Drunken Mystic

So you have a “church”, or rather a group of people that begin to meet in a certain building every week or so and gather to worship God together. For whatever reason, you decide that it would be prudent to make sure you have a count of who’s really a part of your “church” and who’s not, so you require people to fill out a form and submit it for “membership” in your “church.”

I can’t seem to find that in the Bible.

This is a common practice, and as I’ve spoken with many leaders and pastors over the years, I have found various reasons behind why they have this as a part of their fellowship. Some do it because they think that is what should be done and don’t question it in the least. Some are open and have what they feel are practical reasons for it. Others feel very threatened and quote random Bible verses that we’ll discuss in a moment. Ultimately, however, it comes down to, “this is the way we choose to do it. You can either be a part of us or not.” Which, on a certain level, is true. If God has chosen or allowed them to be the authority over that fellowship, they will stand before God one day for their decisions and I should be careful how I challenge them.

But it is also true that I will stand before God for what He’s shown me, as well, and so for that reason I have never been a registered member of a fellowship.

To get a little real here for a moment, I’m going to ask a question. Can you really see Jesus signing His name to a piece of paper to prove He’s a member of a certain fellowship? Maybe He was “registered” somehow at a local synagogue, but I highly doubt it.

Some fellowships defend the practice biblically by pointing to a passage where Paul describes a listing of widows and making sure that they are truly widows that are in need (1 Timothy 5). They stretch this verse to defend a practice that, in many organizations, is absolutely necessary to do any ministry or even partake in communion or vote on congregational issues.

There are many country clubs that operate the same way.

Here’s another question. Before Christ bent down to wash the disciple’s feet, did they ask for a paper qualifying Him for the ministry? It sounds ludicrous, and it is.

Going back to the scripture about the widows, it is very important to remember that both John the Baptist, James, and even the prophets taught the importance of taking care of widows and orphans, taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. It was a common practice. It was even one of the first issues of the Church in Acts as the twelve couldn’t serve the widows and do the teaching and praying that they felt was their responsibility. So they appointed men full of the Spirit, of which Stephen the martyr was one.

But it seems like, in context, that some widows were not in need since they had family members that could care for them. Others were becoming busybodies in the Kingdom because they were still young and able to find husbands or contribute in some way and used their new free time unwisely. So by helping certain widows, the local Church was actually enabling division and laziness and all kinds of things, according to Paul.

In other words, this was an administrative thing to determine who the local Body should be accountable to help. Is this why organizations have registered membership? I have never found this to be the case. They have registered members in order to control who can get involved, to protect their organization and to streamline resources to those who are in line with them doctrinally, because God forbid they actually help someone who disagrees with them about the rapture.

This becomes another way to forego true relationship with others in the Body. It becomes another checklist that we make sure that we have done. It makes pastors feel safe since the people working in certain ministries have signed a piece of paper that they agree with either core or detailed doctrines but many times they’ve only spoken to them for a couple minutes to an hour or so. Out of so many in the congregation, why would they spend more time to get to know someone? It’s a beaurecratic system with no life in it whatsoever.

It’s corporate America at its best. We have programs which require positions, so there needs to be some sort of application process where people like “pastors” or committees make certain decisions based on political power, very rarely on relationship.

I have regularly attended a fellowship that required membership for certain things, and since I had a good relationship with the pastors there, they asked me to cover some Sunday School teaching. Then they realized that I wasn’t a “member”, even though they admitted to my face their respect for me and my wife because we were more committed to their fellowship (based on attendance and financial giving) than most people who had signed on the dotted line. They allowed me to teach but told me to keep it quiet that I wasn’t a member. Well, it got out (not from me) and I wasn’t asked again, even though everyone was blessed by the experience and asked me when I would be teaching again. Their reason for not wanting it to get out? If someone higher up in the denomination got wind of it, they’d get in trouble. For a non-member to teach would lead to absolute chaos!

I respected their wishes while standing for my convictions. I did not badmouth them to people who quesioned why I didn’t teach anymore. I honored them as much as I was able, but God eventually opened doors for ministry and teaching elsewhere.

I know many people who have moved somewhere and began attending another fellowship, yet they were “members” at an old fellowship where there is a new pastor and they haven’t attended there for years … but they have to be “members” somewhere, right? Only when it comes time to be involved in a new program position are they motivated to switch their “letter of membership,” even though they’ve been attending and even tithing in their new fellowship for a year or so.

Is this the type of Kingdom we want to be a part of?

Why are you so adamant about this? some might ask. It’s just a piece of paper, right?

To put it rather bluntly, my name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and that is good enough for me. Christ lives within me in a mystical way I barely comprehend and will never fully understand until I stand before Him face to face. I am brother and sister to every believer because we have the same Father, not because we are listed on the same manifest.

Ever wondered why its not in the Bible? I have a feeling that relationship was so central to the type of community they had, they could see the change in people from a life of legalism or paganism to Christ and freedom from sin and didn’t need a written testimony to be on file. There was a genuine testimony they could remember.

We should trust pastors and teachers and one another because of relationship and a visible life of integrity that we can respect and honor in one another. No one should have to go through a worldly chain of command to be a minister in the Body of Christ. Putting such weight on traditions of men takes glory away from what Christ has accomplished in the life of a believer and the gifts that He has given without regard to person or label and foregoes the type of relationship and discipleship we so desperately need in order to enact spiritual change and growth.

If you are a believer, we are members of one another. If we fellowship together, let it be based on true commitment that draws us closer to one another.

Peace.

So you have a “church”, a fellowship that meets somewhere, maybe a house or a ballroom or a high school theater or cafeteria. At some point, if you start to grow, there comes a very important discussion. The question is asked by leadership or other members of the fellowship. Sometimes it was the goal all along.

“When are we going to move into our own building?”

This is one of the most common concerns for any fellowship. Where do we meet? And the most common answer is to either rent a place every Sunday or to build and own one of your own. Most fellowships desperately desire their own facility, even going so far as holding it up as a signal of their success.

My problem is that I can’t find that goal mentioned anywhere in the New Testament.

Now, if you want to include the Old Testament, then you will definitely find it there, and that is because having a building to worship in is an Old Covenant idea. The Temple of Solomon was back in the time when God’s people were still under the Law. Jesus plainly taught that the worship would now be in Spirit and truth and not on some special place.

But as far as the New Covenant, I really can’t find it. We are told that God now lives in us, that we are built together as living stones as His house of worship. We are told that our home is in heaven.

It is curious to me that the issue of where we meet never comes up in all of the letters from the writers of the New Testament. This means one of several possible things. Either they didn’t grow at all beyond the initial group (which from what we know from history is not true) or it was never a goal at all. Many will argue that just because it doesn’t mention the issue doesn’t mean they didn’t build buildings and meet in them, which is somewhat true. But doesn’t the New Testament mention other administrative or everyday issues? Giving, collecting for widows (when was the last time you did that at your church?), the behaviour of children and what you should drink when your tummy hurts is all in there, but there is a strange silence about the location of meetings.

Other than houses, of course. The only meeting place mentioned in the New Testament was either an extremely public place or someone’s house, the most common being a home, of course.

We do know that later fellowships did build buildings to congregate in, but what does that really prove? Others started to believe that Christ never really came in the flesh, that He was just some sort of ghost and never really died or resurrected … this all happened around the same time … should we do that, too? I’m a weirdo in that I’m concentrating specifically on what the Bible says concerning the subject.

When this is mentioned, you invariably get the “we know, we know, the Church isn’t a building, its the people. We know there’s nothing sacred about the building.” This coming from the same voices that led a chorus of “we are standing on holy ground” at a building dedication a few years ago and spend a few thousand dollars on the steeple because “it’s not a Church without a steeple.”

When you talk to many leaders that are called by some pastors, you get the idea that they have a building and stuff at the building so that they can draw people in. Some even say it outright. They have a basketball court and a baseball field for the church softball league as if competition within the body of Christ wasn’t bad enough. “And there’s nothing wrong with that,” they say.

Really? There’s nothing wrong with someone coming to your church because you babysit their kids (called the nursery or children’s church) for free or for a tax (called a tithe) and have games and fun social activities at this big community center with a cross on it they call a “church”? Again, my question is, if it is so important to draw others in this way, why isn’t it in the Bible?

The use of a building isn’t inherently a sin, although its strong connection with the Old Covenant makes me highly cautious, but there is an easy point you can use to judge your heart on the matter. If you lost your building, would you still have a fellowship of people who wanted to assemble out of love for one another? Some would for a temporary time if you promised them a new building was on its way, but many would still leave for percieved greener pastures.

If you sold your building and the land it was on and gave it to the poor, what would happen to your fellowship? Most would have to admit they would no longer exist. What would we do? they would ask.

Don’t we have public places to meet? Parks, squares, vacant lots or fields where people would allow large groups to congregate, even for a nominal fee? Of course we also have our homes, where people could see us as we are, as we live, and we could show Christ in a real way instead of with shows and lights and sacred furniture where stains are a horror.

There are other issues too, like connecting the decietfulness of wealth with a pulbic vision of a rich “church” in material things and what it means for Christians to own and put so many of their resources toward brick, wood and stone. I’m just challenging the notion that we need large buildings to fulfill the great commission of discipleship. I would go so far as to say that those buildings stand directly in the way of it.

This is too difficult for most, however. They are satisfied with catering to common culture in order to slip the gospel in there somewhere and call themselves church. To move away from that seems like too much effort. Believe me or not, but if we met in large public places and in homes, the world would SEE the gospel lived out, and that is a much more powerful thing than we could ever realize in our American idea of Christianity. Most churches are fine with spreading the gospel as long as the world walks in the building and comes to them to hear it.

Peace.

There is a very important struggle going on within Christianity that is important to point out. Most see it as a conflict between two sides of the political spectrum, where God sees it as a deeper struggle.

Growing up in institutionalized religion, or what some would call the church, I had an experience that I would say was pretty common in that situation. The leaders, pastors and members of the fellowship would often associate their Christianity with a political position. In fact, many on one side or the other would even question the sincerity of the faith of those they disagreed with.

In all my readings of the New Testament, I have never seen a deep political commentary or a doctrine specifying what “side” Christians should be on.

With all the political posturing by those on both sides of the religious politcal community, you would think they knew how God would vote and who God would vote for. And if it your political affiliation were that big of an issue, what does the Bible say about it?

In the New Testament? Absolutely nothing.

Now, I’m not discussing the Old Testament with this issue because under the Law you would have to root for the nation of Israel and the restoration of a monarchy with the king being from the line of David. For believers under the New Covenant, however, we are citizens of a different nation (the eternal Kingdom of Heaven), and our King is of the line of David (through Mary and Joseph, Jesus Christ) and seated on His throne above.

The New Testament does detail our relationship with the government over us, but never does it discuss a political position to take in regards to that government.

Let us, just for a moment, consider the situation the Church, the Body of Christ, was in over the first century. Many of them were Jews, but many were Gentile and that number would grow quickly to outnumber the Jewish Christians (as it is today). They lived under a Repulbic that was dominant in trade and had a powerful military, many consider the most powerful military in the world at the time. Citizens had some basic rights. Christianity, however, was not the state religion and was many times persecuted because of that fact. The Republic in power was known for its corruption and the morals of the nation were fairly bad. The nation was also extremely wealthy and materialism was insane.

Sound familiar?

We know that the Romans were power hungry in their military campaigns. Why don’t we have an account of any protests against oppressive wars? Why don’t we have any statement against the moral depravity of the nation and the government? With the singular exception of Paul using his citizenship to save his life (which didn’t ultimately work because he was martyred), why don’t we have one example or discussion of Christians needing to fight for their rights?

It really is very simple. See, they believed Jesus when he told them that the world would hate them, and they easily saw that the governments of their day were of the world. They expected it. They also knew that the world would not change, that Truth was a narrow way and would not be a majority. They were righteous and obedient not because it would change their communities or their nation but because they would recieve reward in Heaven. Period. Jesus told them that they would always have the poor. He spoke of wars and rumors of wars up through the last days. He spoke of judments and a world generally in chaos that was ordered by his Father and given authority by God.

He also spoke of an eternal Kingdom that was not of this world. The rewards attained there are beyond our comprehension but worth our every intention.

And the writers of the New Testament understood this to a degree that we fail to grasp. The main concepts concerning government and the Church are these: we obey God more than man when the two conflict (especially in spreading the Gospel and meeting together), God gives authority to every government and uses it and the leaders as His instrument, and therefore we are to respect that fact by obeying the government we are citizens of in this temporal realm.

Revelation tells us that the world will not get progressively better but worse. Man will become more religious and sinful and power hungry and conflicts will escalate. We expect things from our human government that can only be attained through Christ. Whether righteousness or compassion, peace or judgment, these are things done by God through His time and eternal purpose.

We are decieved because we get a vote. The Romans had a vote, too. The Bible declares that despite our input, God instills leadership and governments and removes them. Are conservative Christians willing to understand that God put Bill Clinton in power for 8 years? Are liberal Christians willing to accept that George Bush is God’s choice for president?

Fighting amongst ourselves for a temporal gain that won’t matter much in the eternal is not a work of God. It is a distraction of the enemy to keep us from doing the true work of the Kingdom as a unified Body.

As part of our service and respect of our country (that God has ordained to be ours), I believe we should vote our conscience and what we believe to be the best choice based on our relationship with God. I know I do. But am I to judge God’s servants, my brothers and sisters in Christ, because we happen to see things differently on some or many issues? Our unity is not to be based on politics but on Christ and His work on the earth.

The problem is that the Church is trying to get the government to do their job. It is the Church’s job to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, give to the poor. Although the percentage of money given in these areas is pitiful in most assemblies, its not just about money. This is a personal thing. This is your job. It is the Church’s job to take care of the elderly and the sick, even healing them! It is the Church’s job to be a shining example of righteousness in the world, to live what is right regardless of local law.

The only thing we don’t really expect the government to do is to evangelize for us, although we probably wouldn’t mind adding that to the list.

And to repeat myself, we do these things out of obedience and love for God and one another, knowing that our reward is in Heaven, not expecting some Utopian existence here on Earth because we were proactive enough.

Peace.