Category: Christian

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

All that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep … Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

12 – activating church

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Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

Jesus said many astonishing things, though if we hear them often enough the astonishing nature of them can come to seem quite ordinary. There’s an old saying English, that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. Few of us would claim ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6) has become so ordinary to us that we’d call it contemptible, but it’s certainly lost the incisive edge it must have had the day it was first heard. Let’s see if we can recapture some of that edgy significance.

Barton Mill burned down in an unfortunate fire in 1926 and was never rebuilt. Watermills (and windmills) were going out of business at that time as most industries were running on steam power generated by burning coal, or by electrical energy, also usually from coal-fired power stations. Water power and wind power, now seen as green and therefore desirable, were seen in 1926 as ineffective and unable to compete with the more efficient alternatives. This was long before the downsides of fossil fuels were understood.

A place for wildlife

100 years after the fire, in 2026, the mill pond still exists, fed by a sluice gate taking water from the River Churn. The part of the pond in the photo is usually in water all year round, though other parts dry up in many summers, partly because of some silting up near the sluice and partly because the bed of the pond has silted up too, so now the water is shallow enough for yellow flag Iris and other plants to flourish.

There are many birds to be seen in this area too. Mallard ducks breed every spring, there are minnows and probably stickleback in the water and from time to time a kingfisher hunts along the water channels and the pond. Often all you see of the kingfisher is a darting flash of vivid blue. There used to be (and may still be) a pike. A single but very shy little egret hunted around here for the last few years, but this year I’ve seen two of them, probably a breeding pair. And their larger cousin, the grey heron also puts in an appearance now and then.

All life needs is an opportunity

Take any piece of ground, anywhere on Earth, and just leave it alone, life will move in, even if you choose a patch in the Sahara or Antarctica. If you clear a piece of ground somewhere with a reasonable climate and leave it alone, in just a human lifetime you’ll have thriving woodland with a full selection of insects, birds and mammals, and probably reptiles and amphibians too. The experiment has been made many times, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. If you choose the Sahara or Antarctica you might have to wait a bit longer, but the life forms that are adapted to those extreme conditions will move in eventually. Let’s look at some examples.

Broadbalk wilderness (UK)

A wheat field was deliberately left to revert to a natural state at Rothamsted Research Station in 1882. The land was left unmanaged where before it would have been ploughed and harrowed after harvesting the wheat in late summer and drilled with seed again in the autumn. This field had produced winter wheat every year since 1843, but now the scientists wanted to see what would happen if it was left uncultivated; for the first four years volunteer wheat grew, sparser and weaker year on year and after four years completely choked by weeds.

In 1900 the site was divided into three. One part was left deliberately untouched and gradually reverted to natural woodland; another third was mown annually and maintained as grassland; while the third section had all woody plants removed annually so the land became a natural, open mix of herbaceous plants.

The results have been very interesting and the experiment continues today. Levels of captured carbon are still rising in the soils of the site, nitrogen levels have risen as well. The samples and data are available for study and reanalysis.

Chornobyl (Ukraine)

The Chornobyl nuclear power station accident in 1986 rendered the city and a large area around it unusable. People were evacuated and the most contaminated areas became a restricted zone. Since the accident, time and rainfall have reduced the surface radioactivity considerably and it’s now possible to visit the area. In fact, wildlife has moved into the area from the very beginning and the changing conditions and environment have been studied in depth.

Almost 120 000 people were evacuated following the accident, so activities like farming, hunting, logging, and development ceased over an area of 4,200 km². Forests, wetlands and grasslands have reclaimed abandoned farms and villages; and vegetation grows freely through derelict buildings and former settlements. The pine woodland killed outright by the initial high-dose fallout remains one of the most nuclear-contaminated places on Earth, but even there substantial regrowth has happened. The loss of managed agriculture actually increased habitat diversity, reconnecting landscapes previously fragmented by farmland.

Large mammals rebounded strongly. Long-term census data show abundances of deer, elk, roe deer and wild boar comparable to those in uncontaminated regional nature reserves. Wolves are notably abundant, roughly seven times as common as in comparable reserves. Reintroductions have taken hold including endangered Przewalski’s horses, released in the late 1990s and now ranging freely and breeding. European bison have also been established, while beavers have recolonised rivers, canals and the cooling ponds, in places reversing Soviet-era drainage systems. Lynx, foxes and hundreds of bird species are present too.

However, there’s a mixed message – the abundant populations are due to the absence of humans, yet there remains clear evidence of radiation-induced harm to individuals. Some species are adapting and changing, showing signs of radiation resistance, for example.

Returning woodland (Scotland)

It seems that all that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep. Grazing species eat the young seedlings of trees and strip leaves from saplings. Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Other cases are numerous

Similar cases of large scale change include:

Identifying common factors

A rule to cover all these examples will be useful. If the limiting, interfering factor(s) can be identified and removed life will usually return naturally – in any situation. Identifying the limiting factor(s) is the key to success. Reintroduction of missing species can also be a helpful part of the process but is often not necessary.

Growth and regeneration in church life

We can (and I suggest we should) think about abundance and limiting factors in church growth as well, what are the main interfering and limiting factors preventing abundant life returning like the ecosystems discussed above?

In the book of Acts, we see church life in its natural state, like a healthy ecosystem. Everything was in balance, there were no dedicated church buildings as we see in our villages, towns and cities today, and there was no hierarchy of management. People followed Jesus’ teachings because they understood the practical, social, and personal benefits. They met together as close friends, almost like family, eating together, working together, helping one another and doing so effortlessly and comfortably. I’m sure there were some difficulties and disagreements, and rough spots here and there, but they were all overcome informally.

Am I claiming there’s no life in church today? No, I’m not saying that. What I am saying (and I want you to hear this clearly) is that there’s a curtailed, limited kind of life in church as usually experienced in the 21st century. Church life is short of something essential; if we are to have fullness the parts that are missing need to be identified and restored. Just as an ecology lacking an important species cannot function as it should, so church culture lacking an important kind of leader cannot function as it should. And just as introducing the grey squirrels from North America unhinged UK woodland ecology, so introducing the wrong kind of leader unhinges church culture.

It’s an important factor we have largely failed to recognise. We need the full range of species Jesus put in place, and we need to remove the ones we introduced. Once you start to see the parallels between church culture and thriving ecosystem ecology, it all becomes very clear and is impossible to unsee. I’ve written a whole series elsewhere about church leadership.

Popes, priests, bishops, paid professionals, structures and hierarchies are not necessary (see Other church leaders 1 and Other church leaders 2). Nor did Jesus teach (or even suggest) that such functions and positions were required or helpful. Over the decades and centuries (two whole millenia now) church has grown more complex, more structured, less flexible and more traditional. It has also branched into many independent subsets. We’ll examine all that in a later article, referring back to earlier posts here on JHM as well.

But for now I’d suggest human management and leadership might be some of the limiting factors in the church environment, and that these have adversely affected the natural life and ecology of church as we know it today. We should consider removing these factors to see what will happen. And if necessary we might try reintroducing the leadership modelled by Jesus, going back to first principles.

Church life, too, will find a way. All it needs is the opportunity!

See also:

< Previous | Index | Next >

You might also like:

Developing faith – INDEX
Index – Activating the church, APEST
JDMC extracts – INDEX

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!

The tale of two kingdoms

Sometimes we need to be provoked into thinking things through more thoroughly and deeply. The enemy is so clever at interleaving error quite subtly into everything we think and do, even in meetings we believe to be fully devoted to following Jesus.

The tale of two kingdoms

11 – Activating Church

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Crown

I want to point you to two excellent items posted on the website, Life with CD. I’ll give a short taster to both with links to the originals, I urge you to read them both in full (they are not long, but they are very thought-provoking).

Sometimes we need to be provoked into thinking things through more thoroughly and deeply. The enemy is so clever at interleaving error quite subtly into everything we think and do, even in meetings we believe to be fully devoted to following Jesus. We can easily swallow what is wrong and believe it to be right. That’s why I’m adding this post to my series Activating the church.

In part one we read about Eli, a young man who is challenged by a conversation with an older man. He loved the Lord, or at least he truly meant to. He read devotionals in the morning when he remembered. He played worship music in the car. He posted verses online. He served at church once a month, sometimes twice when his schedule allowed. He wanted to be known as faithful. He wanted to be useful. He wanted, if he was honest, to matter.

And that is where the trouble began.

For Meridian was a city ruled by two kingdoms.

The first kingdom was loud and dazzling. It did not always look evil. In fact, it often looked admirable. Its banners read words like success, influence, visibility, control, relevance, security, platform, and image. Its citizens woke early and slept late. They measured life in numbers: followers, income, invitations, accomplishments, upgrades, applause.

Read the whole of Part One.

Eli began to notice the two kingdoms everywhere.

He noticed them when he was ignored and felt a surge of resentment. One kingdom whispered, “Make them regret overlooking you.” The other whispered, “You are already seen by your Father.”

He noticed them in ministry meetings. One kingdom wanted credit, subtle control, and the final word. The other was content to serve, listen, and decrease.

He noticed them in suffering. One kingdom demanded immediate explanation and escape. The other invited trust, even in darkness.

Read the whole of Part Two.

See also:

< Previous – Index – Next>

You might also like:

The city on the hill
Truth still matters
Truth and facts

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!

Life will find a way

All that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep … Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

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Image of the day – 197

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

This is one of my favourite places in Cirencester; on a calm, sunny day wind doesn’t ruffle the surface of the old mill pond and the reflections are correspondingly bright and still. A bridge crosses the water here and crouching down it’s difficult to take a bad photo, or easy to take a good one. (Depends on your mode of thinking.)

The mill burned down in an unfortunate fire in 1926 and was never rebuilt. Watermills (and windmills) were going out of business at that time as most industries were running on steam power generated by burning coal, or by electrical energy, also usually from coal-fired power stations. Water power and wind power, now seen as green and therefore desirable, were seen in 1926 as ineffective and unable to compete with the more efficient alternatives. This was long before the downsides of fossil fuels were understood.

A place for wildlife

100 years after the fire, in 2026, the mill pond still exists, fed by a sluice gate taking water from the River Churn. The part of the pond in the photo is usually in water all year round, though other parts dry up in many summers, partly because of some silting up near the sluice and partly because the bed of the pond has silted up too, so now the water is shallow enough for yellow flag Iris and other plants to flourish.

There are many birds to be seen in this area too. Mallard ducks breed every spring, there are minnows and probably stickleback in the water and from time to time a kingfisher hunts along the water channels and the pond. Often all you see of the kingfisher is a darting flash of vivid blue. There used to be (and may still be) a pike. A single but very shy little egret hunted around here for the last few years, but this year I’ve seen two of them, probably a breeding pair. And their larger cousin, the grey heron also puts in an appearance now and then.

All life needs is an opportunity

Take any piece of ground, anywhere on Earth, and just leave it alone, life will move in, even if you choose a patch in the Sahara or Antarctica. If you clear a piece of ground somewhere with a reasonable climate and leave it alone, in just a human lifetime you’ll have thriving woodland with a full selection of insects, birds and mammals, and probably reptiles and amphibians too. The experiment has been made many times, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. If you choose the Sahara or Antarctica you might have to wait a bit longer, but the life forms that are adapted to those extreme conditions will move in eventually. Let’s look at some examples.

Broadbalk wilderness (UK)

A wheat field was deliberately left to revert to a natural state at Rothamsted Research Station in 1882. The land was left unmanaged where before it would have been ploughed and harrowed after harvesting the wheat in late summer and drilled with seed again in the autumn. This field had produced winter wheat every year since 1843, but now the scientists wanted to see what would happen if it was left uncultivated; for the first four years volunteer wheat grew, sparser and weaker year on year and after four years completely choked by weeds.

In 1900 the site was divided into three. One part was left deliberately untouched and gradually reverted to natural woodland; another third was mown annually and maintained as grassland; while the third section had all woody plants removed annually so the land became a natural, open mix of herbaceous plants.

The results have been very interesting and the experiment continues today. Levels of captured carbon are still rising in the soils of the site, nitrogen levels have risen as well. The samples and data are available for study and reanalysis.

Chornobyl (Ukraine)

The Chornobyl nuclear power station accident in 1986 rendered the city and a large area around it unusable. People were evacuated and the most contaminated areas became a restricted zone. Since the accident, time and rainfall have reduced the surface radioactivity considerably and it’s now possible to visit the area. In fact, wildlife has moved into the area from the very beginning and the changing conditions and environment have been studied in depth.

Almost 120 000 people were evacuated following the accident, so activities like farming, hunting, logging, and development ceased over an area of 4,200 km². Forests, wetlands and grasslands have reclaimed abandoned farms and villages; and vegetation grows freely through derelict buildings and former settlements. The pine woodland killed outright by the initial high-dose fallout remains one of the most nuclear-contaminated places on Earth, but even there substantial regrowth has happened. The loss of managed agriculture actually increased habitat diversity, reconnecting landscapes previously fragmented by farmland.

Large mammals rebounded strongly. Long-term census data show abundances of deer, elk, roe deer and wild boar comparable to those in uncontaminated regional nature reserves. Wolves are notably abundant, roughly seven times as common as in comparable reserves. Reintroductions have taken hold including endangered Przewalski’s horses, released in the late 1990s and now ranging freely and breeding. European bison have also been established, while beavers have recolonised rivers, canals and the cooling ponds, in places reversing Soviet-era drainage systems. Lynx, foxes and hundreds of bird species are present too.

However, there’s a mixed message – the abundant populations are due to the absence of humans, yet there remains clear evidence of radiation-induced harm to individuals. Some species are adapting and changing, showing signs of radiation resistance, for example.

Returning woodland (Scotland)

It seems that all that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep. Grazing species eat the young seedlings of trees and strip leaves from saplings. Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Other cases are numerous

Similar cases of large scale change include:

Identifying common factors

A rule to cover all these examples will be useful. If the limiting, interfering factor(s) can be identified and removed life will usually return naturally – in any situation. Identifying the limiting factor(s) is the key to success. Reintroduction of missing species can also be a helpful part of the process but is often not necessary.

See also:

< Previous | Index | Next >

You might also like:

Life always wins out
Seemingly a leafy town
Tree shading

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!

Loving more fully and widely

There are to be no debts amongst us, not only because we pay them off but because we forgive them. When I lack the means to pay I become dependent on your willingness to forgive. Jesus is our example in this. He is the ultimate debt payer and forgiver.

Money

This is a copy of an article I wrote back in October 2012, you can still see the original if you like.

Money (click images to enlarge)

We’re going to see how much we can draw from a single occurrence of the phrase ‘one another’. I think Romans 13:8 is the particular example I should take.

Here it is in context, verse eight is picked out in the centre…

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honour, then honour.

8 – Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

There’s a wider context too, that we need to bear in mind. Paul first writes about civil government, making it clear that goverments are there because the One who is Authority puts them there. They have a function and a purpose, we must submit to them.

Then come the verses above.

And finally Paul writes that time is short, we need to act now while we still can. Jesus is returning – soon! We need to be found ready and obedient and already covered by him. Romans 13 is relevant in its entirety. We should read this chapter often and let it sink deep into our hearts and minds!

But in verse eight, Paul makes three statements.

  • Don’t let any debt remain.
  • Continue to love one another
  • This fulfils the Law

What does he mean? He is not simply saying that I should pay off any debts I owe. He is saying that I should allow no debt to stand. He is saying I should pay my own debts but I should also, if necessary, pay yours. The important thing about debt is that it is paid, the effect is the same no matter who pays.

Jesus paid my debt so if I want to be like him I will pay yours. And Paul is not writing merely about money, he has just explicitly used the words respect and honour as well. These things apply to one another as much as (or more than) they do to governments.

There are to be no debts amongst us, not only because we pay them off but because we forgive them. When I lack the means to pay I become dependent on your willingness to forgive. Jesus is our example in this. He is the ultimate debt payer and forgiver. We are called to be like him in our dealings with one another.

Will I pay my monetary debt to you? Will I forgive your debt of money to me? But also (and often harder) will I pay the respect and honour I owe to you? And will I forgive you if you disrespect and dishonour me? This is the nitty-gritty of not allowing any debt to remain.

If I continue to love you I will indeed pay and forgive in all situations where debt might remain. Love will cause me, compel me to cover every kind of debt. If not, do I have love at all?

And it goes further yet! Paul writes that there is one debt that should stand, the ‘continuing debt to love one another’.  Love is not just for today but also for tomorrow and for tomorrow’s tomorrow. I owe you love and that is a debt I cannot pay off. Love goes forward without ceasing. ‘Faith, hope and love remain’, writes Paul, ‘And the greatest of these is love’. Love remains, even in the kingdom of heaven, especially in the kingdom of heaven.

So, just as love is the fulfilment of Torah, so love is the fulfilment of civil law and indeed every kind of law. If I truly love I will not be able to commit any sin at all. The fact that sin remains is just a clear sign that love is not yet complete in me.

Let’s go forward in our lives understanding that love remains and is greater than anything else. And let’s remember who ‘one another’ means. It’s not limited to the church.

Jesus made it pretty inclusive. What begins with brothers and sisters becomes all encompassing. Love the Father, love one another, love your neighbour, love your enemy. My love is to extend out and become fully inclusive, not in any way for club members only. ‘One another’ is just a starting point, the nursery slopes of loving.

See also:

You might also like:

The city on the hill
John 15:9-17 – Love and fruit

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!

APEST in Jesus

Since Jesus is the best example of all five APEST gifts, it makes good sense to look to him for guidance in using them. I’d say read the gospels and notice the things he did and the things he said. Pay particular attention to the way people responded and try to work out in each case which of the five gifts were active.

APEST in Jesus

10 – Activating Church

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APEST (Diagram from What is APEST) – Click images to enlarge

Having looked at each of the gifts of service individually, we’ll check them one by one to see if we can find them active in the life of Yahshua (Jesus). Does Jesus himself demonstrate these gifts, and if so how? Let’s also bear in mind that if he worked through these special gifts 2000 years ago, we can be quite confident that he still does today. His character doesn’t change; he is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

Each section begins with an Alan Hirsch quote which we then examine in the light of the character and nature of Christ himself. But before we do that, I want you to understand that all these gifts are equally important and equally valuable. There’s no hierarchy here, though there is a sequence. Apostles prepare the ground for prophets, who prepare the ground for evangelists, who prepare the ground for shepherds, who finally prepare the ground for teachers. At this point, the young gathering (or church) will be ready to begin sending out apostles and the cycle repeats.

You’ll find the quotes on Alan’s What is APEST? page. The tests are not expensive and I recommend them for both leaders and anyone with an interest in the topic.

Apostle

APOSTLES extend the gospel. As the “sent ones,” they ensure that the faith is transmitted from one context to another and from one generation to the next. They are always thinking about the future, bridging barriers, establishing the church in new contexts, developing leaders, networking trans-locally. Yes, if you focus solely on initiating new ideas and rapid expansion, you can leave people and organizations wounded. The shepherding and teaching functions are needed to ensure people are cared for rather than simply used.

Is Jesus an Apostle? He did not merely extend the gospel; he originated it! Was he a ‘sent one’? He was and remains the Sent One, bringing faith and truth from the presence of the Father sharing it freely here in the physical realm of Earth. If that is not transmitting faith from one context to another, I don’t know what is! Did he think about the future and bridge barriers? Just think of the old picture of Jesus as a bridge or plank crossing the gap between heaven and earth.

Did he establish the church? (I will build my church). He developed leaders (his disciples) and he networked trans-locally (the Samaritan woman at the well, healing the Centurion’s servant, raising Jairus’ daughter, calling Lazarus out from the tomb, and discussing truth with the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilatus). It would be really hard to argue that Jesus is not apostolic!

Prophet

PROPHETS know God’s will. They are particularly attuned to God and his truth for today. They bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions we inherit from the culture. They insist that the community obey what God has commanded. They question the status quo. Without the other types of leaders in place, prophets can become belligerent activists or, paradoxically, disengage from the imperfection of reality and become other-worldly.

So, is Jesus also a prophet? Most certainly! Does he know the will of the Father? Way better than anyone else in history (you’d better believe it.) Is he particularly attuned to Yahweh and his truth for today? Most emphatically! Does he bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions of his culture and of our own? He insisted (and still insists) that we obey what the Father commands. When did he not challenge the status quo? Certainly he does these things fully, wholeheartedly, and tirelessly. Jesus is, indeed, the greatest prophet of all time – by far.

Towards the end of his ministry, Jesus is clear that the temple will be destroyed and he foretells the misery and horror of those days, this done privately, just speaking with the disciples, but when these events unfolded in 70 AD under the Roman commander Titus they would have remembered his description and would have been confirmed and encouraged that he had the same prophetic spirit as the old testament prophets themselves. (Luke 21)

And Jesus had the same upward connection to the mind of the Father as well as the horizontal concerns about justice in the world that the old testament prophets regularly displayed.

Evangelist

EVANGELISTS recruit. These infectious communicators of the gospel message recruit others to the cause. They call for a personal response to God’s redemption in Christ, and also draw believers to engage the wider mission, growing the church. Evangelists can be so focused on reaching those outside the church that maturing and strengthening those inside is neglected.

Jesus is a recruiter par excellence. He called and worked intensely with a small group of close followers, he spoke to multitudes, but closely taught just a few. He is the evangelist, calling for a personal response from many individuals and not merely growing the church, but founding it in every sense worth considering. If you want to know what an evangelist is like, check out Jesus!

By the time Jesus teaching was complete and the time came for his death, resurrection, and a return to the Father’s presence, his disciples had understood him clearly and fully enough that the four gospel accounts could be written from what had lodged in their memories. They may not agree in every detail or always have precisely the same sequence, but that makes the four accounts more real and no less believable.

Shepherd

SHEPHERDS nurture and protect. Caregivers of the community, they focus on the protection and spiritual maturity of God’s flock, cultivating a loving and spiritually mature network of relationships, making and developing disciples. Shepherds can value stability to the detriment of the mission. They may also foster an unhealthy dependence between the church and themselves.

In what sense is Jesus a shepherd? He’s rightly described as ‘the great Shepherd of the sheep’. He is strong on nurturing and protecting; that was true as he moved among the people in first century Israel, Galilee and Samaria, healing the sick, feeding hungry crowds with abundant fish and bread from almost nothing (making very little stretch a very, very long way). He cared about wine running short at a wedding. He was the greatest of caregivers for his community.

He protected his followers, shielding them by giving everything he had, even his life. And he taught them to bring them to spiritual maturity so that after he returned to the Father, they’d be able to carry on his work once they had received his Spirit from above.

Jesus had a wide network of followers well beyond the eleven men that he closely trained. There were so many that he touched and discipled amongst Samaritans, Romans, Greeks, even members of the Sanhedrin. He valued stability, but not to the detriment of his mission.

Teacher

TEACHERS understand and explain. Communicators of God’s truth and wisdom, they help others remain biblically grounded to better discern God’s will, guiding others toward wisdom, helping the community remain faithful to Christ’s word, and constructing a transferable doctrine. Without the input of the other functions, teachers can fall into dogmatism or dry intellectualism. They may fail to see the personal or missional aspects of the church’s ministry.

And it’s not just a matter of explaining things more clearly or studying the meaning of Hebrew or Greek terms. It’s much more helping people through those ‘I just don’t get it’ moments until they suddenly cry out, ‘Oh, now I see!’ The teaching gift sparks revelation. It’s very clear in the gospels that his disciples had these moments of revelation, over and over again as Jesus taught them. He understood the truth and he understood their difficulties in grasping it. He communicated truth and wisdom more fully than anyone else could ever do. He is the teacher of teachers – quite literally. He did it by explaining, by asking difficult questions, by highlighting mistakes as they occurred, and by telling good stories. He also taught without words, by setting good examples.

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Here too his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate. This kind of teaching gift cuts through misconceptions and breaks into parts of our being that seem to be based somewhere other than the grey matter in our brains. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things. Jesus cared deeply about both.

And when the wealthy, or the Pharisees, or the Temple priests needed a bit more than a word to pitch them over the edge from not comprehending to fully understanding, Jesus would show them what the Father’s heart was like – ‘Don’t stand on street corners praying where everyone can see you, go quietly into your own room where only the Father sees you and pray there.’ And sometimes there’d be a spark of comprehension. It might only be one person amongst a group of proud scoffers, but it’s so worth it when even one person sees the light and understands a previously hidden truth for the first time.

In the round

Since Jesus is the best example of all five APEST gifts, it makes good sense to look to him for guidance in using them. I’d say read the gospels and notice the things he did and the things he said. Pay particular attention to the way people responded and try to work out in each case which of the five gifts were active, sometimes it may be more than one. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes harder to discern.

You’ll see the gifts working (and described) in the New Testament letters as well, look out for them there as well.

See also:

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You might also like:

Pear-shaped
The city on the hill

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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!

Understand and explain

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate.

Students and teacher (Wikimedia)

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9 – activating church

Students and teacher (Wikimedia) -Click images to enlarge

The final APEST gift we need to consider is the gift of teacher. Just like the other gifts, the teaching gift is there for the building of the church, does not act in a controlling way, but is a life-bringing and helping function in the life of the church and the individual parts of it.

Where a teaching gift is active there will be a clarifying service at work. Confusion and misunderstandings will be swept aside. Decades, even centuries and millenia of mistakes and misunderstandings will be exposed and brought out for fresh examination. Teachers cannot sit still or take a back seat where they detect error of any kind.

What is the most fundamental definition of a teacher? It must be something along the lines of:

A teacher is a person who helps younger or less experienced people to grasp and excel in an idea or a process that they have not previously met or mastered.

The photo at the head of this post, and my words in italic above may make you feel the teaching gift is about extending knowledge. But that’s not quite what the gift of teaching is all about. The distinction is critically important so read this carefully… The spiritual gift of teaching has little to do with imparting knowledge, it has everything to do with growing character.

I just don’t get it!

And it’s not just a matter of explaining things more clearly or studying the meaning of Hebrew or Greek terms. It’s much more helping people through those ‘I just don’t get it’ moments until they suddenly cry out, ‘Oh, now I see!’ The teaching gift sparks revelation. Hold on to that thought as you continue reading.

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate. This kind of teaching gift cuts through misconceptions and breaks into parts of our being that seem to be based somewhere other than the grey matter in our brains. Often, we express this as heart even though that’s biologically incorrect. But our languages are full of heart-based expressions – heartfelt, avoir le cœur sur la main, heart-stopping moment, sich ein herz fassen, good hearted or a heartless act. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things, we tend to think of facts being in our heads and understanding being in our hearts.

When the wealthy, or the Pharisees, or the Temple priests needed a bit more than a word to pitch them over the edge from not comprehending to fully understanding, Jesus would show them what the Father’s heart was like – ‘Don’t stand on street corners praying where everyone can see you, go quietly into your own room where only the Father sees you and pray there.’ And sometimes there’d be a spark of comprehension. It might only be one person amongst a group of proud scoffers, but it’s so worth it when even one person sees the light and understands a previously hidden truth for the first time.

As always, community really matters

It’s still like that in the church today. There are many who don’t see the truth but now and then a light comes on for someone – Ding! Anyone with a teaching gift loves it when that happens. Understanding is like a staircase, each step makes the next one possible when the right time comes. The teaching gift enables the teacher to recognise that right moment and drop in the necessary grain of truth so that it makes a deep and long-lasting difference.

Look again at the photo at the top of this article, these are not strangers interacting, they are people who know one another, a teacher and his pupils, they care about one another, they are engaged in conversation, they are happy and comfortable together, the entire class is a kind of community. In the church environment we should all be learning from one another every time we meet. Some people have a gift for making things clear. Make sure you encourage them as much as possible.

Building the body of Christ

Jesus told his followers, ‘I will build my church’. He doesn’t want you and me to build it, but he does pour out gifts upon us so that we, together, can contribute something essential and useful. There’s an abundance of brotherly/sisterly love amongst us when we all pool our different gifts. And that in itself is a secret that has been lost during church history. We need to fully grasp that secret – we all have gifts and we do far better when we share them, recognising them in one another and encouraging one another by saying what we see. This will never happen if we keep thinking only in terms of individual people and individual gifts. We, together, are the body of Christ.

Don’t think in terms of a tyre here and a seat there. A gear lever and a rear view mirror. Understand that thinking about a car is very different from merely thinking about the different parts of a car. You can travel quickly over long distances if you have a car, but if you have only a tyre and a seat you’ll go nowhere. Building a car means recognising the pieces and putting them together in right relationship. Building community and church needs exactly the same skills and understanding.

A big mistake

There is one big mistake frequently made in mainstream churches today, OK, there are many mistakes made, but I want to highlight this one in particular because it’s very widespread and very harmful. It’s also an easy and natural mistake to make.

Many well-intentioned teachers don’t teach Jesus, instead they teach the Bible. Jesus is very much present throughout the Old and New Testaments. But teaching people to memorise or study verses may do little to help them grow in character or grace. Instead we need to bring Jesus himself into one another’s hearts and minds and be changed by his presence. We need to grow in love and in joyfulness, we need to be rooted in his peace, reflect his patience and great kindness and goodness, become faithful as he is faithful and develop the kind of self-control that never criticises and never directs anger or disappointment at the brothers and sisters.

We simply cannot be built on the foundation of Christ unless we come to know him well, so we’re not looking for technical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or deep Bible studies. Instead we need to know Jesus as our dependable, older brother, to recognise that he is always present and how to help one another find him again when we lose sight of him. We need to learn that the fruit of the Spirit is more fundamental than the gifts of the same Spirit, but that we need both to function as Jesus fully intends his church to do. ‘I will build my church’.

That’s it for this part of the series. Next time we’ll consider Jesus, the source of these gifts of service. Can we see all five APEST gifts at work in him? What can we learn from him in this regard?

See also:

I wanted to provide links or articles about the topic, just as I do in most of my posts, I looked at a load of stuff but nothing seemed to jump out for me, I didn’t hear Jesus whispering, ‘Yes, put that item in’. In the end I felt there were two videos I should include. Neither of them is specifically about the gift of teaching (though they both mention this gift in passing. Both of them are about the five APEST gifts as a whole. They are both interviews. Alan Hirsch and Neil Cole have both pretty much dedicated themselves to studying , teaching, and writing about APEST. My feeling is that I should link to these two interviews, so here they are.

I’ve met and spoken briefly with both Alan and Neil, and and I’ve heard them both speak in meetings several times. And I trust them to reveal something useful to you, so have a listen.

  • APEST, Interview with Alan Hirsch – YouTube (Follow Baptist Church)
  • APEST, Interview with Neil Cole – YouTube (Cynthia Anderson)

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You might also like:

Pear-shaped
The city on the hill
We are all priests

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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!

Seeing and believing

No gardener would know her name, and in that moment she recognises his voice. She cries out ‘Rabboni!’ (‘Teacher!’) and reaches to grab him, perhaps just an arm, more likely a full hug. Her misery and grief fall away immediately, replaced by astonishment and joy. But Yahshua says, ‘Don’t hang onto me because I have not yet gone up to the Father.’

Greek commentary on John’s gospel dated 1190-1200 (Bodleian Library)

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Cruising the gospel – John 20:1-18

Bible text –Read it yourself (opens in a new tab)

An amazing day

A fragment of John’s gospel
(Wikimedia)

10:1-10 – It’s now the day after the Sabbath, and the normal work of the week could begin. But this was not a normal week. Jesus’ disciples, family and friends would have been subdued, grieving, and wondering how things could have gone so wrong, so suddenly. But there were still practicalities to be dealt with and today was the first day when those tasks could be done.

Early, well before sunrise (Sabbath had ended at sunset the day before) Maryam Magdalitha (Mary or Miriam Magdalene) walked to the grave where they had laid Yahshua’s (Jesus’) body, wrapped in strips of cloth with a separate piece of linen for his head. The first thing Maryam noticed, probably from some distance away, was that the heavy stone that closed the grave had been rolled away to one side. Panicking, she didn’t go any closer but must have been horrified; turning round she ran back to Shimon Kepha (Simon Peter) and Johanan (John) and told them the conclusion she must have jumped to, that someone had removed the body and she didn’t know where they’d taken him.

Shimon and Johanan set out running to the tomb and Maryam was right behind them. Johanan ran fastest and bent over and looked in through the low opening and saw the linen strips inside, but didn’t go in. Then Kepha arrived and just went straight into the tomb; he saw the linen strips as well, and also the head cloth. Then Johanan went inside the tomb, saw the same things, and believed.

What’s the significance of this? The author, very likely Johanan himself, explains in verse 9 that they didn’t understand from the Bible that Yashua had to rise again from death. This is not surprising. The Bible mentioned here is what we call ‘The Old Testament’. It was the Hebrew Bible or a Greek translation of it, and the passages that suggested the Son would die and rise again are scattered around in the books of various prophets, the Psalms and elsewhere and are always straightforward (though more so in hindsight). The opportunity for hindsight was only now beginning to open. Yahshua had explained some of this to them. Johanan, who was a close friend of Yahshua and a deep thinker had seen him die and now made the mental leap to understanding that for Yahshua death was a temporary affair. He’d said he’d return from death, and he wasn’t here in the grave anymore, somehow he was alive again! Johanan got it immediately. Kepha, a more down-to-earth and practical person did not, at least, not just yet. The two of them didn’t seem to worry about Maryam in her distress, but no doubt deeply distracted themselves, turned back to the city and the place where they were staying.

10:11-18 – Maryam, still crying in grief, now finally looked inside the tomb herself and saw two people, one sitting where Yahshua’s head had rested and the other at his feet. Seeing the tears rolling down Maryam’s cheeks they asked her why she was crying. The use of the word ‘woman’ here seems to us rather strange, perhaps unkind, perhaps distant and rather aloof. But it was a normal way to address a woman at that time, much as we might still say to a man, ‘What’s the matter, man?’, ‘What’s up, chap?’ or ‘You OK, mate?’ or just ‘What’s the problem? So let’s translate this the way we might say it today. Think in terms of these two angels saying, ‘Why are you crying?’ or ‘Why are you crying, Lady?’ And she tells them, through her sobs, ‘They’ve taken the Master away and I have no idea where they’ve put him.’

Turning round, she saw a figure standing outside the tomb. We know the tomb entrance is low so she’s unlikely to see the person’s face until she is outside, and with tears in her eyes she may not be seeing anything very clearly.

In fact, it’s Yahshua, and he also asks, ‘Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?’ She assumes it’s the gardener who perhaps looks after the nearby olive trees and asks him, ‘If you’ve moved him – tell me where he is and I’ll go and get him’.

Yahshua, seeing how confused she is, says only one word. He appreciates how blurred her vision is so he simply speaks her name.

‘Maryam’.

No gardener would know her name, and in that moment she recognises his voice. She cries out ‘Rabboni!’ (‘Teacher!’) and reaches to grab him, perhaps just an arm, more likely a full hug. Her misery and grief fall away immediately, replaced by astonishment and joy. But Yahshua says, ‘Don’t hang onto me because I have not yet gone up to the Father. Instead, go now to my brothers and tell them that I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my Elohim (Gods) and your Elohim’. And right away, off she went to tell them.

Why did I write ‘Gods’ in the previous paragraph, not ‘God’? Because ‘Elohim’ is a plural form in Hebrew, the singular is ‘El’ or ‘Eloah’. Plurals are sometimes used to stress importance and power, Queen Victoria used ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ – ‘We are not amused’ instead of ‘I’m not amused’ In the Hebrew Bible ‘Elohim’ is a plural noun but when referring to the Almighty it takes singular verbs, As if Queen Victoria had said, ‘We am not amused’. In Aramaic it is ‘Elah’ or ‘Alaha’ allied to the Arabic ‘Allah’. We shouldn’t miss the significance of this, there’s a hint of threeness here. The Father and the Spirit are ‘up there somewhere’ while Yahshua is still ‘down here’. He plans to return to be with them, and later he will send the Spirit to come to live in and among his followers. Two thousand years later, the Spirit is still here in and among Yahshua’s followers. The Spirit is entirely capable of being ‘up there’ and ‘down here’ simultaneously.

And why did he tell Maryam not to cling to him? Perhaps he’s simply saying that the most urgent thing for him now is to get back to be fully in his Father’s presence because only then can he send the Spirit, someone they need in them as soon as possible. In a hostile and confusing world any delay in the coming of the Spirit will leave the disciples vulnerable and without direction. Maryam can help by taking the news that Yahshua is alive back to them right away. Clinging to Jesus is natural but only benefits one person while leaving the many feeling lost, distressed and confused. I think Maryam understood this right away because she heads back to the city immediately without another word.

It’s also significant that Yahshua appeared to a woman before he appeared to any of the men he’d been teaching for three years. In Jewish tradition scribes taught village boys to read and memorise the Old Testament Law. Girls were not taught these things. And Rabbis (Teachers) would take men as disciples, but not women. Yahshua broke tradition by teaching both men and women, and he now chooses to appear to a woman first. This is a lesson that church understood at the beginning, but forgot for 1900 years and has begun to relearn very slowly over the last seventy or eighty years.

See also:

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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!

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Matthew 27:32-66 – Cruising the Gospel

Whys and wherefores

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.

Community life in Peckham (Wikimedia)

Church constitution – 2

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Community (Wikimedia)

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.

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:

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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

Making a start

[Why do] 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.

Clear or unclear, the church building

Church constitution – 1

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Community (Wikimedia)

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:

< 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

What’s the rush?

We live in a culture deeply uncomfortable with grief. We rush people through heartbreak. We hand out silver linings while wounds are still open. Even in faith spaces, we sometimes move too quickly toward redemption language because suffering itself makes us uneasy. We want resurrection without sitting at the tomb. We want healing without fully acknowledging what was lost.

The Slow Return of Hope

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On the web – 4

Slow Return of Hope

It’s quite easy in life to bounce from one thing to another without paying much attention to anything. It’s the usual mode of the world we live in. But when we do that, we miss a very great deal. We don’t really get into the deeper aspects, we don’t think things through properly. On the one hand we don’t see the wood for the trees, but on the other hand we don’t have time to even get to know one, single tree in the depth it deserves – the crevices in the bark, the shades of green in the details of the leaves, the patterns of the veins in those same leaves, the gentle sound of the breeze filtering through the canopy. The aroma of moist earth and leaf-mould.

Sandy doesn’t make that mistake, it’s even in the title of her blog – Run with Patience (KJV Heb 12:1). Here’s an extract from a recent article to give you a flavour of her approach, at the end of the extract I’ll place a link so you can read the rest direct on Sandy’s site.

Extract from Sandy’s article – The slow Return of Hope

There are seasons when the soul does not sing easily. Seasons where faith feels less like soaring and more like sitting quietly in the dark, trying to remember what light once felt like.

I think that’s why I keep returning to Book of Lamentations, not because it resolves suffering neatly nor because it offers quick comfort, but because it refuses to lie about pain.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare that is.

We live in a culture deeply uncomfortable with grief. We rush people through heartbreak. We hand out silver linings while wounds are still open. Even in faith spaces, we sometimes move too quickly toward redemption language because suffering itself makes us uneasy. We want resurrection without sitting at the tomb. We want healing without fully acknowledging what was lost.

But Book of Lamentations lingers in the ruins. It lets the smoke rise, the silence ache, and grief breathe.

And strangely, that honesty feels sacred to me.

Because there are losses in life that cannot be reduced to inspirational lessons. Some grief changes the architecture of a person. Some suffering rearranges the nervous system, the body, the assumptions you once held about safety, love, God, or the world itself.

Sometimes you survive something, but you do not emerge untouched.

I think Scripture knows this better than we often allow ourselves to admit.

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