What is the mission of the Church according to the New Testament?-Philip Nation

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Contextualization

by lduncan

"I do not think for a moment that the church should aspire to become irrelevant. There is always a need for Christians to speak the gospel into their own context. Rather, my concern is with the ever present danger of over-contextualizing. Consider what happens to a church that is always trying to appeal to an increasingly post-Christian culture. Almost inevitably, the church itself becomes post- Christian. This is what happened to the liberal church during the twentieth century, and it is what is happening to the evangelical church right now. As James Montgomery Boice has argued, evangelicals are accepting the world’s wisdom, embracing the world’s theology, adopting the world’s agenda, and employing the world’s methods. In theology a revision of evangelical doctrine is now underway that seeks to bring Christianity more in line with postmodern thought. The obvious difficulty is that in a post-Christian culture, a church that tries too hard to be relevant may in the process lose its very identity as the church. Rather than confronting the world the church gets co-opted by. It no longer stands a city on a hill, but sinks to the level of the surrounding culture."

Philip Graham Ryken, City on a Hill: Reclaiming the Biblical Pattern for the Church in the 21st Century (Moody Press, 2003), 22.

A Church of Feet and Ears, Section C

By Mark Roberts

Part 15 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In my last couple of posts I've been describing the historical and cultural context for the letter we know as 1 Corinthians. I explained how the Corinthian congregation was divided, and how the culture of Corinth undoubtedly contributed to this problem. Today I want to focus a bit more closely on the issues that led Paul to use the image of the human body as a way of talking about the church in Corinth.

As we read through 1 Corinthians, it's obvious that some of the Christians there were majoring in what we would call self-centeredness. They were going to do what they wanted to do, without concern for how their behavior impacted others. If, for example, they ate meat in pagan temples and this scandalized their fellow Christians, tough! If some of the men in Corinth participated in prostitution, tough! Some in Corinth were going to enjoy their freedom in Christ whether it hurt others or not. Tough luck for the rest!

This was especially true when it came to the matter of behavior in the ekklesia, the gathering of Corinthian believers. In 1 Corinthians 11, we learn that some of the women were dressing immodestly in the assembly, even though this scandalizes the men who were present. And when it came time for the assembly to share in the Lord's Supper together, which they did in the context of an actual meal, some folks ate sumptuous dinners while others went hungry.

Then there was the matter of purported spiritual experiences and demonstrations. Some members of the Corinthian ekklesia spoke in unknown languages – usually called speaking in tongues – while others did not. A version of this behavior was common in some of the pagan cults that were popular in Corinth at that time. Participants in these cults became so wrapped up in corporate frenzy that they engaged in ecstatic activity, including babbling in unrecognizable syllables. It seems likely that some of the Corinthian believers, believing that speaking in tongues was the apex of spirituality, did so in the Christian gatherings, just as they had once done in their pagan celebrations.

This behavior was disruptive and not helpful to the rest of the gathered believers. Moreover, if an outsiders were to visit an ekklesia and hear such behavior, they'd be inclined to dismiss the Christian community as one more odd Corinthian cult.

Yet those who spoke in tongues not only failed to see how their behavior in the gathering was unhelpful, but also tended to see themselves as spiritually superior to the believers who didn't speak in tongues. Some of these self-appointed elite may even have thought that those who didn't speak in tongues were not even important at all. And it seems likely that those who lacked such demonstrations of spiritual influence also devalued themselves.

So spiritual self-centeredness became mixed up with spiritual pride. The net result was hurting the Christian community in Corinth, especially when they came together for common meetings. Paul's task in response to this problem was a tricky one. For, on the one hand, he agreed with the selfish Corinthians that the Holy Spirit empowered Christians in unusual ways, including speaking in tongues. Yet, on the other hand, Paul saw the value of such spiritual demonstrations in very different terms. In order to help the Corinthian Christians to have a right understanding of how they were to relate to each other, and how, in particular, they were to employ demonstrations experiences in the ekklesia, Paul used the image of the church as a body.

In my next post I'll begin to examine how this image functions in 1 Corinthians.

A Church of Feet and Ears, Section B

By Mark Roberts

Part 14 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In my last post I began to explain why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, and why he used the image of the human body to help them understand who they were as God's people together. The core problem was that of division in the Corinthian ekklesia, with members treating each other in an unloving manner and failing to value their connectedness in Christ.
The more you learn about Corinthian culture in the first century A.D., the less you are surprised by the problems occurring among the Christians there. Corinth was located in southern Greece, in a prime location for travelers and merchants moving across the Mediterranean Sea. Thus Corinth was a hotbed of economic opportunity, unlike much of the rest of the Roman Empire. Lots of new money, and all that often comes with it: pride, boasting, extravagance, prejudice, resentment, selfishness, sexual adventurism, etc.
Moreover, because of Corinth's location and economic vitality, it was a truly multicultural city, with immigrants from throughout the Roman world. With multiculturalism came all sorts of adventures and challenges, including foreign religions, different languages, and conflicting cultural patterns. The religious life of Corinth was suitably varied, with vestiges of older Greek religion and its mysteries, as well as lots of newer cults brought by immigrants and visitors. Among those who brought their religion to Corinth were some Jews who had built a synagogue there. (If you're looking for more information on the Corinthian culture and its impact on the Christians there, see the outstanding commentary by Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth.)

Given what I've said about the diversity and unsettled nature of Corinthian society, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the Christian gatherings weren't without their challenges. After all, if you were to bring together people from different socio-economic brackets, religious backgrounds, and ethnicities, and put them in close fellowship with each other, and supply only minimal leadership, then you would surely find yourself with a mess. And that's what Paul experienced with the Corinthians.

Please understand that I'm not necessarily criticizing the Corinthian believers for this situation. After all, they were relatively immature Christians when Paul left their city to plant churches elsewhere. They didn't have Bibles, since the New Testament wasn't written yet, and they would have had at most very limited access to scrolls in the local Jewish synagogue. They didn't have mature Christians to lead them (except perhaps for a few visiting missionaries). They didn't have Christian books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, or websites. What they had was a memory of Paul's teaching, some of which they misunderstood or found confusing, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I'm not minimizing the value of the Holy Spirit, mind you. Indeed, there is not better resource for Christian community that the third person of the Trinity! But the problem is that Christians, especially immature ones, can easily get confused about the Spirit. They can attribute to the Spirit works of the flesh, or even of demons. They can claim for themselves spiritual inspiration when none is truly to be found. And this is exactly what happened at Corinth.

In my next post I'll say a bit more about the specifics of this Corinthian confusion about the Spirit, and how it relates both to their culture and to the divisions within the Corinthian ekklesia. Then we'll be ready to dive into Paul's teaching on the church of feet and ears.

When a Church is not a Church, Section G

By Mark Roberts

Part 12 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

Before I finish my discussion of the meaning of the word ekklesia – usually translated as "church" – in the New Testament, I need to say something about the use of ekklesia in Paul's letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians.

Curiously, neither of these letters are addressed to an ekklesia or to a group of ekklesiai as is the case in Paul's letters to Corinth (both letters), Galatia, and Thessalonica (both letters). Colossians is addressed to "the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae" (Col 1:2), while Ephesians was sent to "the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus" (Eph 1:1). The greetings at the end of Colossians reflect the sort of tangible, actual-gathering quality of ekklesia that we have seen before in Paul. He greets "Nympha and the ekklesia in her house" as well as the "ekklesia of the Laodicieans" (4:15-16).

Yet earlier in Colossians we find a different nuance of ekklesia. Let me quote several verses from the first chapter of this letter:

15 [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (1:15-20; emphasis added)

A few verses later Paul underscores this new sense of ekklesia:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. (1:24)

Ephesians takes this ball from Colossians and runs with it far upfield. In the first chapter, God raised and exalted Christ,

22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (1:22-23)

In Ephesians 3, God reveals His wisdom "to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places" "through the church" (Eph 3:10). He concludes the chapter with a stirring benediction:

20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (3:20-21)

Then, in Ephesians 5, ekklesia shows up six times. Christ is "the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior" (5:23). The church "is subject to Christ" (5:24). Christ "loved the church and gave himself up for her" (5:25). Christ seeks "to present the church to himself in splendor" (5:27). He nourishes and tenderly cares" for the church (5:29). Finally, like the unity between husband and wife, so it is with Christ and the church, something Paul refers to as "a great mystery" (5:32).

The meaning of ekklesia in Colossians and Ephesians has clearly moved far beyond the literal gathering of Christians in some location. Now the ekklesia is the body of which Christ is the head. It appears to be some cosmic reality that transcends ordinary space and time, and that encompasses far more than a single gathering of believers. Paul seems to be envisioning some sort of "gathering," now used metaphorically rather than literally, of all Christians on earth and in heaven. This ekklesia has permanence in time like an actual body. An ekklesia in its regular meaning may come and go, but a body remains intact over time.

The relationship of the church/body in Colossians and Ephesians and the local church is not spelled out clearly. Though Paul uses ekklesia in a new and greatly expanded sense, he can still refer, as I mentioned earlier, to the ekklesia in Nympha's house (or that meets at her house, Col 4:15) and to the ekklesia of the Laodiceans (4:16). His specific instruction that his letter be read "in the ekklesia of the Laodiceans" suggests that Paul can still use ekklesia in the sense of the tangible gathering. Yet, at the same time, the ekklesia is also a much larger and more permanent reality. It is something that can be spoken of as a body, with Christ as the head.

The use of ekklesia in Colossians and Ephesians offers a fitting segue to the next image I want to investigate in this series on the church, the image of the body. To this I will turn in my next post.

Shotgun Churches

By Thabiti Anyabwile

You've heard of the Victorian, the Cape Cod, the transitional, traditional, contemporary, and the once-fabulous split-level home. There are also the MacMansions popping up all over suburbia. But in the poor, working lower class town where I'm from, the "shotgun house" is pretty popular. That's those little houses of simple design with one main corridor with a couple of rooms off to the side. They get their name from the fact that you could shoot a shotgun through the front door all the way through the back door without hitting anyone or any walls.

I think it's time we christen some churches "shotgun churches." Seems the front and back door of too many churches are wide open. You could fire a sawed-off through one door and never hit a wall or a member. Faster than the speeding bullets can travel through, members enter and leave.

At least that's what we're to gather from a recently published Lifeway Research survey of 469 "formerly churched adults" who gave their top reasons for leaving church. (HT: Pray Connecticut). Lifeway conducted the survey "to better understand why people stop attending church - and what it would take to bring the back.

Part 1 of the survey focused on why people are leaving. The two major categories of reasons for leaving were "changes in life situations" (59%) and "disenchantment with pastor/church" (37%). Between these categories, the top responses were:

1. Simply got too busy - 19 %
2. Family/home responsibilities prevented attendance - 17 %
3. Church members seemed hypocritical - 17 %
4. Church members were judgmental of others - 17 %
5. Moved too far from church - 17 %
6. Work situation prevented church attendance - 15 %
7. Church was not helping me develop spiritually - 14 %
8. Stopped believing in organized religion - 14 %
9. Church was run by a clique that discouraged involvement - 12 %
10. Got divorced/separated - 10 %

There's much to respond to here. On the one hand, it seems clear that these folks did not understand the centrality of the local church in God's plan of redemption (Eph. 2:11-3:10). When to top reason for leavingis "simply got too busy" and "family/home responsibilities prevented attendance," then someone has never learned or taught that following Jesus means and always has meant, in part, joining the local collection of other followers of Jesus as the people of God. This very basic aspect of the Christian life must be recaptured and emphasized in our membership classes and our public teaching. It must be.

Also, there are the problems with the behavior of some Chrisitians. Certainly, people inside the church are hurt from time to time. Pastors stumble. Members wound. So, part of our teaching must emphasizing growing in Christ likeness and the "one anohter" passages of Scripture. Instead of investing an inordinate amount of time in fancy vision and values statements made popular by corporations, perhaps we should major on that vision and those values expressed by God himself in His Word. Let's hold the Bible's picture of the church up as the vision and call all to enroll in that, which includes loving our brothers so uniquely and visibly that others will know we are followers of Jesus.

The respondents described themselves as "spiritual, but not religious" (24%), "Christian, but not particularly devout" (42%), "devout Christian with a strong belief in God" (19%), wavering on Christianity (10%), and no belief in God at all (6%).

These self-descriptions are helpful because they suggest that as much as 40% of the respondents (former church members) quite possibly were not Christians at all (spiritual but not religious, wavering on Christianity, and no belif at all). That's not including the potential numbers of people who are falsely assuring themselves they are Christians when the say they are "Christians, but not particularly devout." Setting aside for a moment the particular responses given for not attending, it would seem the more fundamental problem is taking care to be sure people understand and profess the gospel before admitting them to membership. In other words, these statistics suggest that what we need to do is close the front door to the church so that Christians who value and are committed to the local church a priori are admitted to membership. We'll always have these kind of reasons for leaving and high non-attendance rates if we don't first work to have our membership comprised of informed confessing Christians.

Here, I think the Lifeway writers got it precisely backward when they concluded, in part, "More than 80 percetn of the formerly churched do not have a strong belief in God, explaining why work and family are a higher priority than church. But would they be 'too busy' to attend if they felt more welcome at church?" If the idea that they're "too busy" is a sham, why would we think that the solution is to make them "more welcome at church"? I think we want them experiencing discomfort at church because our emphasis on the corporate life of God's people, drawn from the Scripture, causes them to be convicted and to notice their low valuations. Our aim is not to make the uncommitted comfortable, but to edify the committed saints and thus make the Christian life distinctive and attractive for those who are being saved.

Part 2 of the article, asks whether or not "church leavers" would be willing to return. Here are the results:

1. 4% are actively looking for another church;
2. 6% would prefer to resume attending the church they left;
3. 62% are not actively looking at all, but are "open" to attending;

The average respondent had not attended regularly for the past 14 years. But the Lifeway authors conclude that we should be encouraged that 3 out of 4 are "willing to give it another try." Fourteen years of non-attendance and only 10% of folks looking in some fashion to attend hardly combine to warrant optimism. This reminds me of the SBC's tendency to count non-attending church members as "prospects." They're supposed to be converts! Perhaps a little more pessimism about their spiritual position and a little less optimism about "getting them to come to church is the answer" is warranted.

Among those who indicated some "interest" in returning to church "when they felt it was time to return" (58%) or "felt God calling them to church" (31%), these were some of the reasons they might consider returning:

• "to fill a gap felt since stopping regular church attendance" (34%) - this is the most promising statistic in the entire survey for my money. Folks are supposed to feel a gap when they've removed themselves from the fellowship of God's people.
• "to bring me closer to God" (46%). In a survey where most respondents may not be Christians, I'm not sure what this means.
• "be around those with similar values" (32%). Depending on the values, this is a recipe for cliques and nominalism.
• "to make friends" (31%). See above.
• "to make a difference/help others in the community" (30%). This, too, may indicate that folks are not clear on exactly what the nature and primary purpose of the local church is. It's not fundamentally a community service club, though it may engage in many worthwhile community outreach/improvement activities.

At the end of the day, the Lifeway study is interesting and helpful because it points out once again that for the health of the local church and individual Christians, we must recover a high view of the local church, its centrality in the redemptive plan of God, and the importance of healthy church membership practices that close the front door and open the back. Apart from these things, we will always be plagued with constant leavers and non-attenders.

We would be better off if we thought of statistics like these as not so much indicators of opportunities but signs of impending death and decay. These data are just as likely to forecast church dissension and church splits as they are opportunities for recapturing former members. If we're not careful in our membership practices, we will invite all kinds of folks with different interests and commitments and will one day look up only to find that we've filled the church with carnality of the sort that only produces strife and pain.

When a Church is not a Church, Section F

By Mark Roberts

Part 11 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In yesterday's post I was reflecting on the practical implications that follow from the earliest meaning of "church," ekklesia in Greek. I ended up by suggesting that the early Christian use of ekklesia did, in some sense, undermine the social order of the Greco-Roman city, with its ekklesiai (plural of ekklesia, town meeting-like gatherings to do city business). The Christian ekklesia was meant to be an alternative society, a thumbnail sketch of the kingdom of God.

So, for example, in the ekklesia of God, Jews and Gentiles, so often separated in Roman society, shared life together as brothers and sisters. Slaves could also be full participants in the Christian gatherings, enjoying equality in Christ with non-slaves, even with their masters. Women could actively participate in the gatherings just as long as they didn't engage in the scandalous behavior of the pagan cults. The theological truth that in Christ "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female" was lived out in the Christian assemblies (Galatians 3:28). They were, indeed, a kind of alternative society, one that implicitly rejected the domineering, separatistic, and elitist values of the Roman world.

Could it be said that the church in America today is also an alternative society? Perhaps, in some places and at some times, but I fear these are the exceptions to the rule. The church in our culture tends to play a very different role than what was once envisioned by Paul and the earliest Christians. On the one hand, we often reflect the fallen values of our society rather than the holy values of God's kingdom. For example, put a church in the middle of a materialistic culture and, odds are, the church will be materialistic too. On the other hand, we have often been satisfied to play a comfortable religious role in society, offering a spiritual narcotic to soothe jangled nerves rather than an alternative way of living under God's rule. We don't want to rock the social boat. We want to find our niche in society so that society will smile upon us. Of course there are some Christians, who, like the Amish, withdraw from society in order to live as God's chosen people. But they hardly reflect the reality of what the Christian ekklesia ought to be in the world.

Christians who are active in politics, whether on the left or right side of the political spectrum, may see themselves as the rightful heirs of the early Christian ekklesia. Indeed, their desire for God to make a difference in this world does reflect what we see in the New Testament understanding of church. But nowhere in Scripture do we get the idea that the role of the ekklesia is to directly influence (or replace) the civic ekklesia. Nowhere is it suggested that the Christian assembly should "speak truth to power." Rather, the power of the ekklesia to change society comes from the authenticity of its corporate life. In the New Testament, the ekklesia offers, neither a prophetic critique of the civic ekklesia, nor political advice to the members of the civic ekklesia, but rather a whole new way of living, one that reflects the kingdom of God rather than the empire of Caesar.

I come from a denomination that has often seen itself as a counselor to the federal government and other leaders. We pass motions and write position papers, recommending to our leaders what courses of action they should take on a variety of issues. There is a sad irony in all of this, because, on the one hand, I don't think many of our national leaders care one bit about what we recommend. On the other hand, our efforts to "speak truth to power" often end up dividing us and impoverishing our own fellowship. The very thing that should be making a difference in society – our life together as an alternative community – is hampered by our misdirected efforts to make a difference in society. How I wish we'd stop trying to recommend to our government how it should act and start, instead, trying harder to get our own act together.

What would this mean, in practice, for my denomination? It would care much less about our national meetings and pay much more attention to the regular and real gatherings of our ekklesiai. It would mean that our denominational bodies would put much more energy into nurturing healthy ekklesiai than we do today. It would mean that we would strive harder to be an alternative society through our ekklesiai, one that truly reflects the gospel of Jesus Christ, one that shines as a light into our dark world. It would mean that we would see our gatherings as essential, not only to our congregational life, but also to the health of our cities. It would mean that our congregations would embrace our identity as "missional churches," fellowships sent by God to proclaim and live out the reality of His kingdom. We'd be less committed to our own self-preservation and more committed to offering our neighbors the good news of Christ, both in word and in our shared life together.

When a Church is not a Church, Section E

By Mark Roberts

Part 10 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

Let me begin with a brief review. In my last few posts in this series I've been exploring the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia, which is ordinarily translated as "church." This translation, however, is not necessarily the best because the English word "church" always has religious connotations, whereas ekklesia was a secular word that meant "assembly" or "gathering." When it was used in the phrase "ekklesia of God" it referred to a Christian assembly, but the religious sense came from "of God," not from ekklesia. Moreover, in the common Greek of the New Testament era, ekklesia denoted one particular kind of assembly, the gathering of citizens in a city to do civic business. In this sense, ekklesia had a meaning rather like that of the classic New England town meeting.

With this review in mind, I want to ponder a bit further some implications of ekklesia for our understanding of Church.

Implications for our Understanding of Church (continued)

My last post focused on the implications of the broadest sense of ekklesia. If an ekklesia is an actual meeting of people, then a "church" exists when Christians gather together. The physical meeting of believers is essential to a right understanding of church. This stands as a critique, I suggested, of the American tendency to downplay the importance of church involvement. In our speech and practice, one can be a member of a church without showing up for the gatherings. This, however, runs against the current of the basic notion of ekklesia.

In this post I want to begin to work on the implications of the more specific meaning of ekklesia: the gathering of citizens of a particular city. Consider the following thought experiment:

Suppose I were to move to New Hampshire in order to plant a new church there. I find a small town that has only one small, lifeless church, and decide to set up shop there. This town, Athens by name, is governed, in typical New England fashion by a town meeting that gathers periodically to oversee civic affairs. I begin my ministry with a Bible study in my home. After I have about twenty regulars, I decide to offer weekly worship services in the local school gymnasium. So I pass out flyers throughout the town. They proclaim: "Come to the Town Meeting of Athens in God."

How do you think the locals would respond to the name of my church? It isn't hard to imagine their confusion, and probably their ire. "Why are you calling yourself 'the Town Meeting of Athens' when we already have one?" they would ask. "What are you suggesting about our local government? Are you planning to replace our official town meeting? Are you a subversive? Or are you merely rude? We don't need your kind around here!"

Of course we can't know for sure that the citizens of Thessalonica reacted this way when they heard about the "ekklesia of the Thessalonians in God," but it's likely they were at least confused if not a bit miffed. Surely Paul and the other early Christian church planters knew what they were getting into by calling their gatherings ekklesiai (plural of ekklesia). No doubt they realized that referring to the Christian meetings as thiasoi (religious clubs) or synagogai (assemblies, synagogues) would be less troublesome. Yet they chose ekklesiai nevertheless.

It would seem that the early Christian use of ekklesia was indeed meant to be a bit seditious, but not in the ordinary manner. The first followers of Jesus were not intending to overthrow the established ekklesia of their cities. Yet they were setting up an alternative society which, as it grew, would indeed upset the apple cart of civic life throughout the Roman Empire. The Christian ekklesia was not some little religious club off in a corner, or some innocuous gathering fit nicely into Greco-Roman society. Rather, it was a thumbnail sketch of the kingdom of God. It was a foretaste of the new creation yet to come.

Tomorrow I'll explain in more detail how this looked in the first century, and how it might look in ours.

Urgent Preaching

Robert Culver reminds us in his Systematic Theology (pg. 967) of the need to carry on what he calls “urgent preaching.”

Among the features of the public services of worship in the ekklesia the sermon, therefore, is of great importance. During the dark ages of the Western churches of Europe parish priests were so prevailingly ignorant of the Scriptures that the memorized liturgy of the Mass was about all they could produce. The evangelical Reformation restored the Bible to the people and put it again at the center of worship by way of public reading and urgent preaching by a competent preacher.

Pastors.com: Clown Noses to Convey Eternal Truths?

By Ingrid Schlueter

Proving once again that no satire regarding the sorry state of evangelicalism can outdo reality, please read this article from pastors.com first and then link to this site that is included in the article. I'll bet you didn't know that "beginning with the Word" is a bad thing. Well, welcome to the weird and wacky world of Purpose-Driven church. What's needed now, according to the author, are communicators, not preachers. Of course, to communicate effectively, minus the Holy Spirit, you will need to utilize things like clown noses, trapeze artists, dancing poodle shows and so forth. I'm not joking. These things are now called, "experiential resources". Here's an excerpt from the article:

The primary difference is that preachers begin with the Word and communicators start with the audience. Sounds sacrilegious to begin with who's listening, but it's what Jesus did. He didn't keep repeating the same Kingdom message over and over. Jesus constantly changed up his communication based on his audience.

Pastors today don't want to begin with the Word because they have no confidence in the promises of God. They don't regard the Word as foundational and they reject the idea that the Holy Spirit alone is responsible for conversions. That's why we are seeing clown noses on our pastors today. It is a fitting statement that they put more confidence in a rubber nose than the eternal Word of God.

When a Church is not a Church, Section D

By Mark Roberts

Part 9 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In yesterday's post I explained that the earliest Christian usage of the word ekklesia, which is normally translated as "church" in English Bibles, referred to an actual gathering of believers in Jesus. The ekklesia in Thessalonica didn't exist, therefore, unless the Thessalonian Christians were actually together. So when Paul wrote a letter to this ekklesia, he didn't mean "all the Christians in the city wherever they might happen to be." Rather, he meant "all the Christians in the city who were gathered together at a certain time."

I realize that this might sound rather trivial, the sort of thing that advances academic careers while boring ordinary people to death. But there are, I believe, important implications of the meaning of ekklesia for our understanding of what a church is.

Implications of Our Understanding of Church

Once we get beyond the "church is a building" mistake, we tend to think of a church as "all of the members of a particular Christian institution, whether they are present in the gathering or not." If you ask me, "How big is Irvine Presbyterian Church?" I'll say, "Oh, we have about 750 members." I do not mean by this that we ever have all 750 in the same place at the same time. This almost never happens because we don't have a room large enough for this number of people. In common speech, Irvine Presbyterian Church is composed of those who have decided to this particular group of people their religious home, whether they show up very much or not.

This understanding of church has some benefits, to be sure. It means that you're still a member of the church if you're sick on a Sunday and can't show up for worship. This is comforting, to be sure. But there is a downside to thinking of a church as a collection of people who may or may not ever actually be together. This downside is illustrated in a conversation I had with somebody not long ago. She was talking about her church, so I asked, "Oh, are you a member of Anonymous Presbyterian Church." "Yes," she answered, "I'm a member there. But I don't attend very often."

I'm sure you've heard this sort of thing before. Maybe you've said it yourself. You can be a member of a church in good standing and not be physically present in the regular gatherings very often. But from a New Testament point of view, this is peculiar indeed. One was part of the ekklesia in Thessalonica if one was part of the real gathering because, indeed, ekklesia meant "gathering." To say, "I'm a part of a church but I don't attend very often" would be rather like if you invited me to a party at your house on Sunday evening, "I'm having a little gathering of friends on Sunday night. Can you come?" and I answered, "Sure, I'll be a part of your gathering, but I won't be able to attend." You'd be downright confused by my answer, because being a part of a gathering means being physically present.

I'm belaboring this point because one of the major problems in with our churches today is that many of our members don't actually participate very much. I saw a survey not long ago that found average church attendance in America to be 30-40% of membership, and this includes non-member visitors. It's likely, therefore, that only about one-third of people who associate themselves with a particular church actually associate in reality with that church on a regular basis. To put it negatively in the vernacular, about two-thirds of church members don't regularly go to church. But if the ekklesia is meant to be the actual gathering of people, not some ethereal club, then something is terribly wrong when the majority of so-called church members aren't regularly present with the church.

Please understand, I'm not necessarily blaming church members for this problem, though they surely contribute to it. Churches and church leaders have much to do with the problem of inactive members. Among other things, we have perpetuated that notion that church is about joining something where literal attendance isn't assumed. Moreover, we have often made the content of our assemblies so boring and irrelevant that I can't blame folks for attending irregularly. All pastors need to ask themselves: Would I show up on Sunday morning at my church if I didn't have to?

To sum up: When is a church not a church? If we take seriously the New Testament sense of ekklesia, then our answer is: When the church is not gathered together. To translate a bit more literally, The assembly is not the assembly when it isn't assembled. Now I certainly believe there's a sense in which we can be the church when we're scattered in the world, and I'll have more to say about this later. But, for now, it's important to note that there's something extremely important, and, indeed, essential about the actual gathering of Christians. Though there may be a derivative sense in which the church can be scattered, the regular assembly of believers is absolutely crucial to the health, if not the essence of a church.

When a Church is not a Church, Section C

By Mark Roberts

Part 8 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

(Photo:Norman Rockwell's classic "Freedom of Speech" painting portrays the reality of the American town meeting.)

In my last two posts I've suggested that the Greek word ekklesia, which is usually translated as "church" in our English New Testaments, did not have the religious overtones we naturally hear when "church" is spoken. Because of this, I've even suggested that "church" is not the best translation for ekklesia. "Assembly," it seems to me, is better, even though it doesn't quite represent the nuances of ekklesia. You may recall that ekklesia had a common and quite specific meaning. It denoted the gathering of citizens in a Greek city, those who had authority over the city much like a city council might today. (In actuality, the ekklesia would be like a peculiar combination of the voters in a city and the city council. Perhaps the town meeting in a small New England town would be the closest modern equivalent.)

The Earliest Usage of Ekklesia in the New Testament

Unquestionably, the earliest written use of ekklesia in the New Testament comes from the letters of Paul. Scholars differ on which of Paul's letters was the earliest. Some opt for Galatians; while others prefer 1 Thessalonians. I'm in the "others" group for reasons I won't go into here. When Paul wrote his first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica (in Macedonia, an area of northern Greece), he began in this way:

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the ekklesia of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thes 1:1)

Presumably, of course, he had taught the Thessalonian Christians to think of themselves as an ekklesia, so they would know what he was referring to when he used this word.

The phrase "ekklesia of the Thessalonians" would have had an established, commonly-understood meaning in this city. It denoted the gathering of citizens to govern the city. But Paul qualified his use of this phrase and therefore limited misunderstanding by adding "in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The Christians gathered in Thessalonica were not equivalent to the civic ekklesia. Rather, they were an alternative assembly, one that met "in God" and "in Christ." "In" means something like "by the work of" or "under the authority of" or "for the sake of."

Given what we've seen earlier about the meaning of ekklesia, it's quite likely that Paul was referring to the actual gathering of Christians in Thessalonica. He envisioned that his letter would be read in this gathering, and he was addressing the people who were in fact there. There's no evidence that he was thinking, as we might think, of all the members of the Thessalonian church, whether they were present for the reading or not. Paul was addressing a real assembly, and actual gathering of people. These were the ekklesia.

Support for this understanding of church comes also from Paul's letter to Galatians. He addresses this letter to: "The churches [ekklesiais] of Galatia" (1:2). The use of the plural is telling here. When Paul writes a letter to the Christians in the region of Galatia (in the center of modern Turkey), he does not think of them as some sort of spiritual group that could be called a single ekklesia, even though it never gathered together in the same place. Rather, they were a bunch of ekklesiai, "assemblies" in the plural.

It may well be that in some of Paul's later writings, notably Colossians and Ephesians, he expands the sense of ekklesia beyond this basic sense. I'll discuss this later. For now, however, I want to make the simple point that the basic meaning of ekklesia includes the notion of an actual gathering of real people. Paul wouldn't know what you meant if you said, "The Thessalonian ekklesia didn't meet today." From his point of view, there would still have been a few dozen Christians in Thessalonica, and they would still have had many ties together in Christ and in the Spirit, but they wouldn't have been an ekklesia if they didn't actually meet.

It may seem like I'm make an academic and linguistic point here that is of interest to scholars but otherwise of little practical value. On the contrary, I think what I've just said has giant implications for our actual understanding and practice of church today. I'll explain this in tomorrow's post.

When a Church is not a Church, Section B

By Mark Roberts

Part 7 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In my last post I argued something fairly commonplace: that the word "church," understood theologically, does not refer to buildings but to the congregations who use them. Then I argued something fairly unusual: that the English word "church" is a poor translation of the Greek word ekklesia, the word that is almost always rendered as "church" in English translations of the Bible. I explained that ekklesia in standard first-century Greek did not have a religious connotation, and therefore "church" smuggles in meaning that was not present in ekklesia. So, you might wonder, if "church" isn't the best translation of ekklesia, what might be better? I'll try to answer this question, first by looking at the ordinary meaning of the word ekklesia.

(Photo: A statue of Artemis in the Vatican Museum)

The Ordinary Meaning of Ekklesia

Almost all New Testament uses of ekklesia are distinctive in comparison to secular Greek, since ekklesia is almost always used to denote an usual gathering, that is, of believers in Jesus. In Acts of the Apostles, however, this term is used three times in a more or less ordinary sense, though perhaps ironically.

The context for this usage is Paul's ministry in Ephesus (a city in what is now western Turkey). For two years he preached the gospel, with considerable success. Many residents of Ephesus put their faith in Jesus and rejected their pagan practices. This led to a sharp decrease in the sales of little silver trikets of one of the most popular pagan gods, Artemis. Those who made their living by making and selling these souvenir idols became enraged, fearing the loss of their livelihood. So they stirred up their fellow Ephesians, who all rushed together to the theatre at the center of town, dragging a couple of Paul's companions with them. Acts tells us that the assembly in the theatre was in great confusion. The Greek word translated as "assembly" is ekklesia (Acts 19:32). When one man tried to address the gathering, he was shouted down because the pagan Ephesians were biased against him owing to his being Jewish. Finally one of the civic leaders of Ephesus managed to quiet the people down. He told them not to worry about the worship of Artemis, and to follow appropriate legal actions if they had been wronged by Paul and his retinue. The leader concluded by saying, "If there is anything further you want to know, it must be settled in the regular assembly [ennomoi ekklesiai, literally, the lawful ekklesia or assembly]" (19:39). Then, Acts tells us, the official "dismissed the assembly [ekklesian]" (19:40).

From this story in Acts we can learn several things about the word ekklesia. Most simply, it meant "assembly" or "gathering." It referred to some sort of meeting of people who had come together for a particular purpose. In Greek society, the ekklesia was the assembly of full citizens in a particular city. (Most residents were not full citizens at that time.) Thus the ekklesia was rather like the city council in a modern American city in terms of its authority.

Etymologically, the word ekklesia was derived from the verb ek-kaleo, which meant "to call people together" or "to summon" them. This does not mean, however, that ekklesia really meant "the called-out people," as is sometimes claimed by preachers. Those who wrote the New Testament and those who read what they had written would not have thought of ekklesia in light of its etymological roots. For them, the word meant "assembly" without a hint of whether those who gathered had been called out or not. It's like when you hear the word "microwave." This word denotes a certain kind of oven. You and I don't think of the fact that "microwave" was derived from the combination of "micro" and "wave," and uses high-frequency electromagnetic waves. Rather, "microwave" means "that white oven over there in which I warm up my leftover pizza."

Ekklesia was a common Greek word for a gathering of people. It came to have a special meaning in reference to the assembly of the voting citizens of a city. In this sense it was the "regular assembly" referred to in Acts 19:39. But, as we saw in Acts 19:32 and 40, ekklesia could also be used to describe an unplanned and unruly crowd of people (perhaps ironically).

As I mentioned in my last post, ekklesia was not used specifically for religious convocations, not did it have religious overtones. The first-century Greek speaker would not thought of the gods or of a religious gathering when hearing the word ekklesia. Thus if I were a Bible translator, I'd opt for "assembly" or "gathering" rather than church for most New Testament instances of ekklesia. What gives the Christian ekklesia its distinctiveness is not the fact that it is an ekkelesia, but the fact that it is an ekklesia in God. More on this later.

All of this raises some fascinating questions about the meaning of ekklesia in early Christianity, and why the early Christians chose this particular word to describe their meetings. I'll try to answer these questions in my next post.

When a Church is not a Church, Section A

BY Mark Roberts

Part 6 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

When I was young, I learned the little rhyme that goes like this:

Here is the church,
Here is the steeple,
Open the doors,
See all the people.

Of course it didn't dawn on me at the time that I was getting deficient theology. Only later in life did I realize that I should have learned a better rhyme:

Here is a building,
On top there's a steeple,
Open the doors,
The church is the people!

In my life I've probably heard a hundred sermons or teachings on the church. I've probably given a hundred more of my own. In virtually every one of these talks the same point is made: "The church is not a building. It's the people of God." Of course in common speech we refer to the place where Christians gather as a church. But this has nothing to do with biblical theology, and runs the risk of fostering a profound and detrimental misunderstanding.

Nowhere in the Bible is the place where Christians meet referred to as a "church." This word appears around 75 times in our English Bibles, depending on the translation (around 110 times if you include the plural). In almost every instance "church" is a translation of the Greek ekklesia (from which we get words like "ecclesiastical" and "Ecclesiastes"). Never does ekklesia refer to a building in which people gathered, for worship or for any other purpose. (In fact, the earliest Christians didn't even have special buildings in which to meet during the period in which the New Testament was written. This came much later. For the most part, the first Christians met in private homes.)

At this point you're probably commending me for my grasp of the obvious, or perhaps thinking about skipping this blog post altogether. But now's the time I take an unexpected turn. For I would argue that the use of "church" in our English New Testaments as a translation for ekklesia is problematic at best, and probably wrong. Yes, that's right. I'm saying that the word "church" should not appear 75 times in our Bibles, or 110 times including the plural. This, I fear, is a potentially misleading translation.

Now you might really be thinking even more seriously about skipping this blog post, since I'm now arguing a minority position versus almost every English Bible translation and Greek-English dictionary. But before you dismiss me as hopelessly eccentric, please allow me to defend myself.

No matter what connotation for the English word "church" you prefer, either the architectural one, the congregational one, or the institutional one, one thing is clear: "church" has religious connotations. A church is either a building used for religious purposes, or it is a group of people who have gathered for religious purposes, or it is a larger configuration of people who have been organized for religious purposes (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church). Say the word "church" and anyone who understands English will think "religious entity."

This was not the case for ekklesia in first-century Greek parlance. If, for example, a Christian traveler showed up on the streets of Corinth in the first-century A.D. and asked for the location of the ekklesia, nobody outside of the tiny Christian community there would direct him to a religious building or gathering. Nobody would think he was asking about anything that had to do with the gods or with religious practices. An ekklesia wasn't anything like a church. Greek had words for religious gatherings, words such as thiasos (cultic society) or synagoge (Jewish gathering). But ekkelsia wasn't one of these words.

Ironically, one might same the same thing for the use of the word ekklesia in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, abbreviated as LXX). This word appears about 100 times in the LXX, almost always translating the Hebrew term qahal. Both words, ekklesia and qahal, have the basic meaning of "assembly" or "gathering." They can be used to describe a gathering for religious purposes, but the words themselves don't have religious connotations. They need something like "of the Lord" to make the religious setting clear.

So, if "church" in English always suggests something religious, whether buildings or gatherings of people or organizations, and ekklesia does not have this meaning in the time when the New Testament was written, then translating ekklesia by "church" almost certainly leads to some level of misunderstanding on the part of the reader. When it comes to the vocabulary of the New Testament, truly "a church is not a church."

So, then, what is the New Testament understanding of ekklesia? If this word isn't equivalent to "church," what other English word or words might better render the sense of ekklesia? To these questions I'll turn in my next post.

Evaluating Ministry: John MacArthur on 1 Corinthians

John MacArthur from his commentary on 1 Corinthians:

A caring minister of Christ cannot be insensitive to the feelings, needs, and opinions of his people. He should not try to be. A sincere word of appreciation after a sermon is encouraging, and reflects spiritual concern and growth in the listener's life. A word of helpful criticism can be a needed corrective and even a blessing. But no minister can remain faithful to his calling if he lets his congregation, or any other human beings, decide how true his motives are or whether he is working within the Lord's will. Because their knowledge and understanding of the facts are imperfect, their criticisms and compliments are imperfect. In humility and love, God's minister must not allow himself to care about other people's evaluations of his ministry.

Nor must he allow himself to care about his own evaluation of his ministry. All of us are naturally inclined to build ourselves up in our own minds. We all look into rose-colored mirrors. Even when we put ourselves down, especially in front of others, we often are simply appealing for recognition and flattery. The mature minister does not trust his own judgment in such things any more than he trusts the judgment of others. He agrees with Paul that his own evaluation may be as unreliable as that of anyone else.

Spiritual introspection is dangerous. Known sin must be faced and confessed, and known shortcomings are to be prayed about and worked on for improvement. But no Christian, no matter how advanced in the faith, is able to properly evaluate his own spiritual life. Before we know it, we will be ranking ourselves, classifying ourselves--and discover that a great deal of time is being spent in thinking of nothing but ourselves. The bias in our own favor and the tendency of the flesh toward self-justification make this a dangerous project.

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Section C

By Mark Roberts

Part 5 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

In my last two posts I began exploring various sources from which people get their ideas of what a church should be. These included:

1. Past experience of church
2. Pop culture
3. The news
4. A projection of their personal needs and preferences

Today I want to explore one other source, a source that has a powerful influence on the way people think about the church.

5. People get their ideas of church from analogous institutions.

People often expect the church to be like some similar organization or event. For example, some people expect a church to be like a concert. When you go to a concert, you file into an auditorium. You sit in rows and watch something happening on the stage up front. If the concert is any good, you feel lots of positive emotions. At times you might even get into the act, but just a bit. You leave feeling uplifted and satisfied by the performance. Church, for many people, is just like this, only better, because you don't need a ticket, and don't even have to pay anything if you don't want to.

Others think of church like a school. They come for religious education. In my community, dozens of young parents start attending our church each year because they want their children to receive moral training. And we do provide this sort of thing. Children gather in age-grouped classes. They have curriculum and teachers. They do learn, or at least that is our hope. We also have lots of classes for adults. And we do hope to educate people. In many ways, we are like a school.

For others, a church is like a club, perhaps a social club or a service club. We have regular meetings. We have members and a process for joining. Members can become leaders in the church. We do lots of different things together, including service projects and social gatherings. At church, as in a club, we make friends and find a center for our socializing.

Many people today see the church as some kind of store. Small churches are like neighborhood markets; large churches are like department stores. Both churches and stores "sell" products. Both have professional staffs. Both "market" their wares in the community, hoping to attract interested "consumers." Larger churches, like larger stores, offer a wide array of "products." Smaller churches, like small stores, offer more personal service but fewer "products." If the church you attend provides what you're wanting to consume, you continue to go there. If that church stops meeting your needs, you think nothing of finding a better church, just as you might switch markets or clothing stores.

It's also common for people to see the church as something like a hospital. When you're physically sick, you go to a hospital to get well. Similarly, churches promise to help you overcome your spiritual ailments. Both hospitals and churches have professional experts to help you heal (doctors, pastors). Both hospitals and churches offer specialized treatments for particular ailments (in churches: singles groups, AA groups, etc.). Both hospitals and churches are staffed by people who care, or at least that's the way it should be. Many churches and hospitals even share similar names: St. Luke's Hospital/Church, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, etc.
		Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, California, where both of my children were born

All of these analogous institutions – concerts, schools, clubs, stores, and hospitals – are like churches in many ways. Thinking of a church in these categories makes sense, to a point. But to the extent that people see a church exclusively in light of these analogies, to that extent they misunderstand essential aspects of church life. For example:

• A church is like a concert, but it's better to see a worship service as a concert in which God is the audience and the worshippers are they performers, turning the concert imagery upside down.

• A church is like a school, but a church offers much more than religious and moral education. It seeks to transform people's hearts and lives, not just to educate their minds. And it seeks for join people together in life-changing community.

• A church is like a club, but unlike most clubs, membership isn't a privilege, but a gift, and non-members are welcome to participate in virtually every aspect of "club" life. A church, unlike a club, exists not just for its members, but especially for its non-members.

• A church is like a store, but it ought to do far more than offer "products" for consumption. A church will thrive only if its members are committed to the church in a way far beyond consumer loyalty.

• A church is like a hospital in that it offers healing to those who are spiritually sick, just like Jesus did. But a church is not like a hospital because it seeks, not only to get "patients" well, but also to enlist them on the caring team. When you go to a hospital, you're not expected to become a doctor or a nurse. When you got to a church, you should join the care-giving team as well as receive care.

Ironically, biblical teaching on the church is rather like what I've just laid out. Scripture uses analogies to reveal the essence of the church. Each analogy has certain strengths; each analogy also has certain limitations. So, for example, we'll soon see that the church is meant to be like a human body. But it is not meant to grow old and die in three or four generations. So it is both like a body and unlike a body. In the posts that will follow in this series I'll try to unpack the biblical analogies for the church. Taken together, these will reveal the true nature of the church from God's point of view.

The Mission of the Church

Rick McKinley, pastor of Imago Dei in Portland, spoke at a recent Catalyst conference. Out of Ur has some thoughts on the "lab" McKinley led at Catalyst...

"As pastors, we are tempted to build the church," [McKinley] said. "So we send out postcards to targeted Zip codes and we promote church programs." But that misses the point, he argued. "Our job isn’t to build the church. We’re supposed to BE the church, and build the kingdom." He emphasized that the kingdom is to be experienced NOW, on earth, as Christians exemplify godly living, but he also pointed out, as the recent school shootings demonstrate, that the kingdom is also "not yet." God’s kingdom won’t be realized in its fullness as long as such sin characterizes our world.

[...]

"The best expression of the church is NOT what happens on Sunday morning. It’s what happens in the world during the week. And that’s not something you can market."

His most provocative statements focused on the Christian’s calling to love their neighbors, even if those neighbors don’t respond to Christ or clean up their act. He told of his church’s messy efforts to love those with addictions, mental illnesses, and other conditions that aren’t easily cleaned up.

"We’re not called to change people’s behavior; we’re called to love them whether they change or not. It’s up to God to change them."

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Section B

Part 4 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

By Mark Roberts

Yesterday I began considering the sources of people's ideas about church. To review, here is my first point:

1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church.

Today I'll explore three other common sources.

2. People get their ideas of church from pop culture.

3. People get their ideas of church from the news.

Much of the time, I'm sad to say, what people get from the news isn't all that positive. Church scandals tend to make headlines, deservedly so. Churches that are faithfully living out the Christian life usually fly under the media radar, however. There are exceptions to this rule, however. A couple of days ago the Los Angeles Times ran a fine piece on the recognition of World Communion Sunday in many churches. (As you may have noticed, recently I came down pretty hard on the Times for its reporting of the All Saints vs. IRS battle. But the Times often does refreshingly excellent work reporting on local churches, synagogues, and mosques. Here's another recent example.)

4. People get their ideas of church from a projection of their personal needs and preferences.

Some years ago a man started attending Irvine Presbyterian Church faithfully. He and I had lunch together, and during that lunch he laid out his vision for how our church could get involved in his personal mission. His was a valid mission to be sure, involving the expansion of ethics education in schools. I explained to him that our church would be glad to support him in this mission, but that it wasn't going to be our primary focus. He proceeded to lecture me on what the church ought to be, and how our church was falling short of this calling. In a nutshell, we needed to join him in his ethics crusade as our number #1 priority. For a while he tried to reshape our church according to his vision. When this didn't happen, eventually he left in anger and disappointment, believing that we weren't what a real church should be. (Ironically, this man didn't even profess to be a believing Christian!)

I've seen this sort of thing happen in people time and again. They have a need and figure the church is the sort of place that should meet this need. Sometimes it’s the desire to expand ethics education. Sometimes it's the need for friendship, or financial assistance, or political activism, or, well, you name it. Folks take their needs and project them onto the church.

To be sure, the church does meet many needs. And often people are drawn to church because of felt needs that aren't the church's main business. For example, someone might come to church hoping to make new friends. She finds these friends, indeed, but also much more than she bargained for, like friendship with Jesus, for example. Rarely do people come to church because they feel a need to worship the living God or grow as disciples of Christ.

In my next post I'll address one more source from which people get their ideas of what a church should be. This one, I believe, is often one of the most influential.

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church?

By Mark Roberts

Part 3 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

People today have a wide variety of ideas about what a church should be. If you ask a dozen people you'd probably get a dozen different answers.

One of my favorite answers came during a children's sermon preached by a young seminarian. This story was related to me by someone who was in the congregation that fateful day. For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, a children's sermon comes in a worship service when the folks twelve and under are brought forward for a sermonette by the pastor or some other church leader. Often the sermon begins with a question like, "What is God?" The preacher gets a bunch of funny – and incorrect – answers, and then offers the right answer, sometimes with a visual aid.

At any rate, a young man was doing his seminary internship at a church. As low man on the totem pole, he got tabbed for the children's sermon, and decided to talk about what the church really is. He gathered the children together in the front, and began with his question: "So, boys and girls, what is a church?" He fully expected that the kids would say a church is a building and so forth. He'd get to wrap up with the correct answer, that the church is not the building but the people. As soon as the seminarian uttered his question, one of the boys shot his hand into the air.

"Yes," the young preacher said, "what is a church?"

"The gathered assembly of believers in Jesus Christ," was the boy's answer.

The seminarian was speechless, not knowing where to go from here. The kid had said exactly what the preacher was going to reveal at the end of a three-minute dialogue. From his point of view, there wasn't anything more to say. So after a few seconds of embarrassed silence, he thanked the boy and dismissed the children. (What the seminarian did not know was that the theologically-sophisticated boy was the son of a seminary professor in the congregation, and should never have been called on first!)

Most people don't get their ideas of church from seminary professors, however, or even from their fathers. Rather, then get them from a wide variety of sources. At a recent meeting of leaders from my church, I asked, "What shapes people's expectations of church? Where do people get their ideas of what a church ought to be?" Their answers were revealing:

1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church.

Indeed, this is surely true for people who have some past experience of church. These days, more and more people come to church with no religious background whatsoever. But most folks still have at least some prior history of church, even if it's limited to weddings and funerals. As a pastor, I've found that people usually have both positive and negative experiences from which to draw. They want a church to be like what they've experienced in some ways, but not like other aspects of previous churches where they've been involved.

Many people look upon their past church experience through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. I've had people from my church, for example, complain about some innovation in worship and talk about how wonderful their church was growing up. When I ask if their church helped them to know Christ, to grow as His disciple, or to have a desire to worship God, they'll say something like, "No, but that's not the point." Looking back, they love what they remember about worship in their childhood church. But, in point of fact, that church did not actually teach them to know and love the Lord, and it didn't even help them want to worship God when they were young.

In tomorrow's post I'll discuss three other ways people get their ideas of what a church should be.

Why a Discussion on the Church?

By Mark Roberts

Part 2 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

This is the second post in a series I'm calling: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community. Yesterday I explained that I'm planning to answer this question from a biblical point of view, though without denying the value of church tradition and Christian experience. I believe that, in the end, however, Scripture is the most authoritative guide for matters of faith and practice, including questions of ecclesiology (the study of the church).

One additional point of clarification might be helpful here. Notice that I'm asking "What is a church?" rather than "What is the church?" I'm more concerned in this series about the nature of a particular Christian community than the whole configuration of Christians throughout the world and/or throughout the cosmos. Of course these issues of local church/global church are interrelated. But my primary focus is on an individual Christian community, a church, if you will, rather than the church.

Why This Series?

I'm taking on this series at this time for a variety of reasons. Mostly it is an outgrowth of my ministry as pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church. In fact, I plan to use this series as a resource within my own church, especially as I teach our new members classes and as I work with my leaders. I'm finding that folks often have differing visions of what a church should be, and that these differences can be either enriching of our corporate life or debilitating, or both. If, for example, people join our church with a particular image of what a church should be, but it turns out that we are not what they had imagined, then it's likely they will become disillusioned and start looking for another church that offers what they want. Nobody wins when this happens. If, on the other hand, members of my church have a clear, common vision of what a church is, then their experience will be more positive. If our leaders share this vision together, then our church will be healthy and growing in the right direction.

As I write this series, there are lots of competing visions of the church in the marketplace of religious ideas. Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Church has had a major impact on Christian thinking about the church, not to mention the practice of individual churches. This book has helped thousands of churches clarify their mission and focus more intentionally upon it. Younger Christians (and a few not so younger ones) tend to be influenced more by an amorphous configuration of ideas and practices known as "the emergent church" or "emerging movement" or something like this (see, for example, The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball or Scot McKnight's excellent collection of blog entries on The Emerging Movement). Of course there are dozens of other visions of the church floating around in the Christian atmosphere, ranging from home-based Pentecostal communities to more traditional churches that emphasize Reformed theology and the regular administration of the sacraments. Moreover, many evangelical Christians continue to be drawn to more liturgical churches of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic variety. Talk about a wide range of perspectives on the church!

Then you can throw into the mix the crises in which many of the well-established American denominations find themselves, including my own, the Presbyterian Church USA. Though our potentially-schismatic squabbles don't have to do primarily with the nature of the local church, they have touched upon this issue, especially with respect to who actually owns the property of a particular church. Many Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and others have been asking what it means for a local church to be connected to a larger body of believers. Is this essential? Or optional? Should such connections ever be broken? And if so, when? Though I don't intend to address these questions much in this series, they do loom over this investigation to some extent.

I determined to do an extended series on the question "What is a church?" a couple of weeks ago. Since we at Irvine Presbyterian Church need to focus again on the biblical basics of Christian community, I figured this might be true of other Christians and churches also. This hunch was confirmed today by an article on the Christianity Today website . The title of this article reads, "What's Next: Local Church." The subtitle explains: "We asked 114 leaders form 11 ministry spheres about evangelical priorities for the next 50 years. First up: Fresh basics for the local church." There you have it: fresh basics for the local church! So it appears that a series on biblical basics for the local church might in fact be helpful to others outside of my own church.

I'm particularly eager to help well-meaning Christians overcome some of the confusion they feel about what the church should be. Even in one particular church, even among leaders who share a common heart for Christ and a common commitment to Scripture, you'll find a wide range of visions of a church. Some of these visions are derived from Scripture and to that extent are helpful. Others come from a wide variety of other sources. In my next post I want to consider where people get their ideas of what a church should be.