“The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.” (1 Cor 16:19, NKJV)
Following from last week we are continuing with the last eight statements about the home church as counter to Myth of Tradition 1: the building as temple in the new covenant:
- God will not leave the church in the hands of spiritual bureaucrats
There is no case of a New Testament church where one professional “holy man” stood at the head and was the sole communicator with God, providing his relatively passive “religious consumers” with spiritual food, á la Moses. This custom, as it is practised in church, is something that was taken over from the heathen religions, or perhaps from the Old Testament. The overpowering professionalising of the church since Constantine’s time, through which church-goers are artificially divided in one of two groups, spiritual people or laity, has been the status quo for long enough. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), “there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus”. God does not want spiritual professionals to forever be mediating between God and believers, and thus He also cannot bless such attempts. Indeed, the veil in the temple has been torn, and God wants people to come directly to Him through Jesus Christ, the only Way. We need to remember that in the Old Testament there was always a mediator between God and the people. This mediator was supposed to hear from God and then carry over his message to the people. Moses and all the prophets are good examples of such mediators, and therefore they were also specially anointed for the task by the Holy Spirit. But in the New Testament at Pentecost God poured out his Holy Spirit on all believers, and thus fulfilled the need for a mediator who needs to hear from God on your behalf. To enable the priesthood of each individual believer, the current system will need to change. Of all administrative systems bureaucracy is the most dubious, as it basically accepts just one of two answers – yes or no. It leaves no space for spontaneity, humanity or true life. Whilst it may be acceptable for politics and the world of commerce, it is definitely not suited for the church. It seems as if God is freeing his church from the slavery of the spiritual bureaucrats and the ruling spirits, and bringing it back to public ownership, in other words into the hands of ordinary people that are made extraordinary by God.
- Move from organised to organic forms of Christianity
The ‘Body of Christ’ is a beautiful description of an organic being – certainly not an organised being. The church on local level consists of a great collection of spiritual families that are organically connected to one another in a network, where the way in which the various different pieces function together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has currently become a maximum organisation with a minimum organism, needs to change into the minimum of organisation to make place for a maximum organism. Too much organisation has often lead to the death of the organism out of fear that something might go wrong. The Body of Christ has been entrusted by God into the hands of people that have a mentality of servanthood, and who have received a supernatural charismatic gift to believe that God is in control, even though He has not been for a very long time. What is needed for the re-appearance of organic forms of Christianity is a collection of trust-based regional and national networks and not a new division of political cooperation of all the Christian churches.
- Stop worshipping worship, start worshipping God
The image one has of a large part of contemporary Christianity can be summarised in somewhat euphemistic terms as follows: holy people that often gather in a holy place on a holy day at a holy time to take part of a holy ritual that is lead by a holy man clothed in holy clothes being paid a holy amount of money. Since this often achievement-oriented enterprise is known as a service or worship event, and needs a huge amount of organisation and administrative bureaucracy to take place in the first place, institutionalised patterns developed into set traditions very quickly. In certain denominations a set liturgical order has been developed and the person who leads the service is not allowed to stray from that. In certain cases even the prayers that are prayed in the service is already in writing. These things are of course a help to the person responsible for the service, but leads to a very stereotypical service. A traditional worship service of one to two hours requires a lot of aids, but does not necessarily deliver a lot of fruit; it does not lead to enough changed lives. It seems to be a structure which costs a lot but delivers little. Traditionally speaking, the desire to worship “in the right way” has lead to denominationism, confessionalism and nominalism. It does not take into account that believers are called to worship in spirit and in truth, and not in buildings with hymn books. It also does not take into account that life is largely informal and that this also is applicable for Christianity as the “way of life”.
- Do not bring people to the church, bring the church to people
The church is changing from a come structure to a go structure. One result of this is surely that we need to stop trying to bring people into the church, and start taking the church to people. The goal and mission of the church will never be reached if we only add to the existing structure. It will only be reached if the church itself rises up through the spontaneous duplication thereof in parts of the world where the person of Jesus Christ is completely unknown.
- Rediscover that the “Holy Communion” is actually a real meal with real food
Tradition has lead to the church presenting communion in a deeply religious manner. Its celebration of communion also resembles a homeopathic enterprise, in other words offering healing elements that for any healthy person will actually bring about an illness – a “celebration” that offers only a few drops of wine, a tasteless piece of bread and a sad face! But the original “Communion” was a proper meal with symbolic meaning and not a symbolic meal with a little piece of actual food attached to it. God is bringing back the notion of the communal meal into our gatherings.
- From Denominations to Festival Celebrations for the entire town or city
Jesus had a worldwide movement in mind, but what actually happened is that a range of religious companies appeared in its stead, which each had its own worldwide contacts and thus each promoted their own unique form of Christianity, competing against one another. This fragmentation of Christianity led to the politicisation of Protestantism, where it is often more concerned about traditional details and religious in-fighting than with offering collective testimony to the rest of the world. Jesus never asked people to organise themselves into different denominations. The early Christian churches were characterised by the fact that believers had a dual identity. They were God’s church and vertically converted, but also geographically organised, in other words also horizontally converted in relationship with others. This means that your believing neighbours not only organise themselves in neighbourhood or home churches, where their lives are changed with those around them, but also that believers gather as a collective identity, as often as it was possible, for city or region services where the corporate nature of the church of that city of region is expressed. This will lead to a church that is politically relevant and spiritually convincing, and also signal a return to a Biblical model of the church within the city as a whole.
- Develop a persecution-proof spirit
Jesus, the Head of all Christians, died on a cross. But his contemporary followers are much more obsessed with titles, accolades and social respectability and at times – the worst of all – they do not speak at all and are not even worth seeing. But Jesus said – “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake …” (Mat. 5:10, CEV). Biblical Christianity is a great threat for heathen sinfulness and godlessness, for a world that is consumed by materialism, jealousy and demonic standards for ethics, sex, money and power. In most countries today Christianity is, at most, painfully polite, too afraid to risk persecution. But if the Christian believers were only to live their lives according to New Testament standards, by for instance recognizing sin for what it is, the natural reaction of the world would either be repentance or persecution. Instead of believers peacefully existing in their comfort zone of religious freedom, they would prepare themselves to be branded as the most important opposers of worldwide humanism, where pleasure is tantamount and the Self is worshipped. This is why believers will need to respond to the “repressive tolerance” of a world that has been stripped of all absolute truth and thus refuses to acknowledge or follow the Creator with his absolute standards. The ideology, privatising and spiritualising of politics and the economy that is taking place will offer a large surprise to believers – much sooner than they think they will be granted the opportunity to stand in the accused bench with Jesus. They need to prepare themselves to have a persecution-proof spirit, and a persecution-proof church structure.
- The church comes home!
Where do people feel the most spiritual? Perhaps where they can hide behind a large pulpit, clothed in holy attire, whilst speaking holy words to a faceless group of people, immediately disappearing into your office after the service. And where would most people find it very hard to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children where everything he does and says is automatically tested, a test for reality and where all hypocrisy is quickly shown, where truthfulness can come to the fore. Many aspects of Christianity has left the home, perhaps because the home and the family is the place which has suffered most in spiritual terms. And then it organised artificial gatherings in holy buildings, far removed from real life. But God is restoring the importance of the home, and therefore the church is coming back to its roots, it is coming home. Thus the circle of church history at the end of world history is complete.
Believers from all nations, denominations and backgrounds hear the clear echo in their spirit, of what God’s Spirit is saying to the global church so that they can implement it on a local level, so that they may start functioning as one body. They join home churches in their neighbourhood and take part in city or regional feast celebrations. You are warmly invited to become part of this new movement, and to make your contribution. Who knows, perhaps your home is destined to become a house that will change the world.
- Selah: What about loose-standing churches that are not part of the apostolic house?
- Read: 17-23
- Memorise: 23:5b
