Category: Building Centered Church

#churchmatters: Gathered believers are sacred space (not the room or building they meet in)

5/27/2019

“The church (read a gathered-church) does not need a ‘sacred place’ to worship, have fellowship, and to offer (apostolic) instruction–three things the apostolic and early church would not have separated–for those gathered are the sacred space. In fact, the local gathered-church is the liminal space between the heavenly places and earth; the human beings, who have gathered together, are the most sacred space, the holy of holies as it were (literally), in all of creation at that moment; they are, not the space or place, the address, they occupy, the temple of the Most High, the Creator God of all creation; they are the mystical, yet visible body of Christ, that is, the presence of God in Christ on earth, right there, because their ascended Head, Messiah Jesus, is now seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places and they, these gathered believers are His body” (CMA).

Church matters (#churchmatters)

*Some texts to give support for my thoughts: Acts 7:48-50;17:24-25; Ephesians 1:15-19, especially 20-23; 2:6, 10, 18-22; 3:14-21. Additionally, I have been investigating the interpretive significance of the church in Acts (the the rest of the NT) as a house-movement–see my previous ETS paper thread here: Seditious Households.

I am also developing a paper on Ephesians 3, specifically verse 16's reference to “the inner man” (τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον), which I take corporately rather than individualistically as it typically (but wrongly) is taken to mean; corporately, meaning a reference to the local church or churches in the Asian Minor region (to whom there is evidence Ephesians as a circulatory Letter, along with Colossians, was written). In the LXX OT ἔσω (inner) is associated with the temple and, very much so, the inner construction and the Holy of Holies, i.e., the space where YHWH's manifest presence . . . and thus, you can see where I am going with this. Stay tuned for posts of that paper.

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Painting table fellowship from our experience of church

11/23/2018

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There are so many grand and wonderful paintings of early church times of table fellowship. And some I really, truly like. Yet, there is a male-centerness to them that would not have reflected the actual tables of Christian fellowship of the early church that these scenes are to depict. I do not see women and wives and slaves and children; typically just men, and when women are depicted, they are serving food. Most of these grand paintings were created and come at the time after Constantine, the Roman Empire Caesar (272 AD - 337 AD), herded the churches away from the homes of Christians and into buildings sanctioned by the State, along with laws to build up and protect an appointed church authority and priesthood consisting solely of men. Church began to reflect the culture of the empire more so than the one painted by the Apostolic church and the early church through 300 AD. This move recreated the church away from the Table fellowship of strangers and unequals that had increased and spread since the days after the Pentecost of Acts 2. Most of these wonderful paintings, as far as I can tell, come from the post-constantine Christian era, reading their “church experience” back into the apostolic and early church (form and experience).

We do that, too, now. Our vision of the church not only reflects the flaws and unredeemed aspect of our social and cultural times and trends, but we read this experience of church back into the life of the early church and, worse, back into the vision of the church depicted by our New Testament writers.

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Wasted Passion Week Thoughts: This was the way to destroy the gods

3/6/2018

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The passion week scene of Jesus and Pilate has provoked many thoughts for me as I prepare for this year's Easter season. I mentioned in a previous post that we ought to identify with the readers of this story and listen closely as they would have to John's telling of this story, and in particular the scenes of Pilate and Jesus (in John 18-19). This scene was an answer to them, as it still remains an answer for us, this is how things change–this is God's way to change the world, destroy powers, and save humanity (our friends, family, and neighbors, even our enemies).

Looking to Ephesians for a moment: I am persuaded that the Gospel of John was written by John in the Ephesus area and its first audience was the gathered-churches throughout western Asia Minor (similar as Paul's Letters to Ephesians and Colossians). So, I start with Ephesians. Most take Paul’s Ephesians letter as an issue-less document (e.g., no real problem in the church) and crafted in such a way to address the church universal rather than the church local. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. The Letter was written to the local churches—ye, household gathered-churches—throughout western Asia Minor . . . and given Ephesian's highly liturgical and hierophany-like nature, its temple-ish and sacred space framing . . . I take the issue to be: the gospel had so penetrated into the Gentile world that former pagan-temple worshippers entering into church fellowship needed to learn a new temple-life as church, something wholly different that there temple life in Roman, pagan culture and society. In this case, a gathered church that looked and felt more like a living room filled with unequal strangers, wives and husbands, children and slaves, and extended family . . . than a theater-like building with mostly equals sitting in pews . . .

What would this scene, Jesus before Pilate, mean to the young church of mostly former (and some, for sure, still) temple-worshipping Gentiles and a number of Greek-speaking diaspora Jews living in western Asia Minor?

We must acknowledge and grasp that there is no New Testament analogy for what we do on a Sunday morning. We’ve exchanged someone’s dining or upper room in the greater Ephesus or perhaps Laodicean region for a theater-like building that Caesar (now) sanctions. We have exchanged a meal, a diepnon or supper, with the broken break shared at the beginning of the meal to signify all those gathered at table were in Christ, a family, made one because of Jesus’ broken body on that criminal’s cross (cf. Eph 2:11-22) and where a cup would be raised after the meal (cf. Luke 22:20) to honor, not Caesar or a household deity, but the resurrected treasonous-traitor, Jesus, the real and only King of kings and Lord of lords, the One standing before Pilate–all exchanged for tokens and symbols rather than a gathered-church of unequals and strangers, poor and wealthy, beggars and doctors, the discarded and the elite, the temple prostitute and the patron, slaves and masters, orphans and male child-heirs, girls and children of slaves, women and men . . . this was the way to destroy the gods of the Greco-Roman empire and to topple a Caesar.

There was only one king in that judgment hall. The one wearing a crown of thorns, bloodied by a criminal's beating, fist marks on his cheeks, in a mock purple robe. You see, we hear the passion-week inquisition where Jesus stood before Pilate with strange ears to the story . . . but . . . hear again we must . . . again, differently . . . we must cry out, 'We have no king but Jesus!' and abandon all our idolatries and allegiances to the kings and powers of this world. As it was for those early gathered-churches in western Asia Minor, so still for us: this is how God destroys the powers and changes everything.

All the Wasted Passion Week Thought blogs >> Click Here

I am the author of Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism, a deep, exegetical read into the Gospel of Mark. All royalties from this book go to support our church planting ministry in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. The book and its e-formats can be found on Amazon, Barns'n Noble, (and most other online book distributors) or through the publisher, Wipf & Stock directly.

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Church building as liminal space: Our worship experience has a history and habits that promote a dual spirituality

2/20/2017

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Among most protestant, evangelical churches we say our worship isn't mediated via a priestly order or professional; but isn't that really how, for the most part, congregations experience worship?

The original New Testament church and on into the first 150 or so years met in homes and worshipped around a regular household meal, which helped promote, facilitate, maintain a connection between faith and life as a whole. A separated worship began the process and habits that produced a dualistic spirituality in our faith—one for Sunday and one for the “real world.” When the building (a building) is considered the liminal* space between God and people, a dualistic religious experience is established and maintained through continued use and habits associated with the building (a building). In other words,

“Church is conceived as a sacred space; the ethereal architecture, lighting, music, rituals, religious language, and culture all collaborate to make this a sacred event not experienced elsewhere in life in quite the same way” (Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, p. 103).

Our habit of “going to church” cannot be separated from our habits of worship that create ways of thinking about our faith and the Christian life. A building-centered church, and in this case, worship experience codifies a dualistic spirituality that maintains a cleavage between the sacred and the secular.

I am as guilty as anyone on this matter, I must confess. Among protestant churches in general and evangelical churches more specifically, we tend to draw our worship patterns, structures, and elements from the Old Testament temple worship experience (and texts) of ancient Israel—strangely enough the very thing that Jesus confronted and of which the very professional temple-class that killed him. We justify our building-centered and professional clergy-based church and worship experience from the Old Testament patterns rather than New Testament affirmations and instruction—and, rather than from the very nature of the gospel itself.

“A building-centered church, and in this case, worship experience codifies a dualistic spirituality that maintains a cleavage between the sacred and the secular.”

Of course, there was a progression and a modification of household worship over the first 150 to 300 years of the early church. But it was Caesar, Constantine specifically, that gave us our start in church as building, away from households. He, not only designed the first separated and built churches, he ordered and approved a professional clergy-class to maintain Christianity under Caesar, and, even, made heresy punishable by the state. Later, under emperor Theodosius such Constantinianism church-forms were strengthened and codified, creating a church culture apart from the text of the New Testament and apart from the household, setting a course for developing a corpus Christianum that affirmed the church’s place under the emperor, and declaring Sunday as the official day of religious “church” observance with obligatory attendance and, as well, punishment for noncompliance.

Most of what we see, experience, and affirm in our church experience is a long by-product of Constantine and the long-standing power invested in a professional clergy class. For sure, there are positive benefits for such a clergy, that is the maintaining and protection of the gospel itself and for preserving a tradition; yet, as in all social experience wherein a guardian class is created (or needed), power becomes the necessarily element in maintaining its (understanding of) purity and rightful inheritance. And, at least in part, the building-centered system we have is a means to protect the rightful inheritors of ecclesiastical power. This, then, becomes part of the building-centered church experience for the congregation, further teaching by habits and world (i.e.,religious) view a dualistic spirituality that separates the sacred from the secular.

“Everything about most modern, theater-like worship affirms the separation of our faith from everyday life . . .”

Everything about most modern, theater-like worship affirms the separation of our faith from everyday life: from “going to church” outside our neighborhoods to seeing and developing the habits of us-them in worship where a professional clergy class are the stewards of all the elements of grace, where from 80% to 95% of the worshippers are passive participants in the worship, where a select few (mostly qualified and/or approved by a designated ecclesiastical power) perform the worship while the rest of the congregation follows, and where there are clear lines of separation between the few (leaders) and the whole of the participants in worship.

When we, that is leaders of the church, are puzzled over, saddened by, and, in too many cases, judgmental of lay-Christians who do not apply or live out their faith in the ordinary, profane, and mundane life outside of “church,” we should not be surprised, for we have taught them to live and experience their faith in this way. When we, by affirmation and by our habits, designate a building as liminal sacred space rather than, as it seems, God's people are now to be such sacred space, we teach our congregations to have a dualistic faith.

*Liminal, that moment or space between earth and heaven, the entrance or threshold between the ordinary or profane and religious or sacred.

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The church (gathered) eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners

12/27/2016

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“The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?’” (Luke 5:30).

“‘The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”’” (Luke 7:34).

“Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him” (Luke 15:1).

Was struck this morning in my daily Bible reading concerning the phrase “tax collectors and sinners.” If we, that is the church (the body of Christ) that is now the presence of the ascended Jesus (that is his body in a place), how is it that we (not as individuals, which is a wholly modernist and ‘merican notion of church applied to the nature of the Christian life, i.e., replacing “wēs” with “I”) are not at a place--in a space--where we are accused of “eating and drinking” (there’s the idea of meals again) with “tax collectors and sinners”?

Instead, we are safely tucked into a building designed and with habits to distinguish who's in and who's out, where all leveling is errased, and we have power over guests; a place where we can escape being aligned with the “Son of Man” and being maligned as a gluttonous group and drunkards, friends “with tax collectors and sinners.” And, gathered in a space that is, in many places, not at all welcoming (easily accessible by design and by default) to “tax collectors and the sinners” to come near to find Jesus and to listen to him.

Now such association with the likes of these people and populations, that is the equivalent to “tax collectors and sinners,” is relegated to church programs outside of the practise (i.e., worship) of the body, to specialists and volunteers, and carefully guarded and designed events. (Don't get me wrong, I know it is important to have worship time—but the early church met in homes that allowed for a mixture of believing and unbelieving to be present.) I am impressed, however, with the idea, amid the wider reading of the New Testament, that this is a church problem, not a volunteer or scheduling problem.

These texts (and way too many like them, e.g., Matthew 9:9–13) are ignored as texts to be applied to the body of Christ (local). How does the body of Christ, not individual Christians apart from the body—on their own time and amid their own convictions and conscience and resources—but, the church be Jesus in this way so that “tax collectors and sinners” are seated at the table in his midst? Perhaps, then, we will, once again be accused of eating and drinking and associated with the marginal and despised, tax collectors and the sinners.

Rethinking church.

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A picture worth words enough: It ought not be this way

11/8/2015

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The Eph 5 filling command, within the sphere of God's new temple-church, sets trajectories of application for the following household code

10/11/2015

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Just finished the long exegetical section on Ephesians 5 command to be filled in Spirit for my up-coming November Evangelical Theological Society paper . . . some editing I am sure, but drafted! Here is the summary for those interested:

A contextual-exegetical exploration and summary places the Ephesians 5 filling command within the sphere of God’s new temple-church (Eph 2:19-22). The community of believers is God’s new sacred space, his multihousehold temple-church that is a dwelling place of God in Spirit, which is a reflection modeling of God’s cosmic reconciliation. Herein lays the potential importance of the following household code: the relationship-trio (wives-husbands, children-fathers, slaves-masters) must in someway indicate the architecture of the new temple, first, as the space where the cosmic reconciliation begins to expand, but also, second, in demonstrating the subversive nature of the work of God through the Messiah in reordering the basic unit of society under the new paterfamilias, the Father. The household code, then, offers trajectories of significance for church growth outputs and outcomes. The relationship-trio, somehow, pushes us to reimagine church growth beyond mere numbers of people in a “sanctuary” built with human hands; potential outcomes that require evangelistic outputs (i.e., activities) that are meant to subvert the status quo and, as a result, demonstrate a reordering reflective of God’s cosmic reconciliation.

*For those following my thoughts on "Church Growth" as I prepare a paper for the upcoming November 2015 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta. Other Not by the Numbers posts >>

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#churchmatters: Gathered believers are sacred space (not the room or building they meet in)

Painting table fellowship from our experience of church

Wasted Passion Week Thoughts: This was the way to destroy the gods

Church building as liminal space: Our worship experience has a history and habits that promote a dual spirituality

The church (gathered) eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners

A picture worth words enough: It ought not be this way

The Eph 5 filling command, within the sphere of God's new temple-church, sets trajectories of application for the following household code

Just finished the long exegetical section on Ephesians 5 command to be filled in Spirit for my up-coming November Evangelical Theological Society paper . . . some editing I am sure, but drafted! Here is the summary for those interested:

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