East End Ecclesia

Ok maybe this is a bait question. But I remember hearing an interesting quote a while back, the quote was “the church doesn’t have a mission, it is the mission.” That got me thinking. I some what agree with the quote, but I would rather say “the church doesn’t have a mission, it exists for the mission.” In other words, God did not create the church then give it a mission to accomplish, instead from the beginning God had a mission and He created the church for this mission. In the over arching story we see that Man has fallen, he turned from God and is now seperated from his creator. Because of this fall everything has gotten jacked up. Instead of letting everything go to hell (literally), God began a grand rescue mission, to redeem a people back to himself. But the story doesn’t end there, these redeemed people are then to be a reflection of God’s intent in the world, a vehicle by which He will call people back to Him. But we see in Col 1 Paul tells us that Christ is reconciling “all things” back to Himself. The end of the story in Revelation is a new Garden of Eden, but now it is not a garden but a city on a new (or renewed) earth, a city that is again under the Shalom of God, a new kingdom that has the rightful king back on His throne. This mission to redeem and restore that which was lost was established the moment man fell. From the beginning God was creating a people (the Jews) to be a vehicle in which God could reveal his Character and will, but ultimately He was gathering this people unto himself in order to send His Son the Messiah, to die as an atonement, to reconcile men back to God. He then commissioned His first followers to go and proclaim this great story of rescue, to build a people restored back to Him. But then through some of His followers He inspired letters which tell these people about God’s nature, His will, and how to live in accordance to the coming Kingdom. From the beginning God had a plan and mission, it preexists the church, it preexists Israel. We are part of a much grander story. The end is not to establish churches. Churches are established as a means to the end, which is the restoration of all things back to God. We must remember that as the church we are joining in on a mission that is much grander than ourselves. I have often talked about “expanding the kingdom of God” as synonymous with growing the local church. Now I believe reaching those who are lost and baptizing them into a local church fellowship is a critical aspect of “expanding God’s Kingdom”, but the kingdom is much larger than that. The kingdom of God is not less than the local church, but I think it is much more than the local church. In the end the Kingdom of God is going to encompass everything. The church is God’s chosen tool by which He will expand His kingdom, but the church is not the Kingdom of God.

I think in some ways as a pastor it is so easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that the establishment of the church is the end. If we establish the church, but lose sight of the over arching mission of furthering the message of Christ, declaring the coming kingdom of God, we have lost the core of what the church is to be; A tool for the mission of God. The mission of God is a movement, it is a radical revolution to take back what has been lost. May we never fall into the trap of allowing the church to become an establishment existing for itself, instead of God’s chosen tool, established for the movement initiated by God at the dawn of humanity.

A lot of people may see the title of this blog and see the term “Eschatology” and immediately pass this post by, thinking “here we go again, Eric is going to go on another theological rant using big terms so he can sound intelligent.” Well you are partially right. Eschatology is a subject that is usually only discussed among intellectual seminary types, but I think that it is an integral subject that may play a key role in helping us shape a more biblically faithful ministry. Eschatology is simply the study of the last things. It is the section of theology in which we seek to understand where God is taking history and if we study it properly it will give us insight into the will of God. So I want to take a moment and give a quick look at eschatology and how this will better shape the mission of our church.

The common eschatalogical understanding is that the end of all things will be every Christian taken to heaven to spend eternity in bliss. Multiple times I have heard well meaning preachers proclaim a Gospel message that calls us to repentance so that one day we will go to heaven, a place in the clouds that has Golden streets and all the golf you want to play (it seems pastors like golf so their understanding of heaven encompasses endless days of golf.) Whether or not you are into golf doesn’t matter, but it seems that heaven is often understood as this great resort in the sky. I don’t mean to belittle this understanding but in all of my study of the scriptures I don’t see this anywhere. If you read the book of Revelation you will see the climax of the story is a restored earth, a new Garden of eden if you will. There is this picture given of a great city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven upon earth with Christ seated as King. Throughout the new testament there is this theme of the “kingdom of God” being established on earth. In Matthew’s gospel he sums up the message of Jesus by saying in chapter 4 that Jesus began preaching saying “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In this Jesus was proclaiming that the Messiah has come, the one that the prophets of old talked about. If you read the OT prophesies concerning the coming messiah you will see that the coming of the Messiah meant that God was going to destroy the old system and reestablish His reign over the earth. Now the majority of the Jews during Jesus’ day thought that this meant that the messiah would destroy Rome and reestablish the kingdom of Israel. Often people think that the Jews originally despised Jesus because He claimed to be the Messiah. But as you read in Luke 4 the Jews were excited when Jesus essentially claimed that He is the fulfillment of the Messianic hope. They didn’t get pissed till He continued to state that the Messiah was coming not only for the Jew, but also for the ones the Jew’s thought He would come to destroy. The reality was that the Jews had a very limited and narrow understanding of what the promised messiah was to come and do. The messiah was not coming to liberate the Jews from an earthly kingdom, but he was coming to liberate the whole earth from the destructive rule of fallen man. The term “heaven” originally was used not to describe a physical place, but to describe the realm of God’s full presence (it was also used sometimes to generically refer to the sky). The idea was that even though God is present here and now, there is a vail that separates heaven from earth that was established with the fall. In the OT we see this idea represented in the vale separating the holy of holys with in the tabernacle. The picture we are given within the book of revelation is that one day the vale will be taken down, heaven will be fully present on earth or in the words of John “the dwelling place of God will be with man.” The eschatalogical end is the reestablished Garden of Eden, but it will not be 2 people and a garden, it will be a multitude of people from every tribe and tongue in a great city “the new Jerusalem”. This understanding of eschatology sees the end of the story as a picture of God putting to right all that was lost in the fall. In the beginning the fall began with the rebellion of man which caused a separation between God and man, leading to a severing of the relationship between man with fellow man, and ultimately flowed into creation itself causing the physical world to begin to see decay. So just as the fall began with the separation of man from God because of Adam’s sin, God’s redemption of all things begins with His restoration of Man to Himself through the forgiveness of sin. But just as the fall did not end with man’s relationship with God being broken, God’s redemption of the world does not end with man being restored to right relationship with God. As the fall led to a broken relationship between humanity, redemption should then lead to a restored relationship between humans. Also as the fall ultimately led to a broken and fallen world so will God’s redemptive work lead to a restored world. I believe we see this view being played out in Romans 8 where Paul says that creation is awaiting its redemption because it must await the revealing of the Sons of God.

Now many of you may say, “that is all well and good, and may make for good theological discussion, but what does that have to do with the mission of the Church?” I think this discussion has a very integral role in our understanding of the mission of the church because understanding eschatology is understanding God’s final plan. We must understand God’s mission in order to understand how we are called to join it. Within the popular eschatological frame work of our day, God’s end is to rescue people from hell so that they will get rewarded with an eternity in the “great country club in the sky, aka. heaven.” With this understanding we have begun to shape the mission of the church around gathering as large a group of people as possible with the purpose of getting them to “pray a prayer” so that they can get to heaven some day. Now I am not trying to diminish the importance of conversion marked by prayer or the reality that Christ has come to save us from an eternal separation from God in hell. But the reality is Christ has not come to give us a “ticket” to heaven, but to call us to “repent” or turn from our allegiance to this current kingdom to become citizens of the coming kingdom of God. We must note that the first century debate was not “how one gets to heaven” but “who will be allowed into the Kingdom”. Christ and the early Apostles did not attempt to change the debate but to offer a different answer to the question being raised. The answer to the question was that one was made a citizen of the coming Kingdom by grace through faith in the Messiah. So as ones being brought into the Kingdom by grace, the church is to then live as citizens of the coming kingdom now. Living as a foretaste or reflection of the coming kingdom of God. When we are saved, we are not just left here to try to be good and wait to go to heaven. When we are saved, we are called to live out the kingdom of God on earth bringing a little taste of “heaven” to earth. With this eschatalogical understanding the mission of the church is much grander than the mere gathering of people for the purpose of getting to heaven some day. The mission of the church is to proclaim the Gospel message of forgiveness, calling men and women to repentance, so that together we may be a small city living out the kingdom of God within the greater city of man. As the church we are to live out the “great commission” found in Matthew 28, which calls us to go and make disciples that live out the kingdom teachings of Christ, not to merely go out and make converts. To accomplish this mission the church must dig deeply into the teachings of the scriptures to better understand what “living out the kingdom of God” means, and we must put more effort into creating disciples not merely drawing a crowd to create converts.

I will finish with this. Christ taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven.” I don’t think this is merely nice wording to be prayed. I believe that we are literally calling upon the Father to bring about His kingdom on earth. I also have to believe that Christ, in asking us to pray for this reality is also asking us to live out this reality as His church.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” John 5:39-40

To begin my little exposition of the things that will make up the heart of this new ministry, I must begin with the term “Christocentric”. Christocentric simply means “Christ Centered.” I place this first because it is of the utmost importance. Take out Christ and there is no Christianity. As we see in Jesus’ statement recorded in John 5:30-40, Christ is at the center of God’s revelation. The books that we commonly call the Old Testament were written to prepare the way for Christ, pointing forward to the coming messiah. Then we have the Gospels that declare that the messiah has come. Finally there are the Epistles that look back to the coming of the messiah, working through how we should then respond to this history changing event. The beginning of the story is the Father creating everything through the Son and the end depicts all of creation being restored back to Him through the Son. He is described in scripture as the author and perfecter of our faith, the alpha and omega, the king of kings and the suffering servant, he is both the lamb of God and the conquering lion of Judah. I don’t think there are many churches that would not acknowledge that Christ must be center in all that we do. It is easy to say that as a church we are Christocentric, but working out what that really means is a different story.

When a church says that it is Christocentric, it must first elaborate on what “christ” is center. Almost every heresy found throughout church history had christ at the center of their theology or at least gave him a high position. The Gnostic heresy of the 2nd through 4th century was very christ centered. The problem is that the “christ” they had at the center was a carrier of a divine knowledge, who came to free the divine spark within men from their physical prisons created by the evil demi-God Yahweh. Some Gnostics even denied that Jesus had a physical body. Sure christ was central for the Gnostics, but that christ was far from the 2nd person of the Trinity incarnated as the Man Jesus of Nazareth. There are so many christs out there. There is the Jesus of Mormonism that focuses on a christ that is an example to us, as our oldest brother, the first of the heavenly father’s spirit children. There is the christ that came as our great investment broker, coming to make all of us rich and prosperous as long as we are good people and we invest in his kingdom which happens to be a certain church or ministry. There is the christ that came as a 1st century hippie, showing us how to live in harmony with each other, care for the environment, and get along with people of other religions. You get the picture, there are a lot of christs being thrown around, so making sure we have the true Christ is as important as being Christocentric. I have heard it said “in the begining God made man in His image and since then man has been trying to return the favor.” We can be fully man centered in our ministry, yet take our own desires and image, slap the term Christ on it, and feel that we are a Christocentric ministry. When I say that we are Christocentric, I am talking about the eternally begotten Son of God, incarnated as the man Jesus, who died as a propitiation for the atonement of our sins, and now sits at the right hand of the Father restoring all things back to Him, patiently awaiting the final judgment of all creation.

Another important qualifier when talking about being Christocentric is what aspect of Christ is center. “The way of Jesus” is a popular mantra for churches that are reaching people in my generation. What they mean by this is that they focus on Christ as our great example. When they claim that we should be walking in the “way of Jesus” they are being fully biblical. Jesus walked this earth as the perfect human, He walked this earth in the manner in which we were intended to walk. The problem occurs when we allow this to be central in our focus on Christ. The Person of Christ, not the example of Christ, is the “way” to God. Dr. Tim Keller once said that “the Gospel is good news, not good advice.” The good news is found in the work of a person, not the advice found in His example. Our ministry, our lives, and our hope must be in the person and work of Christ, not in our ability to emulate the life of Christ. Am I saying that we then should not seek to follow the “way of Christ”? By no means, what I am saying is that in order to be fully Christocentric we must have the whole of Christ as center, His life, His death and resurrections, and His Glorification. On the other hand there are many churches that focus only on the “doctrine” of Christ. Christ may be center in these churches, but only the theological implications of Christs atonement are recognized. It is almost as if Jesus is some one we study, not someone we have an intimate relationship with, follow, and model our lives after. I could go on with examples, but the point is that when we seek to be Christocentric, we must seek to place the whole of Christ as center. I remember studying the Ethiopian Coptic church a few years ago. It was interesting to see how differently the Ethiopian church depicted Christ from how we commonly depict Christ in the west. They regularly referred to Christ as the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Conquering lion of Judah. Their art depicted a glorified Christ as a warrior king. They would often depict Him as a powerful African man in Kingly robes, prepared to judge the earth with a sword in hand. This is so different than how we often depict and talk about Christ in the US. We like the earthly suffering servant. We talk about the lamb of God, and love the stories of Jesus with the little children. We usually depict Jesus as a frail Scandinavian hippie, kneeling broken in prayer. Who is right, the Ethiopians or the Americans? I think both are right and both are wrong. First Christ was neither African or Scandinavian, he was a Jew from the tribe of Judah, but what He looked like really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Christ is both the suffering servant and the King of Kings. Affirming the teaching of the scriptures the counsel of Chalcedon stated that Christ is both truly God and Truly man. As biblically orthodox Christians we must acknowledge the full nature of Christ. He was a man who walked this earth, loved the unlovable, suffered, and died on a cross. But He is also the eternal Son of God, risen from the grave, seated at the right hand of the Father, and will stand as judge over the whole creation. Christ is both the slain lamb and the conquering lion.

It is critical that we not just say we are a “christocentric” church, without truly seeking to place the whole of Christ at the center of all that we do. To be truly Christocentric is to have the historical, biblically revealed Christ as the center of all that we say and do. We must have the Person and work of Christ as the end focus of all we preach, do, and say. Our hope must lie in the faithfulness and sufficiency of the Person and work of Christ. Our lives and our ministry must be modeled after Christ, since He lived as the prototypical human, He is our only perfect example. So as a Christocentric church plant we will seek to care for the poor, love the unlovable, fight injustice, seek reconciliation, and stand against the false religious institutions of the world as Christ did. But we will also proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ, pointing people to the person and work of Christ as our only hope for redemption. We will both follow Christ as our “Rabbi” and fall on our face before Him crying out “my Lord and my God.”

I’ve been working on laying the ground work for this new church plant over the past few months. It has been an exciting yet tedious job. There are many of the standard areas that need to be covered, the vision, mission statement, doctrine, core values, strategies, and church structure. As I have worked through these things I have come up with 11 things that will be the values that will shape the approach of the church. I don’t know what to call these 11 things, they are kind of like values but I wouldn’t call them the core values because not all of these 11 things are really core realities. They are more 11 things that will lay out the groundwork for how we will do ministry in Pittsburgh, but they are not doctrines. So for a lack of a better term I am calling them the DNA of the church. I’m not sold on the term, but unless some one out there has a better term, I will be going with DNA. Basically your DNA is a code that is written within all of your cells that will determine what you will be like. At least that is my non scientific understanding of it. Anyway I wanted to just list the 11 things that will make up the DNA of the church. Over the next few posts I will explain each of these realities. I’m hoping to get some input on these 11 realities and maybe someone out there after reading this will have a better way of describing these realities. The DNA consists of these 11 things.
Christocentric
Scriptural
Missional
Holistic
Relational
Incarnational
Counter Cultural
Multicultural
Historical
Creative
Experimental

Like I said I will explain these things later on. But for now I just wanted to throw this out there and maybe begin to get some feed back on the DNA of the church. As for now, I’m keeping it short because I have to finish a pamphlet to be used for raising support. If working through the foundations of the church plant is exciting and sometimes tedious, raising support is scary and often times very undesirable. Maybe I’ll throw on some TBN and pick up some pointers, they seem to be able to raise a lot of money! Just Kidding If you ever see me on the TV with an expensive Italian suit, some Gold, and a few thrones behind me, please pray that the Lord will take me out. No I’m more just hoping I can just pray for a few days and magically the funding will be there so I don’t have to do the whole fund raising thing!! But in case that doesn’t work I’m going to work on the back up plan and put together the fund raising pamphlet and work on a strategic plan for raising support.

One thing that is hard for me is simplifying things. I’m really good at elaborating on things, but I’m not so good at simplifying. I always want to explain the “why” behind the “what” when I speak or write. I guess it comes from the fact that I don’t like when people speak about “what” they think without ever explaining “why” their belief is true. So for me it is very hard to condense my thoughts into a sentence or a few bullet points. This has made it really hard as I work on the written materials for the new church plant. I just finished a church plant proposal that is roughly around 35 pages long. I guess that is ok for me, but I’m not thinking churches and potential support partners will be real interested in reading a mini theses about this new church plant. When I was at a recent church planting boot camp, they encouraged us to have a short sentence long vision statement, have 3 to 5 values to define your church, and have a phrase that sums up your churches mission. The reasoning behind this is that your average visitor and potential supporters need something to catch their attention and stick in their mind. The argument is that you will have plenty of time through preaching, meeting with people, and classes to elaborate on your vision and values, so you don’t need to have everything spelled out on the front page of your website. My first reaction is to write this off as just gimmicky marketing. But the more I think about it, I realize that I want to write this advice off because it will be really hard for me to condense everything and not elaborate, giving arguments for the why behind the vision, values, and mission. So I took the advice and worked on condensing my vision, values, and mission. As I worked on condensing things I began to get frustrated as I wrestled with coming up with a short phrase that will capture the essence of what the new church will be about. I looked at other churches and they all have catchy wordplays or statements to capture the essence of what they are about and I felt they were all much better than anything I could come up with. I checked out Mosaics website and they have written on the front page “Mosaic: a community of faith, hope, and love.” Other churches had things such as “loving God, loving each other, loving the world” or “transforming the world with the love of Christ.” You get the idea, it is that statement that is to capture the essence of what you are about but can fit on a business card. The problem was that all of my attempts at a mission statement thing would only fit on a business card if the card came with a small book attached to it. So as I looked again over my many poor attempts at a mission statement I noticed one common thread that was behind every statement I wrote. That thread was the reality that we are to be about what God has said we are to be about. As I think about it, if the church has a mission, that mission must flow out of the will of God. We must be about what God desires us to be about or we are no longer His church, we will become just a man made social ministry. So as I looked at all of the statements I wrote, I realized that what I’m trying to get across is that we are seeking to fully be the church that God had intended. So the statement that I’m going with is “East End Ecclesia: seeking to be what God intended.” I actually kind of like the statement even though I’m still not very found of catch phrases. The reality is seeking to be what God intended should be our life long pursuit as a church. That is what we desire to be, His church fulfilling His mission His way. I guess the rest of the sermons I preach to the church will be trying to work through the reality of what it is to be what God has intended as a church. The key is to actually keep this statement central. It is so easy to begin to seek to be the most innovative church, seek to be the largest church, seek to be just like the current popular mega church, or seek to be the church that existed during your favorite era of church history. The hard narrow road is to submit to God’s authority, wrestle with the scriptures, and continually analyze your church and the many cultural influences that shape your view of what church should be. Sometimes being the church that God intended isn’t the easiest way to go, it isn’t always the most pragmatic approach, and it often will not result in the growth that other models will give you. But I think that being a part of the radical vision God casts for his church far out weighs any temporal feeling of ease or success. I don’t know if any church ever gets it right, but I do think some churches are continually striving to be what God intended while other are just striving to be what works.

I’ll be honest here, I’m not to fond of the modern western church culture. Part of my testimony is the fact that I never had a problem with Jesus (even though I didn’t know a lot about Him) but I didn’t want to have anything to do with Christianity because of the church culture I saw around me. Even after I got saved I never felt very inspired by “church”, but as I began reading the scriptures I saw this picture in the book of Acts of this radical movement of sold out revolutionaries changing the world for the name of Christ. After reading the Gospels and Acts for the first time I was set on fire and I spent the next few years of my life studying the scriptures because I was so in love with the picture of God’s intent for the church that was painted in the scriptures. I studied church history so that I could better understand how we got to where we are and I was so encouraged by some of the great reformations that occurred multiple times through out church history. I loved the idea of continual reformation that the early protestant reformers taught. They taught that the church must continually reform itself because culture is always changing and we are always straying away from God’s intent. I love that and I wanted to be a part of that continual reformation, leading the church to rediscover its roots.

Over the weekend I really started thinking about why I want to plant a church, why I went into ministry in the first place? The main reason is because God has called me. But in that calling I have felt that my calling is to in some way seek to be a reformer. I don’t want to plant a church. I don’t even like church that much. I want to plant the Ecclesia (the greek term we have translated as Church) that God intended when He sent His Son to die upon that Cross to redeem a people unto Himself, so that they may be sent out into the world to flip everything on its head, proclaiming the coming kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m not impressed by large churches, I’m not impressed by hip relevant churches, I’m not impressed by innovative churches, but I am consumed by a passion to be a part of continuing that radical revolution started by our Lord and Savior 2000 years ago. So I guess the mission is what it is, to be what God intended, and the rest our lives will be working out what that looks like. But for me if this new church plant is not continually being transformed into the church that God intended, then I have no desire to plant it, because there are plenty of other good social clubs out there.

Just today I started thinking back to my college days when I played rugby. I love that sport. I realized that I really miss the competition, I miss the excitement of warming up on game day, I miss the thrill of scoring a try (what you call a touchdown in rugby), and I miss having my coach who is a native of England yell at us and tell us how much of pansies Americans are. I think I only enjoyed the last part because he was yelling in a very thick British accent. Most of you may think I’m really strange but I also miss the pain! It is not that I’m a masochist, but there is something about the sore muscles and bruises after a well fought game. I loved the feeling of knowing you put all you had out on the field, sacrificed your body to make that big hit, and took some cheap shots and kept pushing through the pain to finish the match. I can remember going out with friends after a match and limping with pride, making sure not to hide the black eye and bloody nose. I remember playing a match in which a guy that was probably 40lbs heavier than me punched me in the face when I went to tackle him. My nose was bleeding and my 2 front teeth got pushed back and I almost lost them. But I kept playing and I couldn’t wait to get back to school to take my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time)out for dinner afterward. Well to be honest you can’t beat coming home wounded to your girl so you can gain all of the sympathy attention, but there was a sense of honor and pride in coming home slightly wounded from a day of battle. I remember another instance when I made a tackle to stop a guy from scoring. While I was tackling the guy he elbowed me in the face and broke my nose. I remember walking off the field at the end of the game, head throbbing, blood all over my jersey with gauze stuck up my nose. A broken nose never felt so good. Before everyone thinks I’m completely insane I must tell you, it wasn’t the pain I enjoyed but it was that the pain was something I endured to fight with my teammates on the rugby field. I have had many injuries in my life and usually I hate to be in pain. But when it was pain from a hard rugby match it was different. This was because the pain was acquired with a purpose.

Just today my wife shared a verse with me she had just read. It is a verse I know but in the circumstances I have been facing it seemed new. The verse is 1 Peter 4:12-13 “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” My wife made a very profound comment about this passage. I have always read the end of this passage as talking about Christ’s second coming, but my wife said she thought it made more sense if it is understood as the glory of Christ being revealed through the endurance of suffering. I think she is right. There is excitement in facing suffering for the sake of the kingdom. There is excitement because God will use that suffering to ultimately reveal the glory of Christ. As I would find honor and even motivation to keep playing harder in the pain I received playing rugby, how much more should we find honor and encouragement in the pain we endure for the kingdom. In romans 5 Paul tells us that he will boast in his sufferings for the Gospel. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul says that if he must boast he will boast in the things that reveal his weakness.He says this in the context of just telling of the many beatings, stonings, and trials he has faced in proclaiming the Gospel. In some ways I see the pain we endure for the Gospel as good pain. It is pain that produces endurance, character, and hope, and through the endurance of that suffering for the gospel Christ’s glory is revealed.

When playing rugby I didn’t dread the pain, but took it as a mark of honor. This was all for a silly temporal game. I’m convicted by this. How much more should I be rejoicing in the many trials and suffering that comes my way for the sake of the Gospel. If there is such thing as good pain, I would have to say that the pain we endure for the Gospel is the best pain we can receive. Not because the pain is good, but because of what it was received for and what it will produce.

If you have taken some hard hits and gotten a few bruises in your pursuit in furthering the kingdom of God, maybe start walking with that limp with a little more joy knowing you are in the midst of one great fight!!!

Last weekend I went up to Pittsburgh with two of my friends, Jake and Chris. We went up to get some photos and video to create a “promo video” for the church plant. It was a long day, a lot of walking, a lot of driving, and a ton of eating. I didn’t mind the eating though. Can’t beat a good Gyro from a Greek street vendor with a sweet mustache and an even better accent. Then to top that off there was dinner at a little Polish pub in Bloomfield, where we got Pierogies, Kilbasa, and Halushki, cooked by a sweet old polish woman. OK what I ate has nothing to do with what I’m writing about, but I felt like reminiscing about the food!! Man I can’t wait to get up there! Anyway after we ate dinner we decided to go for a walk around the part of the east end that I’m planning on planting the church in. As we walked down the street a middle aged homeless man walked by. We all said Hi to him, and he stopped and asked us for money. We pulled out some cash and gave it to him. Then we told him we had no where we had to be, so we asked where he wanted to go eat and offered to buy him whatever he wanted. The guy made up a story then started to walk off. The interesting thing was that once he got a few steps away, he then stopped turned around and began talking to us again. After we talked for a bit, the homeless guy (his name is Mel), came straight and told us that he was a crack head and needed the money to pay off someone. He told us his story about how in the mid 80′s he had a decent job and an apartment. Then he told us about an incident when he saw his cousin get shot in the head and killed, right in front of him in the middle of the street. Mel told us that after seeing his cousin killed, he began seeking an escape and the escape he found was crack. He told us a few years later he was cleaning a gun while stung out on crack and shot himself in the head. He showed us the wound, where the 9mm bullet lodged into his scull never hitting his brain. He was lucky to be alive, but he said that he knows he is no longer completely right in the head. Mel then told us that since then he has been addicted to crack. He had lost his job, his home, his family pushed him away, and he is now living on the streets hustling to get a fix. Something that saddened me greatly was that Mel kept telling us that he has nothing and kept asking if we would just hang out with him because he has no friends. The thing that was interesting was that he never made excuses, he told us that he knows he was the one who screwed his life up. As we shared the gospel with Mel, he continued to tell us that he believed in Christ, but that he was nothing but a crack head and no one would want him, especially God. We then prayed with Mel, and I told him that even though “he made a mess of his life, and even though society sees him as just a crack head, and even though he sees himself as just a crack head, God sees him as one of his precious children who has gone astray.” I told him that in Christ he is a child of God, a co heir with Christ, not because of what he has done, but because of what Christ did. When we finished, Mel welled up with tears and gave us all hugs and went on his way. I don’t know what Mel did after he left, I don’t know if he was saved that night, but what bothered me was I did not know where to send him. Even if he became a Christian that night, I know that without a strong support structure around him, he will fall back into his addiction.

This was a powerful testimony to me. It reminded me of why I’m going up there to plant this church. All of the planing, fund raising, strategy, and programing is good, but I’m not going up there to plant an organization but to bring the Gospel to those who are hurting and dieing separated from God by their own sins.

As I began to think about this encounter, God spoke to me about the reality of sin. So many of us will look at Mel and shake our heads because we can’t understand why he would throw his life away for a temporary crack fix. We see the sad story of how he lost his family, friends, house, job, and ultimately his dignity to this little rock. But the reality is we all have done with our lives what Mel did with his. Sure many of us feel fine about ourselves because we aren’t drug addicts, and sure our sin hasn’t caused us to loose everything like Mel’s crack addiction did. But the reality is that the greatest thing Mel lost in his sin was not his house or family, but it was his relationship with the creator. We have all thrown away our relationship with God, for whatever sin that enticed us. Often we think that crack heads and junkies are so pathetic because they throw it all away for a stupid drug. But then again how many of us were willing to kick God to the side for some fleeting popularity, a stupid promotion, a house that has 5 rooms you don’t even use, a temporary fulfillment of some sexual fantasy. I don’t know what sins lie in each persons past, but the reality is we are just like Mel, willing to throw away true life for some temporal escape or fix. The scary thing is that at least Mel knows his life is jacked up, he can see the consequence of his addiction every day. But many people have thrown away their life for a simple fix, but they feel OK, because at least they aren’t a crack head, at least they still have a family, friends, a home, and a good job. The problem is they have thrown away the only thing that has true value, a right relationship with God.

Praise be to God, that He has come to redeem us through His Son. All of us were pathetic junkies, enslaved to our sin just as a crack head is enslaved to his addiction. But through Christ, He has set us free, we are no longer pathetic junkies, but God’s royal priesthood, children of the Most High. But just like Mel, without a support structure we are all bound to continue to fall back into our sin. I thank God for my brothers that are there to keep me straight and I thank God for my church family that are praying for me and encouraging me, and I thank God for my wife who as a sister in Christ continues to point me toward God. I pray that all of you have found the hope that is only found and Christ, and have surrounded yourself with a strong support structure. Please pray for Mel, I hope one day when I’m up there planting the church I will see him again and will have a place that he will have some sort of support.

The cool thing about all of this is that before our amazing polish meal, Jake, Chris, and I prayed that God would use us as lights in the city as we walked the streets. So next time you are out, ask God to give you the opportunity to pour into the life of someone who is in need. You may not live in an area that has drug adicts walking the streets, but everyone lives in an area that has people walking around who are enslaved to their sin and in need of a savior.

A final note. Just because someone addicted to crack is saved doesn’t mean that he will not have to wrestle with the addiction he has. In the same way, just because you are saved doesn’t mean that you no longer have to wrestle with the addictions you may have in your life. So set your eyes to Chris the author and perfecter of your faith and find some brothers and sisters to walk with you because we all need support.

In planting this new church I desire to be as biblical as possible. So over the past few months I have busted out all of my old books on Ecclesiology I was supposed to read when I was in school. It is interesting, when I was in school my professors would assign hours of reading, and I would end up spending hundreds of dollars on books. The funny thing is when I was required to read these books I would skim the books, and read the bare minimum necessary to pass the coming test. Now that I am out of school, I’ve been picking up my old books and have realized that some of these books are very good and help full. This has nothing to do with the biblical shaping of the church, but I guess I’m giving a quick confession of my rebellious nature. Give me a book on theology and I’ll eat it up, assign that same book for me to read as a class requirement and I’ll end up reading the summary so I can pass the class, but I digress.

Anyway as I have studied these old books from school, poured over articles found online, and searched through the scriptures I have found something interesting. The bible is full of commands concerning the essence, the focus, and the function of the church, but does not have a lot of commands concerning the structuring and methodology of the church.
As for the structuring of the church, I see 2 offices instituted in scripture for the church. The 2 offices are Elders and Deacons. Now during the early church there was also the office of Apostle. As you look through the scriptures you will see that the position of Apostle was a position that was held by someone appointed by Christ and was a witness of the resurrected Christ (see 1 Corinth 15:7-10 for Paul’s connection between being a witness of the resurrected Christ and the position of Apostle.) Now there are some from other traditions that would disagree with the view that there is no longer the position of Apostle in the church, but that would be a whole other series of posts that I don’t feel like writing and most of you probably don’t feel like reading. Now I would say that I do believe that there is a distinction between the office of Apostle held by individuals such as Paul, Peter, and John, and Apostolic gifting that is referenced in passages like Ephesians 4:11. Like I said I don’t believe the office of Apostle still exists in the church, but I do believe people still have Apostolic gifting, which would be someone sent out to start new works.

Now for the biblical offices, the first position to look at is the position of Deacon. In Acts 6:1-6 you see the account of the establishment of the first Deacons. In both 1 Timothy and Paul’s letter to Titus you see the character requirements for deacons within the church. As you look through the New testament you will see that deacons are to lead the church to care for the needs in the church and the community. In other words Deacons are to find the needs of those within the church and community and lead the church to care for those needs.

The other position established in scripture is the position of Elder. In Titus 1:5 Paul commands Titus to put things in order by appointing elders in every town. As you look through the scriptures there are multiple teachings concerning elders in the church, the most prominent are in 1 Timothy and the beginning of Titus. The role of the Elder is to oversee the doctrine and direction of the church. Instead of writing a 2,000 word post giving a biblical overview of the role of elders I am putting a link to a very good article on the biblical teachings concerning elders, so if you are interested take a look at this article written by Alexander Strauch at http://www.theresurgence.com/alexander_strauch_1997_biblical_eldership. If the primary role of Deacons is caring for the physical needs of the church, the Elders role is to care for the theological  and spiritual needs. In other words the deacons focus is primarily a practical and functional focus, while the Elders primary focus is theological and doctrinal.

As you see in Titus 1:5 Paul commands the appointment of elders for the purpose of keeping order. In Ephesians 4 Paul tells us that the 5 primary giftings given to church leaders or elders is for the purpose of equipping the church for ministry, and the maturity of the church under the headship of Christ. One thing that needs to be noticed is that no where in scripture is there any hint of leaders being appointed or hired for the purpose of creating and doing ministry in the place of the rest of the church body. If our elders or church leadership is in place for the purpose of putting together events and a worship service for the rest of the body to attend, we have greatly missed the intent and purpose for church leadership. On the other hand it is very clear that the bible sets forth a leadership structure for the church. The egalitarian view (or in my words, the hippie commune view) of church structure is also not biblical. Yes the church is egalitarian in the sense of the value and importance of each person in the church (every part of the body is equally important.) Concerning function the church is not to be egalitarian, every part of the body has a different function and responsibility, and God calls some to certain positions of leadership to keep order within the body. If your wondering where I get this from check out what Paul says in Romans 12:3-8 and 1 Corinthians 12 along with the scriptures concerning church eldership found in the link I gave.

As for the scripture concerning methodology I will get into that at another time. The main thing I wanted to wrestle with was the structuring of the church. Like I said earlier concerning methodology the scriptures have a very broad approach, telling us the essence of what we should be doing, not necessarily how. The scriptures give commands to the church to worship communally, to teach from the scriptures, to proclaim the gospel, to care for the poor and disadvantaged, along with many other things. But the scriptures are very silent when it comes to the style in which we are to do these things, and the strategic “how” of doing these things. To me the fact that scriptures give structure but leave a lot of free space is exciting. It shows us that their is a solid guide in God’s word to keep us on track, but we have the exciting task of prayerfully seeking inspiration from the Holy Spirit to be innovative and creative in how we represent the kingdom of God in our ever changing culture.

Ok so this was the last part of this 4 part look at Ecclesiology. As I’m still working on structuring this new church I definitely would appreciate other people’s thoughts concerning what shapes the church. And for those who could care less about Ecclesiology, I will be posting on some other topics in the coming weeks so please don’t stop checking out the blog, because you are tired of my theological ramblings about Ecclesiology!

With St. Patty’s day coming tomorrow I just wanted to give a little props to one of the great men of faith, whose story is often lost due to myth and tradition. St. Patrick’s day has become a holiday associated with parades, Guinness, anything green, and anything that fulfills the Irish stereotype. Every year when St. Patrick’s day comes around millions of people get out their favorite green shirt, head out to the local pub (on St. Patty’s day every one calls their favorite bar a pub), and spend an evening of celebration. I remember going out for many a St. Patrick’s days, the bars are unusually packed, tons of people are putting aside their normal American light beer for that ultra thick Guinness which is more of a meal in a cup than a drink, and every person who  is at least 1/16 Irish is running around river dancing when Flogging Molly comes on, while talking about their Irish heritage as if they had just got off the boat from Dublin. Everyone is celebrating, but do we even know what or better yet who we are celebrating.

St. Patrick’s story is an inspiring story of a man who loved His God and had a passionate love for the people to which he was called. Patrick was taken as a slave to Ireland as a young teen, after years of serving as a slave, he escaped to return to his home in England. You would think that Patrick would harbor hatred for the barbaric people called the Celts. He was stolen from his home as a teen by these people, he was beaten, enslaved, and placed in forced labor by these people. You would think that as a young man in England after escaping, he would have everything but compassion for these people. But Patrick had a growing burden for the Celtic people, in his journals he records having visions of the Irish people crying out for help, and Patrick knew he had to return to Ireland. Though these people enslaved him and beat him, the only thing that mattered to Patrick was these people didn’t know Christ. So Patrick returned to Ireland to preach the gospel to the barbaric warrior people called the Celts. During his ministry in Ireland Patrick escaped death many times, he endured times of extreme famine and poverty, all to bring the Gospel of hope to his former oppressors.

I’ve come to love St. Patrick’s day, because I have been so inspired by St. Patrick. His story is so convicting to me. I sit here with tons of fears about moving back to Pittsburgh to plant this church, I’m afraid that I will not be able to reach anyone, I’m concerned about finding enough funding to support my family and this church, just to name a few of my fears. Then because St. Patty’s day is coming up, I’m reminded of St. Patrick’s story. When Patrick returned to Ireland, his concerns were not of raising funding, finding a house, and building a leadership team, he had the concerns of, will these people throw me back into slavery or will they kill me as an escaped slave? St. Patrick was driven by a deep love for Christ and a radical love for the Irish people, he was not looking at this as a “good opportunity” to build his resume, and I’m not thinking he had in the back of his mind “man if I’m really successful maybe they will have a holiday for me.” I have to believe Patrick’s hope was to be able to keep from getting killed long enough to preach the gospel to as many as possible. It is also encouraging to see that from this young man’s obedience to preach the gospel and care for the needs of these people, even at the risk of his own life, God used Patrick’s obedience to bring thousands, eventually millions to Him, and to ultimately change an entire nation.

So this St. Patrick’s day, instead of being inspired to go to the local bar to fulfill the Irish stereo type of drinking to much and getting into a fight, let the story of St. Patrick inspire you to die to yourself, take up your cross, and proclaim the Gospel to our hurting and dying world. So if you are going out to your local pub this St. Patrick’s day, I hope you are going in honor of St. Patrick. Not to drink too much Guinness and dance like an idiot to Irish punk music, but to be a representative of Christ, proclaiming the gospel to those who are hurting and in need of the amazing Grace offered by Christ to all who would receive it.

If you want to read a little more about the life of St. Patrick Check out this link http://www.urbana.org/wtoday.witnesses.cfm?article=24

In the past posts I said that I felt that our mission should shape the church within the framework provided by the scriptures. So the next logical step in working out a biblical ecclesiology would be to go to the scriptures to find that framework. This is true, but what I want to look at briefly before we go to the scriptures, is how we  go to the scriptures. Have you ever wondered how you can have so many churches that look so different but all go to the bible to argue for why they do what they do? I think there are 3 key reasons for this. First I think we see such diversity in “biblical” churches because that is what God intended. I will cover this more in later posts, but the bible doesn’t give many commands concerning how a church should look. Jesus said in John 20:21 “as the Father has sent Me, so I send you”. In this passage Jesus is speaking to His disciples, He is commissioning His church. We see in this that first we are a people who are sent, so at its core the church is missional, sent out. We also see that we are sent as Christ was sent. When Jesus came to the earth He came into the culture of His time, He looked like a first century Palestinian Jew. If Jesus had been sent into 21st century New York, I highly doubt He would have talked in Aramaic and wore a tunic and sandals walking through time square. So if we are sent into the world as Christ was sent, we should expect the church to look vary different depending on the cultural context the church is in. The second reason I think we see some of the differences we see is because some churches have not turned to the scriptures to shape their structure. Though they are “bible believing” churches, they have not taken the time to search and study the scriptures to form their ecclesiology, they instead just adopt a tradition, or the latest model offered within their culture. The third reason is that even though the churches may all go to scripture, they all go wearing different cultural lenses and approach the scriptures in different ways. The reality is we all do this. I’m not going to be naive and think that when I go to the scriptures to shape this church, I will be doing it perfectly. That is why I try to hold what I call a humble theology. Basically what I mean by this, is that though God’s revelation is perfect and infallible, our interpretation is not. I do believe that the scriptures are knowable, but we can’t just interpret the scriptures based on “what it means to me”, we must seek to understand what the author intended it to mean, even if the intended meaning goes against what we always thought. This third reason is what I want to look at quickly before laying out what the scriptures teach concerning the structuring of the church.

I remember talking with a guy a few years ago about worship within the church. The guy I was talking to was arguing that instruments should not be used in worship. At his church they only allow singing, no piano, no organ, no guitar, and definitely no drums. I wouldn’t have had a problem with this if this was just a stylistic preference of his church. But he was saying that all churches that use instruments in worship are wrong. The conversation began because he had visited a service at my current church (Mt. Ararat) and he was telling me that the worship service was unbiblical because we used multiple instruments in our worship. His reasoning behind his conviction was that no where in the new testament does it say the early church used instruments in worship. Now I never did an exhaustive search on that issue (actually I never knew it was an issue) so I don’t know if he was correct or not in saying there is no accounts in the new testament of the church using instruments, but it really doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t. I believe this guy’s church is trying to be biblically faithful, so it is not that they are not using the bible, the problem is how they are using the bible. The type of hermeneutic (way of interpreting the bible) they were using could never be coherent. They seemed to like to use this way of interpreting scripture when it came to how to do worship, but if you would carry this further, they would be just as disobedient in other areas as he said my church was concerning worship. They used pews (not in the bible), they had a microphone (not in the bible), heck they use new testament bibles (not in the bible, because the new testament was being written). The reality is that the bible reveals God’s general will for His people, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us God’s specific will for us such as what job to take, or what color carpet to chose, or how to sing to praise the Lord. I think the reason for this is because the bible was never intended to replace a living relationship with God, it is supposed to point us to a relationship with Him. If the bible was exhaustive in that way, there would be no room for creativity (which is part of the image of God in us), we would no longer be sent as Christ was because we would not be incarnating the gospel into the culture, and the extent of the Christian walk would be reading to get answers for every decision that we make no longer needing to come together in prayer seeking God for inspiration and direction. I think most of us realize this about the bible, but maybe never thought about it. But I use this example to illustrate how we can misuse the bible to create false rules when creating the biblical framework for the church.

There is one issue concerning hermeneutics (interpretation) that I think is very important when going to scripture to understand how to shape the church. The key issue is distinguishing between “descriptive” passages and “prescriptive” passages. A descriptive passage is a passage that describes what happened. A prescriptive passage is a passage that teaches what should be done, it is a command. Often we can fall into very bad interpretations of scripture when we don’t distinguish between the 2. To use an extreme example, lets say some one reads the story of David committing adultery with Bathsheba. As this person reads this account they don’t realize this is a descriptive passage recoding what happened, but instead they take it as a prescriptive passage. So now he goes around telling people they should sleep with other men’s wives, because it’s in the bible and since David did we should too. This is a blatant example, but the point is when the bible records what happened it doesn’t necessarily mean it should happen that way. We can still learn a lot through descriptive passages, we can see if God treats the account positively or negatively. We see in the example of David that the bible makes it clear that God did not approve, so we can gather from this we should not do that. On the other hand there are descriptive accounts that are treated possitively, so we can know that it is ok, or even good to act in the same manner. The main thing is that a descriptive account tells us what a certain person or group did, but it isn’t telling us we all should do what they did, even if God approved of that act. The reason I think that this is important is because when it comes to shaping the church, I have found that most people forget about this distinction. Most people immediately go to Acts to lay out the commands for how to structure the church. Which is a great place to start because it is a picture of how the church took shape with the inspiration of the Spirit and the directing of the apostles. We can learn a lot from Acts. But the problem arises when we begin making rules based upon what the early church did. I have heard many people argue today that because the church in Acts met in houses, we should also be meeting in houses instead of church buildings. Now first off this statement isn’t completely true, (they also met in the temple, in synogoges, etc.) but even if it was a true statement it doesn’t matter. Just because the early church met in houses doesn’t mean that we must meet in houses. It may mean that it is ok to meet in houses, because the bible never condemns this practice, but it doesn’t mean we should meet in houses. The passages talking about what the early church did are descriptive passages. Please don’t get me wrong, I think we can learn a ton from these passages, and we see in Acts that the early church was being blessed and grew immensely, so we should learn from what they did and follow after their pattern. We just must be careful to not take what was recorded as a description of what was done and turn it into a prescriptive command.

So all of this to say, when dealing with the structure of the church we must first look for the prescriptive passages, that give us the nonnegotiable  frame work for the  church.  Once  we have that solid structure, we need to learn from the early church and see what it was that they were doing that God so blessed and not necessarily copy it, but instead take the heart of what they were doing and creatively implement that in our current culture.

A closing thought concerning the prescriptive and descriptive passages.  I think we must obey the prescriptive commands concerning church structure, and be inspired by the descriptive accounts concerning the church.

Like I have said before, I’m still wrestling through all of this. It is my ultimate desire to plant a church that fully reflects what God intended the church to be. So let me know what your thoughts are, I’d rather find out I’m wrong and learn what is right, than to always feel right and miss the fullness of what God has in store.