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church constitution – 3

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Perhaps it’s time to focus a little more closely on the people who make up church.

Where should we look for guidance?

We have to start somewhere if we want church to be the way it’s supposed to be. Here are some people and places we might consider approaching.

• The Pope – If you’re a Catholic this might seem like a good place to begin, but you’re going to find it hard to get an audience with the Pope so you might have to set your sights a little lower. Working your way down the hierarchy bit by bit you’ll probably find the local parish priest will be the only representative you can actually talk to.
• The Archbishop of Canterbury – An Anglican will find the same issue, you’ll probably end up talking to the local vicar.
• Your friends at church – Friends have the great advantage of being approachable and helpful, but perhaps you feel they have very little authority in spiritual matters, no more than you have yourself, maybe. Or possibly you don’t have any church friends.
• Christian authors, websites, and published advice – There’s going to be an awful lot of reading there and you still may not find what you need.
• The Bible? – Now there’s a thought! It’s still a lot of reading, and there are many translations to choose from. However, you can safely ignore the entire Old Testament because everything it contains was written before church began 2000 years ago. You could read Luke’s Gospel and Acts, they might once have been a single book and cover the life of Jesus and the story of how church originated and developed during the first 80 years or so. Not a bad idea! You don’t even need to buy a Bible, try these links to Luke and Acts (completely free).
• What (or who) might be better than the New Testament? Might I suggest Jesus and the Holy Spirit?

The story really begins with Jesus’ Father, he planned everything and sent Jesus as a go-between. Jesus is as human as you and I am and we can relate to him as a messenger sent by his Father to explain everything we need to know. What you should d0 is find out why Jesus matters and why he sowed the seeds of church. Talk to him (that’s called prayer) but don’t make it complicated. Just talk to him like you would to anyone else. It doesn’t have to be out loud, Jesus is really good at hearing you think. That may seem strange at first, but as you get to know him better it will become easier, less weird, and really a lot of fun; he’s very much a fun guy, understands where you’re coming from and is very much on your wavelength. Try to spend time with other people who are getting to know him – you’ll help one another along the way.

I’ll give you a couple of hints about what he may show you. You can also read my personal story of discovering Jesus if you like. But remember, everyone’s story is different, your story will be unique to you. As you set out on this journey, try to remember the points below:

• You matter to him, he cares about you.
• He has far better answers about church than any of those people we mentioned earlier, from Popes and Archbishops on down.
• Church is not about a place, it’s about people – his people.
• Church is not complicated, it’s very, very simple. You can begin to understand all this with your friends or, if necessary, on your own – here’s one way to get started…
  
  It’s a simple guide to help you think about what church really is and what your part in it might be. I wrote it a while ago and it needs updating, something I’ll try to do soon. Here’s a short extract.

Let’s think about Jesus a bit more. What do already know about him? I’ll tell you one thing right away, he’s a builder and he’s an exceptionally good one. The photo show an active building site here in Cirencester where I live, if you enlarge the photo and look at it carefully you’ll see at least four builders at work. Despite the many pictures out there that claim to show Jesus, we don’t really know what he looked like though if you saw him in the street you might assume he was Arabic, not European, African or Asian. But if you really want to get to know someone, never begin with appearances, you’ll always learn a lot more from watching them at work. Jesus works for his Father’s business, he works in the building trade, turning all of us who follow him into a wonderful construction called the Church. He follows the plans his Father gave him and he builds not with bricks, stones, tiles and cement, but with people, ‘living stones’ as Peter puts it in one of his letters.

Start to follow him and he’ll use you in this great project, fitting you gently and carefully into a space where you’ll be a good fit with those around you. Together you will become a permanent part of what he is building.

You’ll understand right away that this isn’t how church is usually described and it’s not how Jesus is usually described either. But I want you to start thinking in terms of a living body, not a stone building put up by ordinary builders according to some architect’s design. Another way of envisaging church is as a body of people with a common purpose, relating well with one another, growing to look like Jesus in their thoughts and actions.

Jesus, although he is not here today in bodily form, interacts, communicates and relates to us through his Spirit.

The Constitution of church so far

1 – Church is not a particular place or building. It is, instead, a particular people

2 – A named place is not required, people can meet anywhere convenient to them.

3 – Jesus is the foundation of church, and he, personally builds it. We are not leaders in this work, we are servants working for and guided by Jesus, the Master Builder.

We’ll take those as the first three clauses of our Constitution for now. Perhaps they’ll be all we need – church is simple to define! Though people who don’t understand it sometimes make it seem complex, difficult, and counter-intuitive.

See also:

• Christian church – Wikipedia
• Constitution – Wikipedia

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

You might also like:

Church as a network – INDEX

I will build my church

Church as we know it

Community life in Peckham (Wikimedia)

Church constitution – 2

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Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has sometimes been described as the constitution of the church, but that’s not strictly correct. Paul didn’t write Ephesians to define what church is and is not, so it contains much more than the bare bones of a definition. Constitutions are (relatively) brief but very clearly lay out the essence and limits of something, be it an organisation like a business, a charity, or indeed a nation. They also spell out definitions of terms as well as the concept being defined, as clearly as possible. So if we want a constitution for the church, we must think in terms of something succinct, crystal clear, and complete but not providing unnecessary additional detail.

Why have a constitution?

The church has never truly had a constitution, some might argue it doesn’t need one. But recently I’ve begun to feel it does. Almost every denomination imposes customs and requirements on their adherents, over and above anything that Jesus taught. There are paid leaders and managers, forms of infant baptism, doctrine, so much encrusted over the basics. So much that can be seen as unnecessary when we compare it to the earliest forms of church as we find it in the New Testament.

Some form of declarative constitution might bring clarity to all this muddled confusion. Over the centuries there have been repeated reforms and corrections, but generally these have resulted in yet more varieties of belief and practice. A constitution might help us simplify and see some patterns in the prevailing mess; we should at least make an attempt to form one.

There are probably as many definitions as there are denominations, and that’s quite a large number; a constitution provides a reference point. The Bible, and even just the New Testament is far too detailed to be a definition; yet it contains everything we need to know and does not support the additions and concretions of the last two millenia.

The essentials, but no more

What else can we say about constitutions in general? The key point, I think, is that a constitution should contain everything essential but nothing beyond that, to bring clarity and focus. Constitutions are usually amendable both for corrections and for additions or deletions. There is normally an agreed process for amending a constitution.

So where would we begin for the church? As always, we must begin with our source – Jesus himself.

Jesus’ claims

Jesus made some pretty fundamental claims; the constitution will need to say whether we accept these claims or reject them.

He said that his father is the God of his ancestors and that he was there with his Father when the universe was conceived and created. He claims to have come into this created world like one of us, as an ambassador for and from his father, to reveal the father to us and to make it possible for us to communicate with the father again. So continuing with the results of part 1 of this series, we can add an additional clause about Jesus. Let’s put that new clause at the beginning, where it belongs.

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The Constitution of church so far

1 – Jesus was sent by his Father to be present in the world to reveal the nature and the loving heart of the Father. He returned to his Father and deposited their Spirit to remain in his followers as a perpetual gift.

The Spirit lives within us, giving us the potential to continue the work Jesus began in this world – loving, reconciling, transforming, encouraging, guiding.

2 – Church is not a particular place or building. It is, instead, a particular people.

Church consists of every person following Jesus, but the term also applies to local church where it’s limited in time and place to a particular group or gathering meeting and working together more or less regularly.

3 – A named place is not required, people can meet anywhere convenient to them.

An informal name may be helpful to explain where and when meetings take place, but names are not intended (and should not be interpreted) to indicate any sort of hierarchy within, or separation from, any other part of church, even if those other parts regard themselves as different or separate.

---

We’ll continue adding and editing clauses of our Constitution next time, rearranging them as seems necessary and appropriate.

See also:

• Christian church – Wikipedia
• Church as we know it – Journeys of heart and mind
• Constitution – Wikipedia

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

You might also like:

Upside-down?

I will build my church

Church as a network – INDEX

Clear or unclear, the church building

Church constitution – 1

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I made a start on a stand-alone article on this topic as one of my ‘Ad hoc’ articles, but thinking about it again more recently I felt it would make a good, stand-alone series that I could develop over time.

But something I didn’t consider was why we have and use the term ‘church’ at all. It’s come to mean those buildings in most towns and cities in the world where Christians gather on Sundays (and often at other times, too) to read Bible passages, listen to sermons, take communion, and in some denominations have one or more leaders at the front wearing funny clothes (or ordinary ones). That’s a sort of caricature of course. Churches and church members often do much more than that. They may run a food bank, hold evening meetings to study the Bible more deeply, visit local hospitals to visit patients, and a whole lot more besides. But these activities are not church; in a sense they are add-ons, though they are certainly good things to be doing in the communities where we live.

Places or people?

But why are they called ‘churches’ in the first place? This is something we need to consider; over time, people have used both place-words and people-words for gatherings. Church is a place-word and we could also mention a series of other place-words used in different times and languages to express the same concept. For example kyriakón / Kirche / kirk, as well as basilica, cathedral, and chapel.

All of these in one way or another are used to signify places of gathering.

Kyriakón is from Kyrios, the Greek word for lord or master. Kirche is German, kirk is Scots, and church is of course English. However derived they all speak of a place but significantly also of kingship, rule and authority.

In a Roman city the Basilica had the appearance of a traditional European church building. Two rows of large columns supporting arches and a high roof, with a semi-circular and sightly raised area at one end. So architecturally it was church-like but was not a place of worship. It was the Roman law court and the judges sat on the raised area in the apse (the semi circular end section). The idea of authority hovers there in the background again.

The Greek word cathedra simply means a chair, a cathedral is the ‘seat’ of a bishop. The word chapel is Latin, from cappa, a mantle or cloak. It entered English in the 13th century from old French.

Going back to Hebrew and Aramaic brings in other aspects. Hebrew was used in the Jerusalem Temple and to read the Old Testament scrolls in the synagogues. Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic in everyday life. Synagogue is a Greek word and means an assembly or gathering, literally a bringing together (the New Testament was written in Greek and there were well-established Greek versions of the Old Testament as well). The Greek term packages up two Hebrew words, edah (congregation or community – a people word), and qahal (summoned or called together – a people/action/place word). After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Greek term synagogue was used to bundle up the senses of gathering, learning and intercession.

There were other words for the buildings themselves. Beit ha-knesset is the house of assembly, Beit ha-midrash is house of study/interpretation, Beit ha-tefillah is house of prayer.

No need for a name

Taking all of this together we can see that when we meet, wherever that might be, it’s a place, a gathered people, and has senses of assembling, study/interpretation, and prayer, as well as Lordship. So where can we gather to achieve all of that? Anywhere we like! We have only to agree a time and place to turn up together to pay attention to Jesus. Anywhere will do. It could be the temple courts, the upper room, my house, your house, a garden, a woodland clearing, a supermarket car park, or it could be somewhere we call a baptist church or a house church. The place itself is of no significance, all of the significance rests in the fact that Jesus is here and we are with him, that he is teaching us and we are learning ever more from him. Have you ever been in a place like that? Does it need a name? I’m going to provisionally call it a House of Presence or a House of the Spirit.

But the constitution of the Church doesn’t need to name things. So we won’t define a name in our constitution at all. We should include a note to say that a name is not required, it’s important to state that; because the name doesn’t help to define church. Why did the 1st Century believers talk about Lydia’s House. or the gathering at Corinth? Because they knew what we have often forgotten – it’s no more than a matter of convenience. We can (and should) meet anywhere; a river bank is enough, or a market place, someone’s home or a hired room.

It’s not the place that matters, it’s the people and the purpose that are significant, the presence of the Spirit of Jesus in his gathered people is what really matters. However, it’s worth mentioning that big spaces with hundreds of people are usually too large for very practical reasons. There’s a need to sit around with no more than one to ten other people. Everyone needs to know one another, like a family, everyone needs to be able to share freely what they’re reading or hearing from the Spirit. If it’s big and impersonal many opportunities will be missed. We can come together in larger numbers with a band of musicians to celebrate and sing our hearts out. That’s good too, but it’s a different kind of meeting. But it’s still an expression of church and life together.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has sometimes been described as the constitution of the church, but that’s not strictly correct. Paul didn’t write Ephesians to define what church is and is not, so it contains much more than the bare bones of a definition. Constitutions are (relatively) brief but very clearly lay out the essence and limits of something, be it an organisation like a business, a charity, or indeed a nation. They also spell out definitions of terms as well as the concept being defined, as clearly as possible. So if we want a constitution for the church, we must think in terms of something succinct, crystal clear, and complete but not providing unnecessary or irrelevant additional detail.

Why have a constitution?

The church has never truly had a constitution, some might argue it doesn’t need one. But recently I’ve begun to feel it does. Almost every denomination imposes customs and requirements on their adherents, over and above anything that Jesus taught. There are paid leaders and managers, forms of infant baptism, doctrine, so much encrusted over the basics. So much that can be seen as unnecessary when we compare it to the earliest forms of church or to what we learn from the New Testament. Some form of declarative constitution might bring much needed clarity to the current confusion.

Over the centuries there have been repeated reforms and corrections, but generally these have resulted in yet more varieties of belief and practice. A constitution might help, I think we should at least make an attempt to form one.

So first of all, why would we even want a church constitution? There are probably as many definitions as there are denominations, and that’s quite a large number; a constitution provides clarity and a reference point. The Bible, and even just the New Testament is far too detailed to be a definition; yet it contains everything we need to know and does not support the additions and concretions of the last two millenia.

The essentials, but no more

What else can we say about constitutions in general? The key point, I think, is that a constitution should contain everything essential but nothing beyond that. Constitutions are usually amendable both for corrections and for additions or deletions. There is normally an agreed process for amending a constitution.

So where would we begin for the church? As always, we must begin with our source – Jesus himself.

A good start would be to state that church is defined by everything that Jesus is and does and teaches and by nothing beyond that. Having leaders of a particular flavour or style and how we name those leaders are not fundamental. Whether you have a priest, a vicar, a pastor, elders or deacons, those are all secondary features of church life and practice. They cannot form part of the definition.

Let’s begin by saying church is a group of people striving to follow Jesus. I don’t think we can start in any better way.

So we’ll make that our primary clause.

The Constitution of church so far

1 – Church is not a particular place or building. It is, instead, a particular people

2 – A named place is not required, people can meet anywhere convenient to them.

We’ll take those as the first two clauses of our Constitution for now

See also:

• Christian church – Wikipedia
• Constitution – Wikipedia

< No earlier items  Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

You might also like:

Upside-down?

Church as we know it

I will build my church

Church as a network – INDEX

The higher you look, the less you see