Monday Morning Reflections

I don’t like saying this out loud–it’s kind of like praying for patience, but I feel like God is really sifting me right now. He is really shaking me to the core of who I am to see if I will follow Him.

I don’t think I realized how influenced by the culture I am. As a sociology major (Quick, how do you get a sociology major off your porch? . . . pay for the pizza!) I realize that we ARE at some point a product of our environment. But what about the fact that God calls us to not be conformed to the patterns and culture of this world? The way I grew up in church, it seemed that verse was easy–dang heathens “out there” “in the world.” Just stay away from “the world” and “the worldly” and you will be fine. But what if Paul was indeed talking about culture–but that there is more to culture than just “the world out there?” What if I can be negatively influenced by a “church” culture that is not necessarily sin, but isn’t Biblical?

I have been wrestling with God lately (and losing–see Jacob in Genesis 32) about what is cultural and what is Biblical in my worship, my “Christian life.” How quickly we get into the routine of doing Spiritual things because “we’ve always done it that way before.” We say we want to be a New Testament church. Did they build buildings, for example?

I’ve been really studying about the 1st century church over the last year or so. Specifically how they were led, how they functioned, etc. I am currently reading a book called “Elders and Leaders: God’s Plan for Leading the Church” by Gene Getz. It is really stretching my seemingly tiny view of church that I must have absorbed growing up in a Southern Baptist “Church” (there’s the word). This word “church” is the Greek word “ekklesia,” which literally means “assembly” or “gathering.” There is where the rub begins. That is the literal meaning, but how was it used in the New Testament. Paul used it to refer to the universal church that Jesus Christ came to build. However, he also used the term to refer to all first-century believers scattered throughout the Roman world. The New Testament writers used the word to talk of the universal church, but they also used the term ekklesia to refer to believers who lived in specific geographical areas. For example, the church at Jerusalem. It is certain that Jerusalem has more than one “church.” So it must be used to describe ALL of the believers in that area. Our problem is that we take the meaning too literal and that is too narrow of a meaning if you observe the way believers lived in the first-century. The biblical writers used this term to describe all activities of Christians, not just when they were gathered together in a service. Getz goes on to say that the scriptural meaning of the local church must be thought of as . . .

“people in relationship–not structures, not meeting places, not buildings. New Testament writers used three basic concepts almost exclusively to describe the church as God’s people in community. They were called disciples, brothers, and saints.” Elders and Leaders, 49

So the church is . . . you and me–in community, in relationship. Charles Colson wrote a book called The Body several years ago and the premise of the book is that we have slipped into the view that the church is a building, a pastor, a service, a couple of hours on Sunday morning. I can remember hearing all of the time “we are going to church today?” Nothing could be farther from the truth! We are the church, and we happen to be going to the meeting place to meet with some more of the church. I know it sounds like semantics, but it is everything to the whole meaning of why Christ died for the Bride. There are some days that I wonder if Christ looks at our churches and says “I died for that?” Not exactly the way it was meant to be.

I am really digging into the New Testament to figure out what church really ought to be and if it is different than how we “do church.” I am finding that they don’t look very similar at all. The big question is whether we are going to conform to the “pattern of this world” or to conform the the pattern that the Lord Jesus set out before us? Difficult question indeed.