Christ being the head, the control center. It is Christ who organizes the structures. With the various gifts, we are organized in different areas of the Body. Some are pastors and elders, some are evangelists, some are teachers, some have the gift of mercy and others the gift of encouragement and so on...Pastors are pastors because they are gifted as such. Teachers for the same reason. Elders the same. encouragers and mercy-givers the same. The structure of the church is not a bad thing. In fact, it was ordained by God. Yet you guys in the majority of these discussions that I have seen are revolting against what God has created. The position of pastor is not manmade. It is God-made.
And one more thing about the goats and sheep thing you mentioned. It is not our place to differentiate between them. That is God's business and he will take care of it in the end. We are to preach the word to all who come to hear it. It is largely up to them and the finality of their own souls to decide if they want to be a goat or not. Let God pick and choose and divide between the goats and sheep.
Other than that, you have a good definition of the Church. And I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on those basic tenants. We are only disagreeing on the extensions of that definition and also on the parts that you left out (structure).
We're not revolting against what God has created, we're revolting against what man has perverted.
God is a God of order, yes. There is organization and structure within the Body, absolutely. We don't advocate some Woodstock atmosphere. All we're pointing out is that 95% of the churches out there run in a way that is not in the Bible.
"disciple line"???
So in your approach, some are disciples of Bob, some are disciples of Zach, some are disciples of Apolos and some are disciples of Paul. That has a familiar ring to it, but I can't seem to place where... hmmm...
Funny though, I thought we were all disciples of Jesus, but Zach is teaching me some new stuff here.
right on j.r. i made that same point in the post that came after this one
Did i ever say we are not disciples of Jesus? where did i say that?
to phil,
homeostasis; the body's way of maintaining itself. the body has processes built in since birth to keep it alive. Since God is the one who builds the Church, wouldnt it make sense that GOd is the one who builds the systems? if He is, why on earth do we think that those systems would be made by man?
I do know what homeostasis is. ANd thanks for pointing this out. I do believe that the structures we have in the established church are ordained by God not man. The pastoral position is a role ordained by God. Those who teach are ordained by God (ie. Sunday school classes. a teacher cannot teach without a class). I am not disagreeing with you on this. I too ask that question, Why would those systems be made by man? I simply do not see them as such. God created the church. God created the deacons and elders. God created the preachers and the teachers.
Homeostasis is also more like this balancing mechanism that keeps the body from getting out of whack. God balances us through history. He is the one that guides us, keeping us from becoming too liberal in theology or too legalistic in theology. He is the one that guides the big ship. He will not fail us.
phil,
as youve stated before, we disagree on a lot. and without intervention of the Holy Spirit, our viewpoints are rather irreconcilable (i love that word, if i spelled it properly). Obviously, as we are in the same generation, we have had entirely different experiences of the church structure. Not to say i have been burned by them, cause i havent. the day the Lord commanded me to leave was a peaceful calm acceptance of the inevitable for me. But when i look at our strucures, and see all the money spent on building AND EXPANDING an atrium to the cafe, and how all that money COULD have gone to widows and orphans, it makes my blood boil. When sermons no longer carry any weight whatsoever, when the people in the church look EXACTLY like the people outside of it:no one is challenged, no one is growing, but LOTS of people are hanging out. The more i looked at it, the more i knew that in light of what i read in Acts, we were called to live for so much more than we have been living for. And God, not Bob, called me out, and called me toward the thing we've been talking about these past weeks. Of course, a blog is NOT the ideal discussion setting, because too much is lost between the electrical impulses on the screen.
and i know that homeostasis doesnt com[pletely describe what i was trying to convey. i just couldnt for the life of me remember how to describe autonomic functions of the brain :)
homeostasis? Really?
Curious how the claim has been (my paraphrase) "unlike the rest of the corrupt churches in America we are al about the Scripture" and then your arguments are supported by appeal to rationalism.
To JR: his claim has reasonable basis because Scripture has a reasonable basis. The Christian faith is logical and does make sense. Homeostasis is a good way of showing God's work in the church. I do not think they are claiming the arrogant statement of "after 2000 yrs we finally have it!" I think they are just reaching a different type of person.
To Zach: I, too, to a great extent disagree with how money is sometimes spent in the church. And it is a shame that we do not reach out to "the least of these" as often as we should. We are beginning to realize the errors of our fathers on this one. The pendulum is swinging back in that direction anyway.
I guess we do, simply put, have different experiences. You say that you could not get excited about God in the established church. I, in my experience have seen and felt the awesome wonders of God in the church. I have seen lives changed in the structures. What is more, I am a pastor's son and have had the privilege of the "behind the scenes look" at the church thing. And yeah, I have seen some really mean people in the churches we have been at. Yeah, people sometimes act as though they have been baptized in pickle juice. But I have learned to get past the hypocrites that are out there. I am not letting them stop me from truly experiencing God and letting him work in and through my life. I will let God deal with the oddly godly. But I have great hope in the church, even in the church the institution. It has worked for so long. God has moved in amazing ways. I want to work to preserve what God has brought us here, so that more and more true believers would come to know him in deeper ways.
What you are embarking on in your "out of the box" type of ministry is something brand new. It ought to work well for those people who have not been so fortunate with established church as I have. Maybe we are just sent to reach people that are like us? That makes sense. You reach people that I could never reach. I have different gifts and personality that your type of people might be turned away from. And vice versa. Maybe we should just stick to our camps. Stick to what we each know and do best. As long as we both stick to the Truth of Christ and cling to the orthodox dogma of the Church universal, I think we should be ok. We are both missionaries: I to those that need a tradition they can believe in with a style that they can trust as being time tested. My type are not as skeptical of organized, structured things. You might be sent to a generation of postmoderns, skeptics of structure, yet open to spiritual things. As long as we both stick to the Truth of God's Word and the authority of Jesus Christ, we both should be ok. (and that goes for you too Uncle Bob).
Good stuff. Glad we could finally get to this point.
But going back to the original post here... Bob quoted some people about we need to ignore the 2000 yrs of tradition of the church. I think it is important that we all in both camps continue to look back over the years. If we don't we could get wrong interpretations of Scripture. We should stand on the sure foundation that so many died to build, with the ultimate foundation of the foundation being Christ. Though our method of reaching the lost is different from the way Augustine or Justin Martyr or John of the Cross reached the lost of their days, we should still cling to what they taught, what they did, how they lived, etc. Even my method of reaching the lost is different from the way they did it so long ago. But I will still cling to the essentials that they brought us. I hope that you guys can do likewise. Blessings!
Hi Phil, you wrote, "To JR: his claim has reasonable basis because Scripture has a reasonable basis. "
I agree with you, but you missed my point. Some folks here want it both ways. The argument earlier in the thread is that Bob is not "rational" because the Gospel is not "rational" and we must listen to the "Spirit and not reason. Now we come to posts that are rooted solely in reason. Which is it?
But here is where you loose me Phil. First you say, " I do not think they are claiming the arrogant statement of "after 2000 yrs we finally have it!" "
Then in your next post you say, "But going back to the original post here... Bob quoted some people about we need to ignore the 2000 yrs of tradition of the church."
Okay, so which is it?
Overall, I am with you in the concerns you express here brother.
ahh..you got me. I realized that once I posted. I think they do not have the arrogant attitude that the first comment would suggest. I think they would acknowledge that the church has done a good job in the last 2000 years. At least I would hope they would go that far. They just do not think that this is the best way to go in our present cultural situation? Now that I think of it, I am not sure how they view church history. Bob? help? Hopefully you don't think that they did it all wrong in the past?
And on the rationality thing...they did say it was all about the Spirit and reading the Word with the Spirit, but my argument is that you can and should have both rationality and the Spirit. The logic that they presented just proved that. Christianity is a logical/rational belief system. It is something that makes sense. We would not have apologetics without reason. Even faith has a bit of reason in it. But I do see your point that they claimed one thing and yet ascribed to the other. I am just showing that they can have both. And they demonstrated that point whether they meant to or not.
Phil - you say "The pastoral position is a role ordained by God."
I only find the pastor expressed 9 times in Scripture. 8 in Jeremiah and 1 in Ephesians.
Can you help me understand how God ordained the position and where it is described.
My understanding of history is that this position devoloped later through the office of Priest first and the as a carry over to pastor after the reformation.
Are you equating the role to that of Bishop or overseer? Help me understand your statement.
Hi Terry, Happy Sunday!
Yes, the pastoral position is ordained by God. Though the term "pastor" may only appear a few times in the Bible, it does not discredit the fact that God created this position. The word "Trinity" does not appear anywhere in the Bible, yet it clearly exists.
Let's look at 1 and 2 Timothy and the book of Titus. These letters are typically referred to as the "pastoral letters" because they provide instruction for pastors and pastoral teaching. Now, of course I am aware that Paul does not call these positions "pastor," but it is clear that he is talking about pastoral positions. He calls them "bishop" "deacon" and "overseer." These are all one in the same. If we look at the descriptions of these positions, they are clearly pastoral.
Now the specific term "pastor" is clearly derived from Christ as the Good Shepherd, the Good Pastor. We get the term "pastor" from the Greek word meaning "shepherd." I am sure you are aware of this. Essentially, the pastor of a church is to be the shepherd of the flock, modeling after the Good Shepherd/Pastor, Jesus Christ.
Finally, yes, the pastoral position has some basis in the Jewish Priest. I would be wrong to say otherwise. But isn't this position also created and ordained by God in the Old Testament? I am pretty certain that it is. It was included in the Law of Moses. Therefore, it was ordained by God. Now if we look to Christ in light of this, we find that he is the fulfillment of the Law. He did not come to destroy the Law. In fact in Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus actually says that not the least stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law. So, if Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, then I think it would make sense that God would carry over the priestly position from the OT to the NT. Does that make sense? The priestly position is now fulfilled in the pastoral position. The High Priestly position is now fulfilled in the High Priest, Jesus Christ.
So, yes, there is the evidence for the ordained pastoral position. Hope it helps. Let me know if you have any other questions or comments. Thanks!
Phil
PS. the pastoral position did not begin with the Reformation. It was always there from the beginning. Even the Catholic/Orthodox Priests are really "pastors," as they oversee a flock of Christians. This all stems from the mind of God as evidenced in his Word (both the written and living) :-)
""""Even the Catholic/Orthodox Priests are really "pastors," as they oversee a flock of Christians.""""""
Agreed. the Catholic/Orthodox Priests were the first "pastor positions" Too bad Martin Luther didn't actually do anything about that, so now we have to now.
??????......not even worth the rebuttal......
There is much to be said about the Church exercising her gifts in the Body. I love it when I see Ephesians 4 gifts at work and unleashed. Let em go!
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