on the walk

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/01/biblical_litera.html

One of the questions that has stirred Mountain Christian Church to action over the past few years is “If your church ceased to exist tomorrow, would the community around you notice or care?”

In light of this question we have commited ourselves to care for the local community as well as the world. We hope to take light to the world.

I was remined of this commitment as I read this fascinating article (HT: Ben Witherinton III).  These are the reflections of an atheist on the impact of Christianity in Africa.  It is worth your time to read.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

on the walk

-Ethan

The first event of the history of the church was a prayer meeting and we don’t have very many of those and don’t feel guilty about it.

The second Christian event is a business meeting and that is something we do pretty well. The irony is that I know many Christians who feel guilty about having business meetings. There is this sense that business meetings are too practical and too mundane to be truly spiritual.  Somehow there is a since that a meeting focus on practical issues of leadership and church politics aren’t really Christian activities.  We fail to notice that here it is in Acts, the very second recorded church event is a business meetings.
Take a look at the text.  While the believers are busy waiting and praying Peter stands up with an idea:

Acts 1:15-26

Here are a few observations.

0. This meeting arises out of a community of prayer.
1.  A leader sees the need and calls the meeting.

2.  A leader connects the situation to scripture and lays out the parameters for their action.

3. Everyone participates but it is not a democracy. In the church, the believers deserve to influence the process of selecting their leaders.
4. More than one acceptable option is produced.  (This is so important to me.  I have seen many church decision processes get sidetracked because people are arguing over two good options and because a choice is hard to make, nothing is done.)

5. In the end they roll dice.  (Let’s face it, that is crazy.  I totally want someone to propose that at an upcoming meeting.  Please report back and share with the restof us how that goes.

And a few reflections:

Unless you intend to be a dictator, leadership will involve meetings.  The only way to include others in a process of leadership is to have meetings (and probably lots of meetings).  In fact, from my experience I have concluded that many a great work waits to be done becuase no one has stepped up to call a meeting, gather the right people, set an agenda and insist that a choice is made. This event is Peter’s first important act of leadership.

So for those keeping score at home we have prayer meetings and business meetings.  I can’t wait to see what happens next.

on the walk

-Ethan

The very first church event is a prayer meeting.  As Jesus leaves he instructs the eleven and all the believers to wait in Jerusalem.  In Acts 1:12-14 we find that they obey him and the eleven return to Jerusalem, gather together all the believers and they are constantly in prayer.  This behavior is so very interesting to me.  What inspires these prayers?

Is prayer the Christian way to wait?

We will see as we continue in Acts that prayer meeting were pretty common.  As in this case, it seems to be the thing the church did as a spontaneous response to all sorts of situations.   They may have had scheduled 2nd Tuesday of the Month sort of prayer meetings too.  But what we hear about all the time is drop-to-our-knees-we-need-to-talk-to-God prayer meetings.

I’ll try to resist applying what we find in scripture too quickly to today but here are a few observations.

1. For them, waiting becomes prayer.

2. Everyone was included.

3. Prayer meetings are low-profile events in contemporary church culture.

As we return to make some constructive observations about today’s practice,  we will wrestle with prayer meetings.  I am surprised even as I write this post at the contrast between the importance of prayer meetings in Acts and their importance in the life of the church today.  We know more about the prayer meetings of Acts then we do about their weekly worship services.  I am already learning from this study.

(In the next post we will read about the first all church business meeting.)
on the walk
-Ethan

We cannot underestimate the central authority of the Bible.

I often find myself out of step in many conversations about difficult decisions.   Other people seem much more impressed with the wisdom that can be found in experience or in experts.  Or they are very confident in the wisdom they will gain from the subjective experience they will have as a result of prayer. I am not.  They may be right and I may be wrong, but for me the only authority that carries much weight is the Bible.

This is why I devote so much of my energy to learning how to wisely and faithfully interpret the Bible and apply it to our lives.  As the old line goes, it is our only rule for faith and practice.  That doesn’t merely mean that it is the best one, it means what it says, it is the only one.

Consequently although I am not a biblicist, the Bible is where I will start for any major investigation of what the church is called to believe and how the church is called to live.  So long before I consider what we can know about God through the post-biblical language of the trinity, I am going to consider what we can learn about God from scripture. And long before I consider what I can learn from the traditions of church worship and programming that I have inherited in my life of faith, I want to return to scripture, to ask, “What is the church doing?”

So I am not a biblicist.  I know that God has continued to guide the church and we must learn from the wisdom of all of church history.

But as my rule for faith and practice there is one source.  The Bible.

So that is where we will turn for our foundation of the core events of the church.

on the walk

-Ethan

Consequently I believe that while the Bible is the sufficient rule for faith and practice it is not exhaustive.  The Spirit still speaks.  Christians have had lots of good ideas since the Bible was written and I am please to benefit from those ideas.

There are some Christian circles in which this is not a radical suggestion, but I grew up in a tradition and I minister in a tradition in which biblicism is easy to find.  In fact a major family of this movement of churches goes by the name acapella Churches of Christ.  They will not use instruments in worship.  This is because in the new Testament there is no record of instruments being used in a worship service.  Some other Christians insist that women where head coverings. This is biblicism.  This view holds that every post-biblical innovation is an innapropriate Christian practice.

If this view had a motto it would be “If it is not in the Bible, I won’t do it.”

You may be thinking to yourself, “that sounds like a great motto.”  I agree.  It does sound like a great motto, but believe me, it isn’t.   It turns out that Christians have thought of lots of good things that aren’t in the Bible.  Now of course because they are not in the Bible that means that we can’t pretend they are essential, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good things.

Here are a few things that are not in the bible,(or at least not in the same way we have them today.)

• Church Buildings
• Offering Trays
• Projectors
• Christmas
• Easter
• Sunday School
• Seminaries
• Heated Baptisteries
• “Quiet Time”
• Church Calendar
• Daily Office
• The Trinity
• Alter calls
• and lots of other stuff why don’t you help me add to my list.

See that is all good stuff.  I wish that it was as easy as being a biblicist.  INstead we have to ask the much more difficult question.  Is this practice or teaching that is not in scripture still faithful to scripture.  Does it exprtess what scripture teaches without going further than scritpure does?

That takes discernment and the wisdom of the whole church guided by the Spirit and that is why I am not a biblicist.

(tune in to my next post for the big BUT…)

And this matters for our conversation about church events.  It won’t be as simple as asking what are the 3 or ten or fifty types of events that the church in Acts had.  Just because they had an event doesn’t mean that we must and just because they didn’t doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.  As we ponder the core evens of the church we will need submit fully to the authority of scripture but to do that we must do more than just copy the church in Jerusalem or Phillipi or Corinth (please don’t copy the church in Corinth).
on the walk

-Ethan

I have been wondering lately what are the core events of the life of the church.  What kinds of events ought we expect from every church in all times and what kinds of events are more tied to the form of the church or the culture it inhabits.

Is a weekly “worship service” necessary?  What should Christian worship look like anyway?

Are outreach events considered core events?  (Certainly outreach is, but what about big events designed for outreach?)

Are teaching events something that every church should have? (Again, I am not asking if teaching should happen, I am asking if its should happen in events.)

Of course churches will have lots of good programming that is beyond core programming but since programming decisions always involve hard choices with limited resources of time and money, it is worth asking what kinds of events lie at the core of the church and what are occasional (even if important) expressions of its mission at a particular cultural moment.
I am choosing the word “core” carefully.  I am not trying to come with a list of essentials.  I don’t want to say that every church will have these events and if a given church licks these events they are less than ideal.  On the other hand it would not surprise me if we could discern a rough handful of events that are so deeply tied to the mission and purpose of God church that they are core events.

I am also choosing the word events with some care.  I don’t mean to pretend that the forms of these events will be static.  On the contrary, I would specifically expect that they forms of these events would need to be redeveloped at least every other generation if not more frequently.

To get started, I will turn to the New Testament.  Let’s wander through it together and see what kinds of events are described on its pages.  That list may not be the whole answer (as I will soon discuss) but it certainly is an important part of the answer.

I hope that many who care about the church and the programming of the church might join me in this conversation. I’ll start with a comment about the dangers of biblicism and then we will get rolling with the first few chapters of Acts.

on the walk

-Ethan

I recently ran out of gas.  This is my first time.  It was rather un dramatic.  The car stopped running as I was driving home.  I was about a mile and a half away from my house.  I coasted toward my home and parked on the side of the road less than a half mile from home.  Consequently I was back to my car with a can of gas in about 20 minutes.

The few days before the incident were rather uneventful as well.  Life was busy, (perhaps even a tiny bit busier than usual) but not frantic.  I knew I was low on gas because I had a little light, so I saw the whole thing coming and knew exactly what was happening when it happened.  The light came on three days before I ran out.  At first I wasn’t worried because I can still drive quite a ways after the light comes on.  After a day I knew I needed to deal with the situation but then I was a bit late for a meeting so I put it off. And then I just wanted to get home so I put it off, and then I was running behind getting the kids to school and so I would stop on the way home.  And then it slipped my mind because I was on the phone.  And then I remembered at work and was going to leave early to get gas on my way to get the kids but I had to run an errand first which took longer than I had planned and so I had to go straight to get the kids and they were cranky so I wanted to take them right home so they could play before it got dark.  While they were playing I had to back to work for something quick and didn’t want to be gone long so I could play with them and we could all go Christmas shopping. And then on the way back home, I ran out of gas.

It was all so mundane.  I never made a radical choice. I didn’t ingore the little light and the gas gauge, I just kept making it my second priority.  And something that is always the second priority never happens.

That is the metaphor.

I’ll let you tell me what you learn from this.

on the walk

-Ethan

I haven’t posted for a long time.  I have missed it but I haven’t had either the time or the creative energy needed to write.  However I am eager to be back for the new year.  I hope that those who were reading will wander back and that many will begin to comment so that this can become a conversation.

Happy New Year.

on the walk

-Ethan

I often disagree with Piper.  But I admire his grounding in scripture and his commitment to faithful proclaim God’s word.  Here is a fine example of his teaching about a scriptural perspective on voting.  It is well worth your time:

 Let Christians Vote as if not Voting

on the walk

-Ethan