Yeshua Explored
11th July 2022
Life!
Is there real life in your Church?
(This series of articles was written a year after the first lockdown in March/April 2021)
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
This is a question that surely should never have to be asked. Here’s the gist of what I had to say in Shalom: Of course, one can’t speak for every church everywhere, but here’s a general observation. Church congregations tend to be artificial communities of people brought together because of a shared experience of Jesus, but mostly without shared backgrounds, culture and so on. One often gets the impression that there is more to divide them than to unite them. It is as if there’s a missing ingredient, one that would bring them together in stronger ways. True life, or Chaim (Hebrew word) seems to be stronger in church congregations that are under strong direct persecution, as we occasionally see on videos smuggled out of such places as Iran and China. For them, their faith is a life or death decision and they freely celebrate the former because they know that the latter can come at any time. Ironically, persecution can become a blessing. If it ever came to Western churches (and there’s every indication that this is a very strong possibility the way our society is progressing) we will be forced to take our faith very seriously indeed. Gone will be church-as-social-club as those people would melt under the first whiff of trouble and, indeed, whole churches will compromise themselves out of meaningful existence and will acquiesce to whatever the State is telling them to do. Then, with what’s left we shall see true chaim. Perhaps we will finally have a Church that resembles the Church of the early Roman Empire, when persecution was extreme.
Our little church has gone through a period of adversity recently. This process resulted in tighter bonds than there ever were before. And life abounds, in terms of new initiatives, joy in each other’s company, love and friendship. Even I have managed to crack a smile or two during a Zoom meeting! What started as a very diverse group of people, defined by their individual paths and backgrounds has resulted in a true Ekklesia, a group of ‘called out ones’ working together, each a piece of a grand jigsaw, celebrating our differences as we follow The Master. No hierarchies or power struggles or personal agendas. It hasn’t been easy but it has been undergirded by masses of prayer and huge dollops of humility. It has also helped by being a very small congregation, in fact roughly the same number that Jesus had to work with. There’s a hint there of Divine partiality.
Of course, we know that the Church of the original apostles was a small church. Those first Christians met in each other’s houses for fellowship and mutual encouragement and instruction, which empowered them to reach out into their community, whether in the Temple and synagogue or in the market squares and public meeting places. Government of these assemblies of “called out ones” was through an informal system of elders, selected from within their number, aided by those itinerant apostles, drawn from the close confidants of Jesus himself (with notable additions, such as Paul).
Of course, many modern churches already operate under this principle, notably the house churches and the smaller independent evangelical churches, but they are far from being the norm. Today’s Church as a whole, both as a product of historical processes and as a reflection of today’s society, still likes to “think big”.
That rag-tag group of around 120 ordinary folk on that awesome Day of Pentecost has morphed into a worldwide network of vast ecclesiastical corporations.
I repeat the question I asked earlier. Is this “Church”?
Continued next week.
This is an extract from the book, Flockdown Church: Back to the drawing board?, available for £5 at https://www.sppublishing.com/flockdown-church-278-p.asp
