Saturday, October 30, 2010

New Testament Metaphor of the Church

The nature of the church cannot be understood apart from its mission and the needs of the world. By reviewing some of the common metaphors used in the New Testament that reveal the nature of the church we are able to back into an understanding of how it originally saw its mission. The needs of the world, then as now, are only discernable by being present. The needs are also subject to change based on time, place, and culture.

In his letters to Corinth and Rome Paul uses the metaphor of the body of Christ to convey the idea of the nature of the church. It was to be a unified yet diverse group of people working together for their common good and to provide the spiritual needs of the world. Both letters are to a specific community, so, they were to be read and understood in that context. He likens the members of each community to specific members of a human body, each with its own function and purpose – a purpose determined by God and used in conjunction with the other gifts to fulfill the general mission of the church.

The gifts listed in the two passages give us an indication of the mission of the church. The lists seem to focus on two main activities: the discipleship of existing members and the evangelism of unbelievers. Gifts like prophecy, teaching, exhortation, and leadership are gifts that are used to build up members of the church. Young believers are truly converted as their life becomes transformed by the direction provided by these gifts. It is through the direction of these kinds of gifts that new habits of life are gained and spirit empowered discipleship can occur. A second classification of gifts: service, healing, tongues, contribution, and acts of mercy are gifts that minister, not only to the believers, but primarily to unbelievers. Members of the body of Christ are to follow Jesus’ example in the gospels; he healed many, calmed storms, forgave sins, raised the dead, and encouraged people to have faith (Mt. 8-9). Knoxvillians and Nashvillians of today, like their Corinthian and Roman counterparts, must identify the questions, hopes, spiritual understandings, maladies, sins, and death which cover their communities in darkness and dispel it through a missional approach to evangelism. The ‘body of Christ’ is not the metaphor of a group of people with a building who plan to be the church, but a living, breathing organism that dwells in and with the people of a particular neighborhood so that the gospel it embodies can change them.

This leads to another aspect of the body of Christ metaphor. Beyond the unity and diversity of the body’s giftedness for mission; the image of the body also implies presence. John 1.14 states that the Word, later identified as Jesus, made his dwelling among us. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of this verse states that the Word “moved into the neighborhood”. God did not try to resolve his dispute with man by remaining behind heaven’s veil, but he sent his son in the flesh to faithfully represent him. Theologians call this the incarnation. As the body of Christ we are called to an incarnational mission to the world. We are to be present with God’s enemies in order to help reconcile them to him. We need to move into their neighborhoods in order to understand their particular needs and be close enough to them to do something about it. Greg Ogden wrote in his book Discipleship Essentials that, “the manner in which the Lord works is incarnational: life rubs up against life. We pass on Christlikeness through intimate modeling”. Paul seems to encourage this when he wrote, "I urge you to imitate me" (1 Corinthians 4:16) and "You became imitators of us and of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 1:6).

The body of Christ as a metaphor is instructive for discipleship and evangelism. Every gathering of believers who allow Christ to be their head has the genetic potential to fulfill his work within their communities. The role of leaders is to discern and act on what the Spirit is saying to the church through the voices of its many members.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Tackling the Distasteful

The principal of my son's school emailed this out this morning – I thought it was good.

When we force ourselves to do something we don't really want to do, we gain strength from it. It doesn't have to be anything earth-shaking. It can be something as simple as exercising or maybe just going to work when we don't feel like it. Perhaps it will require us to be nice to a person that we don't like – even if we feel they don't deserve it.

On the other hand, if we yield to the temptation to avoid the distasteful, the negative impact is doubled. First, we don't realize the growth we would have otherwise achieved. And, our self-image will take a beating. The disappointment we feel from not "stepping up to the plate" can damage our confidence the next time we're faced with a hard choice.

Great accomplishments are the final result of a life of taking on small tasks-----whether they're fun or not.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Build Character Now

Someday, in the years to come, you and I will wrestle with a great temptation, or trembling under a great sorrow. But the real struggle is here, now…Now it is being decided whether, in that day of supreme sorrow or temptation, we shall miserably fail of gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process. – Philip Brooks

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Spiritual Super-set

After service today my sons and I went to our local gym to work out. One of the keys to working out with weights is what is called a super-set. This is the set that does much of the work of tearing down the muscle so that it can rebuild, but many stop before this point and do not see the results they want. Oswald Chambers wrote the following which brings out the spiritual principle behind pushing beyond where your comfortable - a spiritual super-set.

Lord, I will follow Thee; but … Luke 9:61.

Supposing God tells you to do something which is an enormous test to your common sense, what are you going to do? Hang back? If you get into the habit of doing a thing in the physical domain, you will do it every time until you break the habit determinedly; and the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will get up to what Jesus Christ wants, and every time you will turn back when it comes to the point, until you abandon resolutely. ‘Yes, but—supposing I do obey God in this matter, what about …?’ ‘Yes, I will obey God if He will let me use my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark.’ Jesus Christ demands of the man who trusts Him the same reckless sporting spirit that the natural man exhibits. If a man is going to do anything worth while, there are times when he has to risk everything on his leap, and in the spiritual domain Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold by common sense and leap into what He says, and immediately you do, you find that what He says fits on as solidly as common sense. At the bar of common sense Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad; but bring them to the bar of faith, and you begin to find with awestruck spirit that they are the words of God. Trust entirely in God, and when He brings you to the venture, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis, only one out of a crowd is daring enough to bank his faith in the character of God.

Chambers, O. (1993). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year (NIV edition.). Westwood, NJ: Barbour and Co.