In Acts 7 in the bible, we read about the stoning of Stephen.
Does anyone know what role Stephen had in the early church?
Let me give you a clue: In Acts 6.5 we see him described as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit”.
So what did he do? Are we thinking pastor? Elder? Worship leader?
Let me give you another clue: In Acts 6.8 we read that Stephen was “a man full of God’s grace and power”.
If you think of someone like that in your church, what is their role? Any closer to figuring out Stephen’s?
STEPHEN WAS THE FOOD GUY
So at the beginning of Acts chapter 6 we read how the twelve disciples chose seven men ‘known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom’ to take over the work of the daily distribution of food [a move that was done because a certain group of widows was being neglected and they wanted to make sure it wasn’t so].
And Stephen, who went on to be martyred, and who saw heaven opened and witnessed the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand side of God [Acts 7.56] was one of those seven. His role in the church was to make sure that food was handed out.
BE THE CHURCH BE THE CHURCH BE THE CHURCH
As i have been having intimate book launches and creating space for people to ask any questions they might have about church and God and following Jesus, i am becoming more and more convinced that the church is meant to be so much more of an identity than it is an experience.
This does not appear to be the most popular of opinions. There is a loud and insistent clamouring for church to need to be identified as ‘local church’ and a strong focus on the meeting at the particular place with that certain group of people.
i’m not suggesting for a second that local church is wrong, or bad, or should be stopped or left or run away from. At all.
But we are called the bride of Christ. We are described as the body of Christ. Both identity labels. Sure there is doing attached to both of those, but more importantly there is being. Who we are. Not just on Sundays, in the building. But always, everywhere.
It’s not even as if Sunday is the most authentic picture of who we are – we tend to dress up in a way we seldom dress during the week – portray a persona unlike the reality of what is really going on in our lives [So we don’t get to see people struggling with life or relationships or work or issues – every marriage looks perfect, every individual looks like they have it together] – and go through the religious ritual singing words of songs we often either don’t believe or pay attention to, prayers which sound nice and sermons which are too often comfortable and confirming of where we are rather than challenging where we should be being.
i’m kinda tired of feeling like i have to defend my position on this. It feels like too many people have settled for the image of Jesus on the left and far too few are broken before the much closer image on the right.
i believe that being a part of the church means being infused with the D.N.A. of Jesus through the very fact of having His Holy Spirit in us and that it was always meant to be a description of who we are seven days a week, not just one.
It should rally us to social and societal justice, cause us to be more genuinely loving and affected people, move us to use our time, money and skills in the pursuit of the kingdom [not just 10% of them], help us to be more real in our relationships, challenge us towards forgiveness [of EVERYONE who has hurt us in any way] and spur us on to be salt and light and the fragrance of Christ amidst those who are perishing.
While local church is not a bad thing, what i am talking about feels so much bigger. It can be ‘Local Church Plus…’ for sure. And the benefits of community and accountability and teaching and combined worship and sharing of resources should be obvious.
12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. [Romans 12]
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
[Matthew 28]
21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream![Amos 5]
So today, don’t give up on gathering, but let it be real. Let it be transformative. Let it be spirit-enthusing. And above all let it inform the rest of your week as you leave the building and continue to be the church day in and day out.
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Great article Brett.
Thank you, Clive!
Good article. I love the call to “be real”. We were never promised perfection on this earth and I’m more inclined to “we will have struggles” than not. That’s why we need to be part of a ‘real’ authentic body of believers who are not running after the ‘experience’ but the reality of a living relationship with our Lord Jesus. Thanks for keeping us thinking about these issues.
Thanks Shelley for stopping by and for your thoughts. Opportunities and spaces to be real are just what the church needs more of. And more people hungry for it.
[…] [For a post looking at the first martyr Stephen as an example of being church, click here] […]
I think part of the compication is that there is the Church (big C) – those who follow Christ through the ages, all over the world, many denominations – the “church universal.” One can rightly say they are part of the Church by nature of their relationship with Jesus wherever/however that is expresed. However, this Church only exists so far as it is manifested in real people. And because we are finite humans, we need our participation in the church to be expressed with other actual humans.
God has always chosen to be in relationship and work with people. This has taken many forms throughout the centuries. However, I think a very strong case can be made that while God knows and loves each and every individua one of us, He desires/has created us to be part of groups – hence the many and varied images we find for these congregations we find in the Bible. I don’t think you would disagree with that so much as how we understand these, their purpose, and scope.
My perspective is that none of us are able to fully live life on our own. Further, we are not designed to know God or follow Jesus on our own. We are meant to seek God’s kingdom, make disciples, love God/others/ourselves in community. I have yet to find a way to do that well without mutual commitment among people to be like/follow Jesus and help one another as we go. That is different than worshipping with these friends and Bible studies with others, etc. (everything can be Church, but everything isn’t church) because this dipping in and out allows us to choose which parts we share or hide and generally lets us be selective with who gets what. There is something very valuable about being part of something not of our own selection or making [Bonhoeffer speaks directly to this in Life Together] and our world as a whole has a commitment problem that I think the Church/church should be modeling an alternative.
i imagine we agree at the heart of most of this stuff although i suspect i would probably lean towards smaller models of church gathering [that continue to do all the important stuff plus give the opportunity of engaging with the word and live testimony as opposed to just having it blasted at them] more than bigger ones and suggest that possibly it’s the general model of how local church is done today that needs some serious rethinking and revision to truly become the local church Jesus would be super amped with…
I enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing. Your commentary begs the question, so if local church just on Sunday isn’t ‘the’ answer, then what is ‘the’ answer? There are at least two ways to respond. One would be to move away from organized religion and ‘reject’ church as ‘too churchy’. The other, and this is the one I believe is more similar to scripture, is to move closer towards organized religion and become ‘more churchy’. I agree with the notion that many of us spend Sunday in a costume or sorts doing things (rituals) that have little relationship to the other six days. Let’s fix that! Let’s do churchy things the other six days as well and live a life that worships God and serves neighbors daily. Peace, my friend!
LOVE THIS!!!
I’ve just shared it on my blog’s FB page.
Did I mention I love this!?! xoxo
But what did you feel about this?
Wow, getting a little demanding with you readers! 😉
You’ve nailed when you speak of your conviction that the church is supposed to be an identity, not an experience.
I just don’t think organic, authentic, community can occur between a strictly scheduled 2 hour time slot once a week.
Better? 😛
Ha ha. Think you had it right the first time. But yes and not that Sunday meeting not a good thing but really can’t be everything and also not sure it’s a good thing for everyone. Weird how one size fits all doesn’t happen a lot in the bible and yet we try to go there all the time.
Time to go find my bag of rocks. Because this post rocks! (or were you anticipating a stoning?). Um so have you heard the one about the South African, the Spaniard and the Japanese who walk into an Irish church? Neither had anyone else until last night, but we walked out friends. So despite having done about 3 services in 4 months I still think they’re a good thing.
Anyway, I assume this post was triggered by someone speaking (probably preaching) in your hearing about the local church being “the answer”. Probably in a divisive way, to determine some activities and organisations as good and some as “not God’s plan A”.
Time to call a spade a spade: these people might be correct in the broader sense (the church is a big deal) but the practical outcome is empire building. By saying, ‘commit to “God’s plan A”‘, they really mean: anything else you could do is unimportant, put your effort into building up MY organisation.
Chances are the people who do this aren’t doing it deliberately. It’s subtle, I’m asking for people to build up THE church, EVERYWHERE, that’s not self-seeking is it? But practically the building up will happen in MY church, because only a few specific organisations and activities count as God’s Plan A churchy stuff, and look, mine is consistently present as an option.
A lot of grace is needed because running a church is hard and most leaders will be happily task focused without realising that they’re using spiritual blackmail to get stuff done. I’ve done it many times and its taken years for me to realise how wrong I got it.
A special shout out to para-church organisations: I’ve repeatedly heard people teaching that para-church is NOT Plan A and that all that effort should be channelled through a single church. That’s wrong. The church is people in buildings with crosses and without.
Well then I should get my own bag of rocks cos your comment rocks right back. Yes yes yes. As someone who had been home for a year now and still not joined a local church – shock horror – this was more a general response and musing to the general ongoing belief that connection to one particular group of Sunday people is the only way, truth and life whereas i, and i think you here, say how about both/and? Church being my identity rather than a location but also real using that for many people the location assists the identity.
Cool maaan! I mean, I still identify strongly with CCK back in Cape Town, but I’m not in CT right now so…
Oh also think there’s some benefit to having a relationship with a specific group of people BUT I’m not sure we know too much about what makes one group a church and another not.
[…] [For why i believe that Local Church is not all of the answer, click here] […]
[…] Perhaps it was one of the many pieces that were written on the topic of Race? Or some of my reflections on the local church? […]
[…] Why I Believe Local Church is not All of the Answer – i have no doubt many people saw the title of this and sighed and thought to themselves, “Oh dear, there goes Brett Fish again, hating on church” when actually i feel like i do nothing but the opposite and this post helps give some words to that. […]
“Let it be real, transformative, and Spirit led” Amen.
Also offer a Believer’s meeting so that we can all be blessed by the gifts each one has been given. Today there are churches of thousands and the only one with an opportunity to minister is the guy in the pulpit. I think the NT church was much more a body that a shared their lives and gifts with one another frequently.
i love that and the challenge is to figure out how it looks and works and then jump into it together where we are.