The Household of God (1)

At the end of the final post in the What does Ecclesia look like? series, I raised the issue that often comes up when I discuss this subject: So What?

Sometimes I find it hard to understand that people don't see the implications of some truth or a new idea for us humans.  If what I have said is true, there are enormous, earth-shaking if not earth-shattering implications for humans generally, and for Christians in particular.

At the end of that post, I constructed a large dot-point list of some of the many implications of the teaching in that series.  That list serves as a kind of hook into this series.

At the beginning of this series of posts, I note that one implication in particular relates to this question: "If not 'church', then what?"  My answer to that question is ...

THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD.

So let's begin a new adventure.

When you spend a lot of your time writing, there is something unique about that moment when you realise you are not alone in how you see things.  That feeling came over me when I found the page “What is the Ecclesia?” by Ben Williams.

Ben Williams has written:

"Ecclesia" is an entirely different word with an entirely different meaning than "kuriakos" ("church")

Eventually, through the manipulation of organized religion, "church" came to replace "ecclesia" by popular acceptance. Indeed, churches have achieved their goal-- to neutralize Christians!

Thousands of times a week, all over the globe, preachers are heard to say, “The Greek word for ‘church’ is ecclesia.  And that is the big lie of it all.  The Greek word for ‘church’ is kuriakos and it is not used in the New Testament at all to speak of the new covenant people of God.  It literally means “belonging to the Lord” and it is used once in 1 Corinthians 11:20 when speaking of the Lord’s supper and once in Revelation 1:10 where John says he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”

The Greek word that is used in the New Testament for the new covenant people of God is ekklesia and it should never be translated ‘church’.

This graphic comes from the website I linked to above.

Throughout my writings, I use the Anglicised spelling ecclesia, but it is the same word.  So… what was an ecclesia in the time of Jesus and Paul?

I believe Williams is correct when he says, on the above website,

The Greek "ecclesia" was "a civil body politic." This is strong proof that the Christian "ecclesia" we read about in the New Testament was an INDEPENDENT CIVIL BODY OF CHRISTIANS -- independent from rulers and man's government. Their objective was to be free to serve King Jesus. This phenomenon had nothing to do with building and attending churches! Churches are NOT ecclesias!

If one takes the Old Testament (old covenant) paradigm, God’s chosen people are referred to as His Possession and the place where He meets with His chosen people – whether temple or tent – is His house.  In Greek, ‘His Possession’ translates as Kuriakos; the place where He meets with His people is called the Kuriakos doma – the ‘domicile’ or address for the meetings of God with His chosen people.  That was part of the prescription for the people of God pre-Jesus.

In the new covenant however – that is since Jesus – you will not find this concept.  Since in the new covenant God doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands, the New Testament scriptures use a different expression altogether.  And even when the writers wanted to talk about the concept of ‘God’s House’, they did not choose to use kuriakos doma – they used the term oikos theos, the household of God.

And here’s the really good part – they took the common word for a civil body of people and put it to a new use describing God’s new covenant people as distinctly different from His old covenant people.

Ben Williams puts it well:

“What, then, did the writers of the New Testament mean when they used the word "ecclesia" to describe a Christian body of people? Obviously, they meant the same thing: a body of Christians called out of the Roman and Judean system to come together into a separate civil community. It meant a politically autonomous body of Christians under no king but Jesus. No man ruled them! Only Christ. And, that was the reason these same Christians ran into trouble with kings and rulers; got in trouble with Caesar; were arrested, crucified and martyred. They dropped Caesar and took up Christ.

The ecclesias were diametrically opposed to the Caesars of the world. This is the well-hidden secret about the ecclesia!

Many people are seriously uncomfortable with any suggestion that God has changed, citing the scripture, “I am the Lord; I change not”.  But any careful and honest reading of the Old Testament scriptures will show that God Himself hasn’t changed, but rather it is the ‘administration of the realm’ that has changed.  And I don’t mean that a ‘new guard’ has replaced the ‘old guard’.

Imagine a company decides, through fair and legal means, to keep the same board and the same staff, but change its driving vision and the structures through which it delivers its products and services.  I believe it is the same with God in relation to us humans.

The scriptures say, concerning Jesus, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might  redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

God was and is working to “… His eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11).  Under the provisions of the old covenant operating in the human time-space continuum, God would bless His people on the basis of their adhering to the rules and regulations He gave them – until Jesus.  When Jesus came, the provisions of the old covenant became obsolete and Jesus Himself became the inaugurator of an entirely new covenant – one in which God adopts humans (whether Jew or not) into His family on the basis of the finished work of Jesus in redemption, justification and freedom, in return for those humans entrusting their entire lives (temporal and eternal) to Jesus.

Apostle Paul makes it quite clear that his apostolic commission was to announce, proclaim and herald this new administration and how it works.  Ephesians 3 gives us a good insight into this.

And in this new régime, it is no longer kuriakos doma but oikos theos; no longer God visiting a building, but God’s very own household.  And this household is known as “The Ecclesia of God” – quite literally, the assembly or congretation of God.  Read 1 Timothy 3:14-15.

At no point does Paul revert to the old covenant thinking or language to describe the new covenant people of God or to explain the God-revealed provisions of that new covenant relationship.

Unfortunately, the creature we call “the church” does this all the time, and has done so from the earliest time – I suggest from the time of Paul himself.  [Read the Acts 17 account of Paul and Silas.]  Paul was constantly up against it with the religious nutters of the day; and some of his letters contain strong references to the insidious work of ‘Judaisers’ insisting on carrying the provisions of the old covenant into the new covenant.  Paul never backed away from resisting these incursions – even when it meant a conflict with a fellow-apostle.

Williams makes this important observation: “The ecclesias were diametrically opposed to the Caesars of the world.  This is the well-hidden secret about the ecclesia.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica has this notable entry:

In the New Testament, "ecclesia" (signifying convocation) is the only single word used for church. It (ecclesia) was the name given to the governmental assembly of the city of Athens, duly convoked (called out) by proper officers and possessing all political power including even juridical functions.

An Oxford Dictionary entry under ‘congregation’ says this:

...used by [William] Tyndale as a translation of "ecclesia" in the New Testament, and by the sixteenth century reformers instead of "church”.

And Williams continues:

I have a Geneva Bible (Calvin's Bible) in my office. It, too, comes from the sixteenth century. But, unfortunately, Calvin wanted the word "church" in his Geneva version. Nonetheless, godly Tyndale, and other sixteenth-century reformers who were more reputable than Calvin, did not like the word "church." They used other words like "congregation," "governmental assembly," etc.

I agree fully with Williams on this matter.  And I still struggle to find the best word to use to describe and explain what I mean.  One thing I have found useful is to use a word that has not been in use for a very long time: exclave.

Paul speaks of new covenant believers as ‘ambassadors for Christ’; an ambassador’s base of operations is an Embassy;  an Embassy is an exclave of its home country, geographically cut off from home and located entirely within a ‘foreign’ country.  Paul also describes believers in this world as ‘foreigners’, ‘aliens’ and ‘strangers’.

So…. I may talk about a congregation, an assembly, a gathering, an exclave; made up of ambassadors, foreigners, aliens, strangers; here in our world, spiritually but not geographically attached to eternity where God dwells in “unapproachable light” as Paul described it to Timothy (1 Tim 6:16).  Now we’re getting close to an appropriate translation of the Greek ekklesia.

“The Church”, in its arrogance and its interminable quest for legitimacy, has plagiarised the word ekklesia and given it a false meaning, designed to make “church” appear to be the inheritor of God and the Bride of Christ.

Thus the foundation for everything that follows here is this:

• "the church” is NOT the ecclesia: not now, not ever;
• ecclesia is God’s household of ambassadors – an exclave of saints.

I wish you well,
Kevin.

What does Ecclesia look like? (6 - Final)

ECCLESIA now

If you have followed me to this point, you may well be able to make my next point for me.  What does ecclesia look like?  Not Church!  As I have said elsewhere in this series, the only thing ‘church’ and ecclesia have in common is some of the people involved.

If what is contained in this series is what ecclesia looks like, there are some important questions to be asked and answered concerning this creature we call ‘church’ and the species that perpetuates it.

Let me be very clear here.  One of the fundamental differences between ‘church’ and ecclesia is that ecclesia is a creation of God and is not a physical, ‘seen’ thing separate from the people it is composed of; it is entirely organic.  ‘Church’, on the other hand, always has an existence that is physical and ‘seen’ either as an organisation, an institution, a building, etc.  All these physical things have some form of legal existence separate from the people it is composed of, usually made visible in a document often referred to as a Constitution.  As for the buildings, these are usually legally owned by an individual person or a group of people formally in some kind of legal structure, and recognised and registered with the government of the day.

D.L. Moody – a nineteenth century teacher and evangelist – is reputed to have viewed ‘the church’ as a ‘voluntary association of the saved’.  Could he have understood something that others of his day didn’t?  I’m not sure we can know precisely what was in his mind, but I have no trouble with that expression.  I think ‘the church’ is something that has an existence of its own, created, established and maintained by humans, that one can join and un-join at will.  That also infers that one can qualify or not qualify for membership in it based on the ethos and rules it operates under.  And that infers that other humans may determine who is in and who is out.

Ecclesia has none of these features.  It is the fellowship of the saints, not the voluntary association of the saved.  So many today struggle with the idea of being saints.  One of the main reasons for this is that the creature we call ‘the church’ has taken to itself the right to define what a saint is; and what it has chosen is very different from what the new testament teaches.  W.E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary notes: “In the plural, as used of believers, it designates all such and is not applied merely to persons of exceptional holiness or to those who, having died, were characterized by exceptional acts of saintliness.”  And as he rightly points out, in 2 Thessalonians 1:10 “the saints” are also described as “them that believed” – referring to “the whole number of the redeemed.”

In New Testament Greek, the word for saint has the same linguistic root as the word for sanctify and sanctification.  The root idea has two parts to its meaning: one is separation to God; the other is the work of the Spirit in the lives of those so separated as they are “transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).  God names and calls us to follow Him. In responding as the first disciples did, we too are separated to God and, through what Apostle Paul calls ‘the obedience of faith’ (Romans 1:5), the Spirit begins His sanctifying work; and we are assured that “He who began [that] good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

“To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae” (Colossians 1:2) combines the twin concepts well and is Paul’s description of the ecclesia in Colossae.  Those who turn from trusting in themselves, other people or organisations for their right standing before God and place their trust in Jesus alone are called ‘brothers of faith’ (‘faithful brethren’); they are also called saints; they are the ecclesia.  By this process, each one is organically joined to Jesus Christ and to one another.  One biblical analogy is the human body: all the parts are organically joined to make up the functioning whole; another analogy is that of a building – each one is a living stone being built and knit together by the Spirit to form a “spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5) and a “dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).

When all of this – and so much more – is plainly evident in scripture, why do we pretend that ecclesia is anything different?  And why do we pretend that ‘church’ and ecclesia are the same thing?  I suggest one reason is that we really cannot bring ourselves to believe the “glorious liberty of the children of God” of Romans 8:21.  And why might that be? Well Paul did say that “the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).

The god of this world has tricked many into assuming that “seeing is believing”; whereas the reality of eternity, of God, of spiritual life, is the opposite – believing is seeing.  You want to see something and understand it?  First believe it; suspend your unbelief for a moment and allow the light of God to inform your spirit and you will see as God sees.  You want to see and understand ecclesia?  First believe that it is as Jesus and Paul and others clearly indicate in the scriptures; that it is as a continuous line of prophets and teachers have been saying from then til now; that it is NOT what you see when you look at the creature that goes by the title ‘church’.  Do that, and the light of God will teach your spirit to see according to the Holy Spirit and you will ‘discern the body of Christ correctly’.

‘Church’ is not ecclesia now sick; and ecclesia is not ‘church’ made well.  As I have said elsewhere, they are as different as a fish and a dog; as separate as wheat and tares.

On the way through this series, we have glimpsed many examples of ecclesia, from the ‘two or three’ that Floyd McClung teaches about (based as it is on the teaching of Jesus) to the thousands of Acts 2.  But I want here to make one final distinction.  The Greek word ekkalo chosen to describe new covenant believers (saints) is a composite word that means ‘called-out’.  The saints are the ‘called-out’ ones.  If we take the picture demonstrated in Matthew 10 and Acts 1 and 2, the nature of this ‘calling’ was to Jesus.  The old testament announces this prophetically when it says, “unto Him shall the gathering of the people be”.

But if you examine every case of this calling – whether as recorded in scripture or in the lives of the people in our present generation I have referenced – it is not only a calling unto Christ, it is also a calling unto the mission and the mystery of God “on earth as it is in heaven”, which is the ecclesia.

It is not a calling to collect people, to count them and to tell the world ‘Look at me; I am a success because I have collected 3,000 people and they all love me and listen to me and want me to be their shepherd.’  The pattern of ecclesia is that they are called, they gather, they are dispersed, over and over again.

‘Church’ is about ‘collecting’ in order to demonstrate ‘success’, and so others can succeed when they follow what the first has done – which is, effectively, a gathering unto the person or the organisation or the vision, or the program, or the ministry.

In ‘church’, the people belong to us – our church, our people, our vision, our ministry.  In ecclesia, the people belong to Jesus – His called-out company, His family, His vision, His ministry, and, most importantly, His Headship.

So what!?  That is the question many want answered.

I want to finish this series with a short ‘so what’ and, at the same time, use it as an introduction to a new series that delves into ‘so what’ in more detail.
 

So what?  Well here’s what!

• We believe ecclesia is ‘by the Spirit’, not ‘by the book’;
• ‘The book’ is part of the revelation of the Spirit to ecclesia, not the sum of it;
• We are of the view that Christianity is not a ‘religion of the book’;
• For us, Christianity is “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19);
• We place no special importance on owning or using buildings;
• We don’t condone or encourage the use of an ‘order of worship’;
• For us, it is ‘first apostles, second prophets, third teachers';
• That is followed by an application of the 5 ministries of Ephesians 4;
• Local congregations are not led by ‘Pastors’ or ‘Reverends’ or ‘Priests’
• All true believers are saints and priests unto God;
• Every such person has gifts, calling and ministry for the body;
• Every such person is exhorted to serve in their gifts, ministry and calling;
• The functioning body is a testament to God where it is located;
• We don’t practice or encourage the use of homiletic preaching in meetings;
• We don’t practice denominational ordination;
• We don’t conduct denominational birth, marriage and death ceremonies;
• We don’t condone or support the idea of special or sacred clothing;
• We believe gatherings/meetings are for participation not passive observation;
• We don’t elevate one gift or talent over another but encourage participation by all;
• We don’t practice or endorse ‘the tithe’ but rather generosity;
• We encourage giving systematically, individually, privately and proportionately;
• We practice ‘the Lord’s Supper’ as participation in Christ (1 Corinthians. 10);
• We practice baptism as participation in Christ (Romans 6; Colossians 2);
• We practice marriage as a lifetime spiritual union;
• We practice wedding as a familial and social celebratory event;
• We devalue the world’s idea of ‘educated’ in favour of God’s idea of ‘taught’;
• The new testament is not a ‘how-to’ manual but a ‘how-we-did-it’ guide;
• As man is the head of church, Jesus is the Head of Ecclesia;
• Ecclesia is of eternal immortal (not of temporal mortal) substance;
• Ecclesia is a worldwide band of brothers and a clan of equal heir-ship (Matt. 23:8);
• Any person anywhere can have God without religion or ‘church’ or priest;
• We have one Father, one High Priest, one Leader, one Spirit;
• We are the fiancée of the King of kings and Lord of lords;
• Our dream, our passion and our vision is that the world see Jesus alive here;
• We encourage people to stand firm in liberty and reject guilt and bondage (Gal. 5:1);
• We have no interest in erecting an organisation or a building;
• We reject the business model/template in favour of that of an unbroken blood kinship;
• God’s eternal purpose is our mandate and mission;
• All leadership flows from Father Son and Spirit and is visible as serving;
• God’s oversight is administered via His under-shepherds (Ezekiel 34/Ephesians 4);
• Decision-making is by living according to the Spirit and the gift of discernment;
• Authority belongs to Jesus and is delegated via submission to the will of the Father;
• ‘Covering’ is achieved by abiding in Christ and loving one another;
• There is only one ‘denomination’ (the people of God) and God is their covering;
• The normative beliefs and practices of ecclesia is the ‘apostolic tradition’ of the N.T.

Blessings,
Kevin.

What does Ecclesia look like? (5)

Mezzo ECCLESIA – the Town/City/Region Congregation

The Revelation of John records that he was instructed to write messages to the ecclesia in Ephesus, the ecclesia in Pergamum, the ecclesia in Thyatira, the ecclesia in Sardis, the ecclesia in Philadelphia, and the ecclesia in Laodicea.

Paul had correspondence and significant ministry with the ecclesia in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica.  The Romans he addressed as ‘beloved saints’; he wrote to the ecclesia of God which is at Corinth.  The Ephesians he addressed as ‘saints and faithful ones’.  When he wrote to the Philippians, he addressed the ‘saints in Christ Jesus including the overseers and deacons’.  He wrote to the ‘saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae’ and he wrote to ‘the ecclesia of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’
 

Paul had also planted congregations throughout Galatia, a region in the high country of what is Turkey today.  When he wrote to them, he addressed them as ‘the ecclesias of Galatia’ – a group of congregations.

In his understanding, gatherings of the ‘saints’ were ecclesias and ecclesia was the ‘saints of God in Christ Jesus’.  I think this helps us clarify the apostolic understanding of ecclesia in general, of ecclesia as a congregation of no minimum size, and of ecclesia as a group of congregations.

Is there anything written down to help us understand what these ecclesias looked like?  First, I think there are a few sections of the New Testament that help us get a handle on how things were done.  Second, I have found three books particularly helpful in getting an idea of how the early saints and ecclesias functioned.

One:

After the twelve disciples had been with Jesus for a while, watching his life and learning his ways, he “summoned His twelve disciples…[and] gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness…  These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them…” (Matthew 10).  He had previously told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but he workers are few.  Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38).  They were becoming the answer to that prayer.

You may recall Luke’s account at the beginning of Acts where Jesus, before his ascension, gathered his disciples together and told them about the Holy Spirit.  They were not to leave Jerusalem until the promise had been kept that, “…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

Look back at Matthew 10: on their first excursion, Jesus said to them, “Do not go off to the Gentiles and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of Israel.  And as you go, preach saying, ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand’.  Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; freely you received, freely give.” (v. 5-8)

In the days of their training, the twelve were given the power and the authority to manifest the kingdom of God on earth to the ‘lost sheep of Israel’.  This they did and saw many marvellous things done by the Spirit through them.  Only a matter of months later, they were together again – after the death and resurrection of Jesus – and Jesus is again instructing them (minus Judas of course): wait, receive the power of the Holy Spirit, go.  But this time it is a bit different: they start in Jerusalem, but this time they will be taken out through Judea and Samaria to the rest of the world – to the Gentiles!

[As far back as God’s promise to Abraham, it has always been in the heart and plan of God that non-Jews are included in His blessings to humans.]

The eleven, plus the women, plus Mary the mother of Jesus and Jesus’ brothers gathered in an upstairs room in the house where they were staying in Jerusalem.  Luke records it was about 120 people in all and that they ‘…were continually devoting themselves to prayer.’  At this point in time, the gathered company had come to accept the three-fold leadership of Peter, James and John.  Incidentally, you can see the evidence of this in the fact that, apart from Paul’s writings and the book of Hebrews, the remainder of the of the New Testament books are those written by Peter, James and John.

Under Peter’s leadership, the gathered company selects and appoints Matthias to take the place of Judas and take the number of apostles back to twelve.  They prayed some more and trusted the Spirit of God to guide them in their choice.

Then, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place…”  The promise came, the power was received, Peter rose to speak his inspired message to the Jews and Jewish converts gathered in Jerusalem.  The record tells us that, “…those who had received his word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand persons.”

Acts 2 then goes on and explains what happened next:

“They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.  And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.  Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

This is ecclesia in Jerusalem.  This is the first city/town ecclesia.  This is the birth of the ecclesia to which the book of Hebrews is later addressed.  Granted, large numbers of this ecclesia soon dispersed throughout Judea, Samaria and to the remotest parts of the earth, but this is the will of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in action.  This is the congregation (ecclesia) in which Peter, James and John were overseers and elders.

There’s no real estate involved, no buildings, no order of service, no 3-point sermon, no clergyman, no salaries, no costumes, no minister of music, no Sunday school; but look what happened.  It didn’t happen as it did because of the absence of these things, it happened because the people gathered came together as ‘brothers’ to Jesus and to one another, and as sons to God, and as instruments to the Holy Spirit; who came together under the Headship of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to wait on God for what he wanted and needed them to do.

What better definition of a city/town ecclesia is there?  But beware!  Our job is not to copy them, but to go one step behind that:  to learn the principles of ecclesia and then gather to permit the flow of the Spirit and the Headship of Jesus take us into what he wants and needs from us.  Ecclesia is not about a program to be cut-and-paste from one location to another; it is about living breathing saints of God who are in a ‘til death parts us’ intimate relationship with the Father, through Jesus, by the Spirit, meeting together to see the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen like this today because we have decided that we, in our own wisdom and strength, can achieve what we think needs to be achieved by buildings, programs, clergymen and ‘ministries’, and still call it ecclesia.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Contrast modern ‘church’ with the ecclesia of Acts 1 and 2.  With few exceptions, what we do in ‘church’ and how we do it is not in ecclesia; and what is in ecclesia and how they did it is not in ‘church’.  ‘Church’ is not ecclesia now sick; it is another species altogether.  ‘Church’ has far more in common with modern service clubs and charity organisations than it does with New Testament ecclesia.

I conclude that what we call ‘church’ is little different from other service clubs and organisations constructed to bring education, training, social cohesion, morals, welfare, support, charity, etc. to those who need it – and those we feel should have it whether they want it or not.  Its notable difference is that it delivers these things in the context of a religious ethos and program.

You can apply for a job in a ‘church’ and you may qualify or not; in ecclesia you are a brother, servant, minister, priest and saint when God accepts you ‘in the Beloved’ and the Spirit ‘witnesses with your spirit that you are son of God’, through repentance, faith, baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The difference is as vast as outer space; one is natural, the other is spiritual; one is the seen, the other is the unseen, as Paul puts it.

[What I found particularly helpful years ago, was to carefully read through the book of Acts and then when I got to a part where One of Paul's letters was written to the local ecclesia in question, I read that letter, then continued on with Acts. It put a lot of the New Testament in chronological order.]

Two:

As I have listened to people talk over the past 25 years or so, I note with sadness that we in the West – especially the English-speaking West – have a great deal of trouble accepting that some of the words we use are loaded down with hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of historical baggage that we are no longer aware of.  We think a word is crystal clear because it seems that way to us.  Sadly, many of words associated with the christian life fit in this category.

At the top of a long list of such words is the English word ‘church’.  This word contains baggage that goes back almost to the time of Jesus and Paul.  People go into convulsions when I point out that the bible itself demonstrates that the bible is not the only thing called ‘the word of God’.  Yet, we don’t so much as flinch when, day by day and year by year, we hear, we live with and we accept one of the greatest deceptions ever perpetrated upon the disciples of Jesus: that the thing we call ‘the church’ is what the New Testament refers to as ecclesia.

Ch-u-r-ch is roughly the same as k-i-r-k and both roughly the same as kuriakos.  Kuriakos basically means ‘belonging to the Lord’ or ‘the Lord’s possession.  It is very much an Old Covenant expression rarely used in the theology of the New Covenant.  It has no lexical or linguistic connection to the Greek word ecclesia.  Yet, today, we don’t flinch even a little bit when preachers lie to us and say “The Greek word for church is ecclesia.”  It isn’t and it never has been.

Our word ‘church’ is loaded with hundreds and hundreds of years of baggage to the extent that we think the life of the disciples of Jesus for the first hundred or so years after Pentecost is some variation of ‘church’ today.  Few things could be further from the truth.

Think about what is under point One: above.  This is the vision and the model that the first disciples carried with them out through Judea and Samaria and into the remotest parts of the earth.  Our idea of ‘church’ existed in historic Judaism and in the systems and institutions of the secular world.  Ecclesia looked different, sounded different and felt different from the religious orders of the day.  The persecutions of Jesus and Paul are testament to that.  What we most often do in ‘church’ today, I suggest, would be characterised by Jesus and Paul as ‘wood, hay and stubble’, building on sand, ‘works of the flesh’ and ‘dead works’.

I want to recommend to my readers three books that might just jolt us out of our stupor and our error and get us back on track.  It seems that, for all our ranting and raving about the bible, we will not hear what the bible actually says about ecclesia without it being filtered through our preferred grid of ‘church life’.  That, right there, is a serious abuse of the bible and we don’t even see it.

1. Revolution: the Story of the Early Church AD 30-47, by Gene Edwards
2. The Untold Story of the New Testament Church by Frank Viola
3. Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna

In summary, what these books help us to do is re-think ‘church’ as we know it and re-acquaint ourselves with what things were actually like until the ways of man became the dominant paradigm for the people of God.

We can actually get a glimpse into life in the city/town ecclesias of the first century.  It is not pushing too hard to suggest that nothing we do is like what they did.  Even if we factor in culture, language and the passage of time, we are still hard pressed to find a link between how we meet and how they met; how we pray and how they prayed; how we evangelise and how they evangelised; how we pastor and how they pastored; how we plant and build ‘churches’ and how they propagated ecclesia.

Edwards looks at what life was like in those first 17 years after the first post-resurrection Pentecost.  He looks first at Jerusalem, culminating in the death of Stephen; then at Judea more broadly with its 200 (an archaeological estimate) towns, cities and villages; then at Antioch, with its estimated 500,000 mostly Greek population.  Do we honestly think that the massive spread of the gospel of the freedom of Jesus Christ was by means of ‘churches’ like we know today?

Viola’s “Untold Story” is quite an amazing book – a one-of-a-kind, I suggest.  Viola puts the entire story of the New Testament (including eternity past and eternity future) in chronological order.   The reader is taken on a journey through what he calls five ‘motions’.  The first motion is to re-visit the starting point of it all: the Godhead in eternity past.  The second motion is to work your way through the life of Jesus on earth: the Son is sent to earth.

This motion is divided into two chronicles.  You walk through the Nazareth Chronicle and the Galilean Chronicle, noting the hingepin of the drama – calvary.

In the third motion, you walk through the Jerusalem Chronicle as the ecclesia is born, then on through the Antioch Chronicle, the Galatian Chronicle, the Grecian Chronicle, the Ephesian Chronicle, the Roman Chronicle then what he calls the post-captivity Chronicle (after Paul was released from captivity in around 63AD.)

All the while, the reader is immersed in a narrative description where you begin to feel the motion of the whole force of the Spirit as He does what Jesus promised:  “I will build my ecclesia and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”.

The fourth motion looks to the time when the Son returns to earth – what is ecclesia like at this time and what is she doing?  The book then walks the reader through what we see in Revelation to the marriage supper of Jesus and His bride out into what the ecclesia will be doing when the Bride and Groom return to work after the wedding;  The Godhead in Eternity Future.

In God’s story of ecclesia you do not see what we call ‘church’ – it isn’t there.  It is a blip on the radar as the Almighty, through His prophets over thousands of years, cries out “Come out of her my people, so that you will not share in any of her sins or receive any of her plagues.”

The Viola/Barna work “Pagan Christianity” gives an historical record of the pagan roots of all the main features and characteristics of ‘church life’ as has been known in the West for over 1700 years.  The things we do have no roots whatsoever to the teaching and practice of Jesus and Paul.  The things they examine are: the church building; the order of worship; the sermon; the pastor; Sunday morning costumes; ministers of music; tithing and clergy salaries; baptism and the Lord’s supper; and christian education (Sunday school).

They ask the pertinent question: “Have we really been doing it by the book?”  I believe that we have actually been doing it by the book – just not the bible as we suppose.  Rather, we have been doing it by the thousands of other books all too readily available because publishers do not use the gift of discernment and writers are not – to use Paul’s expression – living according to the Spirit.

All of this leads me to a nexus:  I am of the view that, in the West and anywhere Western culture christianity has gone, we can no longer point to an example of city/town ecclesia that reflects what Jesus taught, what the first disciples learnt and what was done by Paul and Silas and Barnabas and Timothy and others in the first hundred years.  Despite this, God’s will and intent has not changed; neither has His execution of His plan.  From the ascended Christ and Pentecost to the present, there is a line of spiritual DNA; there is a ‘remnant’.  There may be tares, but there is a field of wheat that will bring a harvest for the land-owner.

What does the city/town ecclesia look like?  Once again, I come back to Mandlebrot.  Zoom in or out as far as you like, the image is the same.  Whether it is the ‘two or three’ or the worldwide people of God or His called-out ones in a city, town or region, ecclesia looks like what Jesus demonstrated, what the 120 disciples did, what the first ecclesia in Jerusalem looked like and how the hundreds of ecclesias of the first century and a half lived the life of discipleship to Jesus.  And not one of them looked like what we call ‘church’ today – because ‘church’ and ecclesia are two entirely different things with different DNA and completely different modes of being and operating.

The order of the day is to stop saying, ‘We have not sinned; we are innocent’; then repent (do a 180° turn) and admit that we have erred greatly and are guilty as charged.  There may have been a time when ‘church’, being very much like the law, was a tutor to bring us to Christ.  It now cannot do that because it thinks spiritual life is found in it, not in the One it was supposed to point to.  Consequently, as Paul Vieira says, “Jesus has left the Building”.

God is now calling and shepherding His own sheep (by name) out in the hills and the waste country where they have been scattered by the outrageous deeds of pastors and other leaders, and bringing them to His pastures and giving them the shepherds they need and long for.

When we stop wasting time effort and money doing what we are doing and sit quietly at the feet of Jesus, He will whisper in our ear what we need to do next.  What I have found is that, when you obey that whisper, you find you are not alone – indeed you are in the most glorious company: ecclesia.

Cheers,
Kevin.

What does Ecclesia look like? (4)

Micro ECCLESIA – the Local Gathering

My last post talked about Macro ecclesia – the Big Picture of the Body of Christ – the ‘Church Universal’ as we used to say.

This post concerns itself with micro ecclesia – the smallest image of the Body of Christ – smaller even than what we generally call ‘the local church’.

In this regard, I am of a similar view to that of Floyd McClung in You See Bones, I see an Army (David C Cook, Kingsway Communications Limited, London UK, 2007).

I want to encourage my readers to get hold of McClung’s book and read it.  Read it as an informed practitioner.  I know reading is fading away as an occupation for today’s citizenry, but, in my experience over forty-odd years, those who read are the ones also doing the work at the coal-face and on the cutting-edge of spiritual ministry today.

And mind this too: Floyd McClung is not speaking or writing from the position of an armchair critic.  Quite the opposite: he is a pioneering and apostolic servant of Jesus and servant of many people in different and difficult parts of the world – from Afghanistan to the Netherlands, to South Africa.

This is how Floyd lays out the background for the rest of his book:

“No one will die for a cause that is no bigger than Sunday-orientated, building-fixated Christianity.  But people will lay down their lives for a cause that is bigger than themselves, and bigger than the local church building…

“At the same time that we face a crisis of church relevance in the West, there is a spiritual revolution going on in the rest of the world.  Millions of people are meeting in small home churches in China, India, Central Asia and South America.  Without knowing it, they are breaking out of small definitions the rest of us in the West hold dear.

“The ‘rest’ have a message for the West: church is not an institution but an army.  Believers in the rest of the world are not devoted to doing church in religious buildings, but gathering anywhere and everywhere they can to study the words of Jesus and to pray and worship.  The participants in this revolution believe they are at their best when they meet in twos and threes, not two- and three-thousands,  and they don’t see their small gatherings as the purpose for church, but the means for them to be encouraged in their longing to see more people know Jesus.

“The followers of Jesus around the world who do church in small, simple organic communities believe that Jesus is continuing in them what he came to begin 2,000 years ago…

“What Jesus taught about church is so simple anyone can do it.  His example of doing church was a community of men and women reaching out together…  Complicated ways of doing church are overwhelming and difficult to feel part of.  How many people believe they can start or lead a mega-church?

“Success in doing church, as defined by Western methods of church, is often counter to birthing a spontaneously reproducing movement of churches.” (pp. 12-13

More from McClung later.

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Neil Cole, in Organic Church (© 2005 Jossey-Bass [Wiley]) puts it beautifully when he writes, “Most Christians today are trying to figure out how to bring lost people to Jesus.  The key to starting churches that reproduce spontaneously is to bring Jesus to lost people.  We’re not interested in starting a regional church but rather in making Jesus available to a whole region.” (p.24)

I believe motivation is critical.  What is my motivation for doing what I do?  Why am I in this business of being a disciple of Jesus?  What am I looking to achieve?  Or, what is my definition of success in the thing I seek to do?  We need to settle these and other issues within ourselves or we will almost invariably find ourselves dreaming up a plan and copying someone else’s means and methods.  The most likely scenario then will be another ‘Babel’ – another monument to self.

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Similar to Paul Vieira, I believe Jesus Has Left the Building (© 2006, Karis Publishing, Woodland Park CO 80863).  Paul’s chapter one “Outside the Walls” is introduced like this:

“It all started back at a Christian family camp when I was fifteen years old.  Under a beautiful night sky, I asked God to take my life and use me in any way He wanted to.  The only way I can explain what happened to me in that moment was that God lifted me into his loving face, speaking these words: ‘Paul, I need you.’  I know that this doesn’t make any sense theologically.  God doesn’t need anything.  He is perfectly complete in Himself.  And yet, Father graciously spoke to this young teenager to enlist me into His purposes.  I accepted.

“The next evening, after my church’s worship service, I took my guitar and my friends together down to the beach to worship God.  We did this night after night for eleven days, crying, laughing, praying, bowing and dancing on the sand.  A fire was ignited in our hearts.  If I’d only known how deep this flame would burn.” (p. 15)

I want to say to Paul Vieira,

My friend, don’t think “this doesn’t make any sense”; it makes perfect sense.  If the theologians can’t see it, that is their problem.  God is a Father (as you well know), and as Father and God, He chooses how He gets our attention, and He knows how best to relate to us that engineers an unbreakable link between our spirit and His. 

Jesus as a Son is unique in a few ways: first, he was ‘once-born’ (that’s what ‘only begotten’ actually means) whereas we must be ‘twice-born’ or born again; second, He is the ‘elder brother’ with the double inheritance whereas we are ‘co-heirs’ with him of all that the Father is and has; third, he “has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” whereas we struggle at times with our various temptations. 

Remember Hebrews 2:11, “For both He who sanctifies {Jesus} and those who are sanctified {us} are all from one {origin}; for this reason He {Jesus} is not ashamed to call them brothers.”  Whatever theologians may think, Jesus sees us as his brothers, while in no way compromising his wonderful uniqueness.  He even does this “in the midst of the congregation”, declaring “I will proclaim Your name to my brothers”; and he even does it in the presence of the Father, declaring “I will put my trust in {the Father} and say ‘Here I am, and the children God has given me’.”

And my story?...

When I was around eleven years of age, I was part of a boys’ club being run by our local congregation in Ipswich, Australia.  On one particular night as the club leader lead a short bible talk, it was like God looked into my eyes with His love and said, ‘I want you in my army.’  That one moment put my life on a trajectory few had dreamed for me.

It was not until many years later that I discovered the deep significance of how God drew me to Himself.  At the time of this event, I knew I was different from other boys because for some reason I couldn’t do many of the things other boys could, like run or climb.  My little sister, five years younger, was better at these things than I was.  I was skinny and had a foreboding memory of being in hospital for some reason.  I was born only seven years after the end of World War II and many of my uncles had been involved in the war.  Ipswich, where I was born and lived, is home to Amberley, one of Australia’s strategic Airforce bases.  Intuitively, I knew that I would never make it in any man’s army – I was too weak and sickly.  My response to God was something along the lines of, ‘If you love me that much, you’ve got me for life.’

From that moment on, God has always been a very dear father to me.  My dad was small, wiry, very strong, very fast and a coal miner with a reputation that nobody messed with and a temper to match.  His knick-name was ‘hell-fire Jack’.  In 1959, when I was seven, Billy Graham came to Australia and my dad was swept up in the move that saw many Australians turn to face God and deal with their lives.  Dad gave his life to God – I knew that.  Dad had issues – I knew that.  And we three younger children came to know a dad that the older ones hadn’t really known as young children.

Sometimes I say to people that God ‘arrested me with His love’ and they look at me strangely and as if I have said something unintelligible.  When Paul wrote to the Philippians that he didn’t consider that he had ‘arrived’, as it were, he went on to say, “…but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12 NASB)   ‘Lay hold of’ here comes from the Greek word that we generally translate ‘apprehend’ – which we today sometimes use as a alternative to ‘arrest’.  The RSV translation has Paul saying, “…I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”  The RSV here is not translating the individual words but the meaning of the group of words taken together.  Jesus laid hold of / apprehended / arrested me for adoption into the family of God and for a commission he had for me.  I gladly take to myself that for which he took me to himself.  We are joined in a bond stronger than marriage and stronger than death.

God arrested my dad in 1959: the Divine Father was now his Father.  God arrested me four years later and attached me to Himself with a bond of love that cannot be broken.  Dad’s Father had become my Father too.  Dad knew that; I knew that; and dad knew that I knew that.  And the Father knew us both – each named, called and arrested in his own way in his own time.  You know what?  I believe that if there is one distinguishing mark of ecclesia, it is that all who are part of her have a story similar to this – named, called and arrested, for the purposes of the Kingdom of God and the gospel of Jesus.  And it only takes two or three such people, joined together with Jesus, their elder brother, for their lives and the lives of others around them to be transformed steadily but surely into a force that reveals the face of God on the earth.

Now let’s flick back to the top of the post.  Re-read Floyd McClung.  And a little further on in his book, Floyd says this:

“Though Paul pioneered the first church in Europe, it was Jesus who modelled simple church, and defined church in such simple terms.  He did this to help his followers understand the new way of doing things.  Here is the way Jesus defined church: ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’.” (p.44)

Since, as William Tyndale rightly pointed out, ‘church’ is not a word that appears in the original texts of the New Testament, I encourage my readers to substitute ecclesia for church in the above quote.  Here is ecclesia in micro.  Two or three people named, called, arrested (and commissioned) by the love of God and for the love of God to be manifest on the earth, joining together under the authority of Jesus.  Each one has seriously taken to him/herself that for which Jesus took them to himself.

That is Floyd McClung’s story, both in Capetown and “Livingon the Devil’s Doorstep” – read all of his books and you will see it.  That is Paul Vieira’s story – and Jesus has indeed “left the building”, and so did Paul.  That is Neil Cole’s story of ‘organic church’ bringing Jesus to lost people and growing into the likeness of Christ together.

It is also David Watson’s story (see earlier post) – in which two or three (as much as two or three hundred) gathered under the authority of Jesus can and do reflect the will of the Father that ecclesia be marked by the glory of God, the word of God, the joy of God and being united in the love of God.  When David started out in ministry, there he was with a mere handful of people at St Mark’s Gillingham, as he reports, “praying, planning, studying and working together”.

And it is my story too.  After I was arrested by the love of God at eleven, I spent most of the next five years watching people walk with God and reading an old AV bible.  As I read I said to God, “These stories are amazing; but I don’t want to just read and enjoy the stories, I want to experience for myself what the stories are about.”  I think God must have rubbed His hands with glee that day, because it’s been a ride-and-a-half for close to fifty years.

At one stage I got to Acts and read about Philip and the Ethiopian: “here is water, what hinders you from being baptised?”  True to form, God said one Sunday morning, “here is water [the baptism tank], what hinders you from being baptised?”  “Nothing”, I replied.  I talked to the elders and I and a band of other young people were baptised in cold water in the middle of winter in Ipswich.  I was 16.  I still have my old AV bible that mum and dad gave me for my fifteenth birthday.

I’ve been part of groups of hundreds; I’ve been part of groups of tens; I’ve been part of groups of twos and threes.  I’ve been a follower and I’ve been a leader.  I’ve been on my own and I’ve been part of teams.  I’ve been in buildings and I’ve been on the streets.  One thing I have learnt is that ecclesia is the same whether it be two or three, or hundreds; whether it is serving the people of God or serving the world; whether it is planned or spontaneous; whether it is at a friend’s house or the Town Hall; whether it is inside or outside.

Ecclesia  is the living presence of Jesus with at least two or three of his ‘brothers’ as they give all kinds of expression to their intimate union with the Father.

Cheers,

Kevin.