Purpose of church 3 - OUTREACH part 3

“We must stand up for the truth!” A phrase heard uttered by many believers today. A sentiment we follow in an effort to do evangelism. Granted we must stand up for the truth, as long as we are actually standing up for the truth in the process. What do I mean? Take for example, those who crucified Christ. In their mind, they were standing up for the truth. They were protecting their beliefs and traditions to do so. Yet they broke the law of Moses that they held sacred in order to do so. Current believers do not do much better when we correct in pride rather than humility. We walk over all that we hold sacred when we correct without love. Ultimately whenever a believer chooses to correct with impatience, unkindness, boasting, rudeness, or any other action that’s the reverse of the loving actions portrayed in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; The opposition is quick to point out “this is how they love, they claim to be about love, but what they do in not loving at all, not even by their own standards.” Which puts the opposition in a good position to redefine love in their own self-serving image. A position we have put them in, and they have taken full advantage of. All because of sinful impatient non empathetic prideful believers who thinks righteousness can be achieved by shame. 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” - John 13:34-35

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that dayyou will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” - John 14:15-21

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. - John 15:9-17

It seems that Jesus could not stress this point enough, yet still we fail at it.

Non Practicing 

Purpose of church 3 - OUTREACH part 2

In the end when it comes to outreach all one can really do is inspire. The best way to do that is with the lives we live everyday. While you can try to force someone to act as you believe they should, you might even convince the government to back you up, but all you are really doing is whitewashing someone else’s tomb. If it’s pointless to do that to yourself, how much more pointless is it to do that to someone who hasn’t even chosen that for themselves. (Matthew 23:27-28) You haven’t really changed people where it counts, that place being the heart. Yet, the closest thing a lot of so-called church people get to outreach is condemnation. There are very few things that are less inspirational than condemnation and criticism. Ask yourself honestly, do you respect those who treat you critically? Do you go out of your way to please such unpleasant people? Or do you go out of your way to defy them? So why do we expect such methods to produce any other results when we apply them to others? I’ll tell you, it’s the sinful nature of the flesh. The flesh always chooses the phony quick fix. Just look at the ways of sinful flesh nature listed in Galatians 5:19-21 and take note of just how many can correspond with critical condemnation. Then ask yourself, why do we deceive ourselves into thinking this is righteousness.  

The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. - Genesis 39:2-4

Whitewashing someone else's tomb

Purpose of church 3 - outreach

Outreach is essentially education turned outward rather than inward, not that we treat it the same as internal education.

The church as a whole has been making a grand push towards outreach these days. Sadly, it’s often only out of necessity, not because it’s the right thing to do though. They often end up trying to use people to build the church rather than use the church to build people when it’s merely about numbers. Such an attitude comes from self focus rather than love. Yet they wonder why God is not blessing their efforts. 

What’s even more disturbing is the response our church leaders are getting to outreach, regardless the motivation. Sure you can do a sermon on evangelism, you can ask them to write a check in support of missionaries, you can even ask them to memorize the great commission, and it’s all good. However, if you ask people to get directly involved, many start throwing a fit. Sure, they want to see growing numbers, but they don’t want to have to make any kind of sacrifice for it. Despite the fact, that true worship involves sacrifice. It’s quite revealing as to where peoples hearts are at. It reveals a lack of spiritual maturity as well as a lack of empathy. 

Apparently, the church has failed somewhere along the line to create such a heartless generation of believers. Until the hearts of the people who make up the church can be rebuilt to the point where there is room enough for the lost, any efforts to do outreach are hampered greatly. If the church wants to grow numerically, then its present members need to grow up in the spirit. 

Your heart's not in it

Living Education

One last thing about our second purpose of church, education. People today tend to view belief, knowledge, and action as three separate and distinct things. So when we read verses like John 6:29  Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” It may seem like knowledge and action are irrelevant. But what if I told you that the audience that initially received this message didn’t see it that way. The Hebrew point of view saw belief, knowledge, and action as integrated. If you truly belied, you showed it by expanding your knowledge of it. If you truly believed you acted upon said knowledge. 

In recent days, the phrase “Christian atheist” has entered our culture. The idea being that there are people who claim to believe in God yet do not live as if he or his commands matter in everyday life. I’m sure this idea of fragmenting knowledge from belief from action is at the root of it. 

Now we live in an age where people get into such heated debates over definitions; as if believing the right definition is enough. Take for example, the debate over predestination. Do we live any more or less righteously either way? I think not, so why do we let the issue lead us into unrighteous behavior? We do just that when we try to convince people otherwise with impatience, unkindness, rudeness, or boasting, we just end up forsaking our Lord’s command on love; all because our belief, knowledge, and action are not integrated.

But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. -Titus 3:9

 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.  Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. -James 3:9-10

faith on paper

Worship vs Education

I opened this section with the fact that the ancient Hebrews has a separate word for houses of worship from houses of learning. (Temple VS Synagogue) As well as the question weather it’s right to combine said practices into a single convenient service as we do now. It’s not a simple thing to answer, but if you’ve been paying attention; thus far, you will realize that music is a crossover element in both concepts. As well as there was a huge change in the concept of the temple and ultimately worship as a result under the new covenant.  Let us also look at 1 Corinthians 14 which offers some insights to how the first generation church was conducted.

26 My friends, when you meet to worship, you must do everything for the good of everyone there. That’s how it should be when someone sings or teaches or tells what God has said or speaks an unknown language or explains what the language means. 27 No more than two or three of you should speak unknown languages during the meeting. You must take turns, and someone should always be there to explain what you mean. 28 If no one can explain, you must keep silent in church and speak only to yourself and to God.29 Two or three persons may prophesy, and everyone else must listen carefully. 30 If someone sitting there receives a message from God, the speaker must stop and let the other person speak. 31 Let only one person speak at a time, then all of you will learn something and be encouraged. 32 A prophet should be willing to stop and let someone else speak. 33 God wants everything to be done peacefully and in order. (CEV)

It would  seem that the first generation church was the genesis of the practice of merging the concepts. So it would not seem that scripture does not condemn the practice. However, this passage also reveals church practices that are far removed from the church of today. These verses paint a picture of a church that was far more interactive. It all didn’t center around the efforts of but a single teacher, and everyone else merely a consumer. A wide assortment of people was involved. Many helped in bearing an abundant harvest of spiritual fruit, and they were eager to do so. So their Christian education was in no way diminished by such a merger, they were truly living the body of Christ concept. Can we still make such a claim?

     Let me also share this. Over a century and a half-ago during the abolitionist era, when slavery was the big social issue. Many people in the church felt that the governments approval of such a horrific crime against humanity was a sign of the end. A perception that was compounded by a fact that many churches were not taking a stand on the issue so as not to offend their members that were getting rich off slavery; in their mind this was the church of Laodicea come to pass. When the civil war officially broke out the abolitionist side of the church was so utterly convinced that the end was near that a grand campaign to save as many people as possible was implemented. They didn’t worry about a deep rooted knowledge and faith. They just tried to give them enough to keep them out of hell.

     This false perception is probably but one of many events that has lead to the decline of education in the church; and the church as a whole has just declined with it. No we don’t need to separate education from worship, but we probably need to take both concepts far more seriously in our lives, by getting back to the level of dedication that the first generation church had. The Sabbath was an all day observance in Biblical times. Now it’s often no more than an hour and a half. If we tithed our time and only counted waking hours, even that would be 11 hours and 12 minutes.
       As scripture reveals in many places; man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. We feed our physical bodies every day, even multiple times a day if we have the means. However, many of us starve our spirit by only feeding it when convenient. For many see the church as merely a place to consume spiritual fruit, not bear it as Jesus called us to; as the first generation church did. (John 15:8) When a church is filled with nothing but consumers with very few producers, it’s no wonder the crop is so small.

Veiled glory 2 Corinthians 3:7-18

Purpose of church 2 - Education part 2

Last time we talked about how Jesus taught. Yet, another concept we should take to heart is how Jesus did NOT teach, yet the church sometimes does. Christ-likeness isn’t about doing as he did, but avoiding faulty methods that he did as well. 

Forced coercion - Submission is actually a very Biblical concept. Many dismiss Christianity for that reason alone. All because people don’t recognize the difference between submission and forced submission, even within the church itself. Biblical submission was meant to be an option made of ones freewill. (Joshua 14:15, Luke 14:25-33) To see and recognize the value of Biblical truth and choosing to submit to its authority. Jesus valued sincerity, if you did not choose to follow him of your own volition, he didn’t see you as ready to be his follower. The Bible actually records people rejecting Jesus a number of times. (Matthew 8:34, Mark 10:17-22, Luke 4:28-30, John 6:60-69) While Jesus would sometimes elaborate on his position, not once ever does he prevent someone from using their freewill to abandon him or his teachings in any way. Let me put it all into perspective for you. If you pointed a gun at someone's head and demanded that they say “I love you” they would probably do it. Yet, the words they uttered would be meaningless; there would be no truth or reality within them at all under such circumstances. You are only kidding yourself if you think otherwise. It is no different when we try to force righteous behavior upon people. It can be nothing more than a phony external whitewash to keep you off their back at best. At worst, it’s just a source of rebellion. 

Harsh words - Granted Jesus could be tough on certain people, specifically religious people who should have known better. Yet offered much grace to those who were less knowledgeable. Church people often do the exact opposite by condemning and criticizing people for not knowing better already, yet soft on their fellow church folk who shouldn’t have to be told. So where should we draw the line? It’s a valid question we would do well to try to understand and act upon, rather than just reacting emotionally. To answer that, let’s do a compare and contrast between Jesus and the religious people he was the toughest upon, the Pharisees.  Jesus sought to do what’s right, where the Pharisees sought to be right. Jesus sought to help the lost, where the Pharisees sought to belittle the lost. Jesus sought to serve others, where the pharisees sought only to serve self and their agenda. Jesus sought to do everything in love, where the Pharisees loved only themselves and their traditions. This is what separates vitriolic criticism, condemnation, and guilt from good and proper correction. The easiest thing in the world to do is to hate those who hated you first, so when we correct with fleshly anger filled hate we are only painting our beliefs in a negative light. It only serves to accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend. When it comes to correction are you more Christ like or Pharisee like?

A truth made undesirable 

Purpose of church 2 - Education part 1

Church serves as a place to explore and learn about the faith we profess; or at least curious about. This may seem to be a rather obvious fact with little to explore. However, I believe there is in reality one aspect of Christian education we should explore, yet the church hasn’t done as much as we should. That being the question of, how did Jesus teach? Religious leaders talk about Christ likeness all the time, yet seldom do I even see the concept being applied to how he taught. I think it’s about time we did. 

How Jesus taught

Discipleship - The concept of discipleship is so equated with Jesus many assume that he invented the practice, but that is not the case. It was a common practice in Biblical times, even before his birth. We often throw the term around loosely, but the practice went farther than mere mentorship, as we sometimes treat it. Discipleship involved becoming as much like the one you were following as possible.

Example - Jesus didn’t just command us to do things; he told us to do as he did. To love as he loved, to obey as he obeyed, to serve as he served. (John 15:9, 14:31, 13:14-15) As St.Francis of Assisi said, “preach the gospel everywhere you go, if necessary use words.” Yet, often what we observe today is many words being uttered with very little example to back them up. Words that don’t have a good example to back them up possess very little impact.

Scripture  - Jesus quoted scripture often to those who recognized its authority. There isn’t much mystery here, for even current church leaders utilize this as the church always has and should. Yet, sometimes we try to utilize this on people who do not yet recognize the Bible’s authority, to little effect. This is where good example is better suited.

Parable - One of the primary ways that Jesus taught, yet very few pastors do, is parable. However, it’s a concept I utilize in my artwork, only I use illustration rather than words to provide the narrative. I have a whole website dedicated to the idea of parable and my execution of it via art. So rather than repeat myself here I’d encourage you to visit my website. Visual Parables

Christ-UN-likeness