Our daily bread
I wrote the post “Our daily bread” two years ago after a water main break in our county. This event help me realize that we don’t know what it means to ask for “our daily bread” nor do we know what it means to help someone who is in need out of our own necessities. I’m still convicted, because I don’t think I’ve learned this lesson yet.
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As part of Jesus’ model prayer, he prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread”. (Matthew 6:11 ESV) Literally, the word translated “daily” means something like “what is necessary for today”. Thus, Jesus was teaching us to ask God to provide us with what we need to exist today. In the following sections of Matthew 6, Jesus continually reminded his followers to trust God to provide what we need for today.
Similarly, James taught us:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2:15-16 ESV)
Again, if someone is lacking in the necessities needed that day, and we have the means to meet that need, then are to provide for them. Apparently, we have more than is needed for today; someone else has less than is needed for today; so we take from our excess (that is more than is needed, not more than is wanted) and give to our brother or sister.
Something happened this week that helped me see that we don’t know what it means to ask for or to share based on “necessities”. We still think luxuries are necessities.
There was a major water main break in a town just north of us. This water main was part of our county’s water system. The county lost 1.5 million gallons of water and had to replace the water main. This is a devastating loss in the middle of a drought – at least, they’re calling it a drought.
Because of the drought and possible contamination due to the water main break, the citizens of our county have been instructed to boil their water. Also, citizens have been instructed not to use water unnecessarily: i.e. do not water lawns, do not wash cars, etc. Many restaurants have been closed for the last few days because of the water restrictions and because they cannot boil all of the water that they use.
The news has been constantly covering this story. They have interviewed almost every person in the county, except us. Everyone who wants to complain about the water restrictions and the closed restaurants and the dry lawns and the dirty cars has been given a microphone and 15 seconds of air time on the 6 o’clock news. We need our water…
But, we still have water. This is not a problem of necessity. We have water. This is a problem of luxury and convenience. Instead of being grateful for having water just by turning on the faucet, we are complaining because we have to boil it. Instead of grateful that we are not dying of thirst, we are grumbling because our yards (I mean, our lawns) are brown. Instead of being grateful that we do not have to walk miles to find water, we are angry because we can’t wash our cars.
We are pathetic. We do not know what it means to be in need. We do not know what it means to be grateful for having our needs met. Therefore, I do not think we know what it means to meet someone else’s needs.
Good news! The water restrictions have been lifted. Now, we do not have to boil our water. People can return to their favorite restaurants. Lawns will be green and cars sparkling clean by tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps, now, we will find it in our hearts to give a glass of water to a person who is truly in need. But, probably not.
God have mercy on us.
No Senior Pastor? Can it work?
My friend Maël from “The Adventures of Maël & Cindy” has (finally!) completed his series examining various view of the “senior pastor”. His final post is called “The Senior Pastor – Fourth View: final comments.”
So what are the four views of “the senior pastor”? Maël describes them in his first post in the series:
- The senior pastor is the leader and has more authority (decision-making responsibility) than other elders/pastors.
- The senior pastor is the leader but has the same authority has other elders/pastors.
- “First among equals” – the natural leader comes to the top because of function and gifting, not title.
- There is no human senior pastor.
In his last post, Maël makes some final comments about this fourth view – no human senior pastor. By the way, Maël knows from experience that this can and does “work,” because he was one of our elders… and we do not have a human senior pastor, nor do we have a “first among equals.”
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Decision Making and Leadership
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the third part of my review: Decision Making and Leadership.
Of the three parts of my review, this one will probably be the most difficult for Western thinkers. Why? Because aside from our personal times, individualistic thinkers pride themselves on making their own decisions.
But, according to Hellerman, one of the aspects of strong group thinking is shared decision making, both decisions that affect the group and decisions that seemingly only affect the individual. Why? Because all decisions actually affect the group. This includes life decisions such as occupation, marriage, and place to live.
Hellerman writes:
[B]ig decisions are best made in community, in the context of the church family – especially big family decisions. (pg 168)
More than advice-seeking is at work here. It will not do simply to challenge American evangelicals, who otherwise live life as isolated individuals, to seek counsel from others only when they come to a defining fork in the road of life. In the strong-group church family model, input from others is a way of life, not a resource to occasionally draw on as one of several items on a checklist that purports to tell us how to find God’s will for our lives…
This is quite important because what I am advocating here is not an institutional program… More often than not, input comes in a less structured, more organic way, as long-term relationships with brothers and sisters in the church family provide the natural context for speaking wisdom into one another’s lives in a variety of settings. (pg 170-171)
Hellerman recognizes that Christian leaders can be helpful in making decisions, but he says that most decisions should be made in the context of the whole church. Unfortunately, I think Hellerman’s examples fail him at this point. All of his examples (unless I missed some) were of church leaders (pastors) instructing individuals about decisions they should make. I wish he would have included many examples of community-wide decision making that affected individuals. (I’ll touch on this point again later in this review and interaction.)
Hellerman suggests several methods of helping a church organization transition to a “family-oriented church model” – recognizing that this is not a model to be implemented but a different way of understanding and living life. He says that the content of teaching and reconsidering the social context can be very beneficial.
What does he mean by “reconsider the social context”? He says:
But teaching our people about the church as a family will not suffice to alter deeply ingrained patterns of behavior. We must also reevaluate the social contexts of church life, the ways in which our ministries are executed. The priority most churches place upon the success of the Sunday service subtly but powerfully communicates the message that this impersonal, once-a-week social environment is quintessentially what “church” is all about… [S]o it is essential to provide for our people the kind of social settings in which church family relations can be experienced firsthand. (pg 177-178)
I think Hellerman is correct that we (that is, all believers) should recognize that all interactions with other believers are important. (This is one of the reasons that I started my “Church Life” series.) I would add that it is also possible to make the Sunday (or weekly) meeting of the church less of an “impersonal, once-a-week social environment.” The church meeting can be very personal and interactive, but we must be willing to change from our current models and ways of meeting together.
Finally, in a strong group community such as Hellerman describes (that is, the type of community that he finds in the New Testament), he recognizes that there exists the danger of abuse, especially from leaders. Hellerman says that following the biblical mandates of plural leaders and servant leaders will help to balance this danger.
I would also add that removing the decision-making authority from leaders will also balance this danger. Remember that when Jesus spoke to his disciples about the way worldly leaders exercised authority, he said, “It shall not be so among you.” That is pretty clear to me. In the church, leaders are servants, not decision makers. Decision making is the responsibility of the whole church together.
I would hope that the church would recognize mature, serving people as their leaders, and that those leaders would offer godly guidance and wisdom. But, the responsibility to make decisions should remain the function of the church, not the leaders.
In the last few years, my thinking about the church has changed drastically. Primarily, my understanding of the church has changed because I recognize that the church is a family – not that the church should become a family, but that the church is a family. Thus, many of the statements in this book are familiar to me. However, Hellerman brings up many aspects of family and strong group life that remain difficult for me to consider. But, I must consider these aspects of family life as well.
I would recommend this book to any Christian. For many, this book will help them along a journey that they have already started (like me). For others, this book may begin to put some pieces into place. For still others, what Hellerman writes will sound strange, impossible, and undesirable. But, for all of us, I think Hellerman can help us understand more clearly what the New Testament authors wrote. It remains to be seen what our response to that understanding will be.
Blogging/Essay Contest – 21st Century Church
This information is copied from The Jesus Paradigm site:
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Energion Publications will host a blogging/essay contest. Entries are open immediately and will close November 2, 2009 when Dr. David Alan Black’s new book Christian Archy is released. Judging will take place during the first week of November, and winners will be announced by November 16.
To enter, simply write an essay in answer to the question: What should a congregation following Jesus Christ in ministry look like?
If you are a blogger, post the essay on your blog and link back to this post, then also e-mail pubs@energion.com just to make sure. We will add your post to the list of those participating. If you are not a blogger, e-mail your essay in either Word document or Open Document Text (OpenOffice) format to pubs@energion.com and indicate in the e-mail that you are entering the 21st century church contest.
Entries will be judged in the following areas, with each area receiving a score of from one to ten:
- Biblically rooted
- Historically aware
- Complete
- Clear and Concise
- Overall impression, including appearance, discussion generated, and anything one of the judges wants to include
Note that 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 may conflict in the approach of some people. That is why there will be three judges, who come from different theological traditions:
Alan Knox (The Assembling of the Church), a doctoral candidate at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Geoffrey Lentz (GeoffreyLentz.com), associate pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pensacola, FL, doctoral student at Drew University, and author of The Gospel According to Saint Luke: A Participatory Study Guide.
Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., author of Evidence for the Bible, Christianity and Secularism, and Preserving Democracy, (all from Energion Publications), and owner of Aletheia Consulting, Inc. Elgin is a member of a Christian Reformed congregation.
Each judge will rate the entries independently. One of our copy editors will also rate the essays, but that rating will only be used to break a tie. Judges will not consider whether or not you use or quote from Energion Publications products or web sites in your post.
The prizes are:
First prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + two other Energion Publications books, with a $25 gift card for Barnes & Noble
Second prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + one other Energion Publications book, with a $15 gift card for Barnes & Noble
Third prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm with a $10 gift card for Barnes & Noble
(If you have previously received and reviewed a copy of The Jesus Paradigm you may choose any other book in our catalog as an alternative.)
All other participants get the joy of participating in the discussion, and hopefully a fair amount of link love. All posts regarding this contest will be cross-posted to JesusParadigm.com, and you can comment/link there to enter as well. Feel free to participate in the discussion even if you don’t want to enter the contest.
Note: All prizes will be awarded. Prize winners have no obligation to Energion Publications other than the necessary steps to enter the contest. Judges will be instructed to disregard use or non-use of Energion Publications books and web sites in judging the entries.
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I will not be participating in this contest, since I’ll be judging. However, I encourage all of my readers and fellow bloggers to participate!
(NOTE: When you post your essay, make sure to link back to The Jesus Paradigm post and send an email to pubs@energion.com.)
Church Life #6 – The Workplace
This series is about our life with the church as we attempt to live together as brothers and sisters. (For a more detailed description of this series, see my post “Church Life – A New Series.”)
In this post of my Church Life series, I want to talk about the workplace, and primarily, the coworkers that God has brought into my life and the relationships that we’ve developed.
Too often, when we think about sharing life with the church, we limit that “shared life” to specific people, specific days, specific times, etc. However, anytime that God brings people into our lives we should love them as our neighbors (i.e. the parable of the Good Samaritan). This becomes especially true when those people are also brothers and sisters in Christ. Our responsibilities toward one another are not limited to people who share an organizational membership (i.e. church members).
I work in an office with three or four other people (the number changes from time to time). In the seven years that I’ve worked in this office, I’ve met some great people, and we’ve formed very close friendships. In fact, I’m still in contact with several people who have now moved to other states.
We’ve had different beliefs when it comes to the church, or end times, or salvation, etc. However, we found unity and community in Jesus Christ.
Yes, we’ve made each other angry at times. We’ve gotten on each other’s nerves. We’ve let each other down from time to time. That is, we’re human.
However, these were not relationships that we could just drop and move on to someone else. We had to work together. So, we worked through the problems, and we found our relationships becoming even stronger, not because of our agreements but in spite of our disagreements. Why? Because, we discovered that we still have fellowship with one another in Jesus Christ, if we do not hinder that fellowship by some man-made distinctive.
So, even though we were part of different church organizations, and even though we had differing beliefs in some areas of doctrine or theology, and even though there was friction occasionally, we found community together in Jesus Christ. Of course, given that we spent more time with one another than with most other believers (we worked together 40 hours per week), we found these relationships to be much stronger than others, and often more important in our developing maturity in Jesus Christ.
We talked and discussed issues together. We prayed together. We listened to one another. We helped one another (even outside the work environment). In other words, we carried out our family responsibilities toward one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
So, when you are thinking about Christian community and sharing life with other believers, don’t forget about relationships outside of the church organization (i.e. church members). God may bring coworkers or neighbors or fellow volunteers into your lives. Don’t neglect those people but foster your relationship with anyone that God brings into your life, especially fellow believers.
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Sharing Life Together
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the second part of my review: Sharing Life Together.
As I mentioned in the first part of this review (Strong Group Identity), Hellerman demonstrates in this book that the early church saw itself as a new group – God’s new family – with a strong group identity in which the group becomes more important than the individual and more important than any other group. This type of group identity affected the way these early Christians lived.
The problem in Western culture is that our individualized way of thinking has left us unable to contemplate sharing life with other people. As Hellerman states:
As cultural analysts will tell us, people in our relationally fragmented, increasingly isolated, techno-culture are highly sensitive to the need for healthy relationships with their fellow human beings. We long for community, but our own family experiences have often left us painfully aware of the tremendous difficulties involved in cultivating such relationships with the resources the secular world has to offer. We are left wholly unequipped to satisfy our deepest relational longings and needs. (pg 138-139)
Thus, the images in Scripture of early Christians sharing not just the gospel but their lives with one another is very appealing, but also very confusing to modern readers. While many would love to share in that type of community, few realize or are willing to sacrifice what it takes to get there.
For example, Hellerman covers four “New Testament family values”: 1) We share our stuff with one another, 2) We share our hearts with one another, 3) We stay, embrace the pain, and grow up with one another, and 4) Family is about more than me, the wife, and the kids. (pg 145)
Even these four family values demonstrate that community life begins by giving, not getting. It begins with pain, not comfort. Although life in a New Testament community can be encouraging, beneficial, comforting, caring, etc., there will also be friction and disagreement, especially as believers learn to shift from an individualistic mindset to a group mindset. (Of course, there would have been some friction among those first Christians as well, but they would not require a paradigm shift, only a group shift – which can still be painful!)
Sharing material possessions, time, hopes, dreams, tears, decisions, etc. does not come readily for modern Western thinkers. We’ve been taught to demand our own rights and to strike out on our own if necessary. Thus, we never move through the pain of giving in order to live in a real community. (I wrote about this previously in a post called “The depths of community.”)
Another difficulty for modern believers is the lack of example. There are very few people willing to live in and demonstrate community for us. Even many leaders are more interested in making decisions than in being part of a community. Then, once we find a community, we find that it looks nothing like our community. Believe it or not, this is natural. Hellerman says:
What would Christianity look like if we truly recaptured Jesus’ vision for authentic Christian community? It would likely vary considerably from person to person and from church to church, since the surrogate family values we observed among the early Christians would manifest themselves in different ways in different church environments. The values themselves – group loyalty and sharing of material resources, for example – would remain much the same. But these fundamental expressions of social solidarity would surely express themselves in our churches in a myriad of ways. (pg 144)
So, as we share our lives together – beginning with each person sacrificing their own rights for the benefit of the group – the community that forms would probably look different than another Christian community. Each community is made of people (obviously) and all the people are different (obviously), so we should expect the communities to look different, although they will share common values as directed by the Holy Spirit who indwells both the individuals and the community.
Two particular ways that we share life together as a community are in the areas of decision making and leadership. I will discuss these community/family concepts in the next part of my review and interaction of When the Church Was a Family.
More than outreach
I love the name of Stephen’s blog: “Beyond Outreach.” Also, he hit a home run with his post “We ministered to them.” Here is an excerpt:
“I ministered to you” is condescending. I’m up here and you’re down here, lucky to receive whatever I am giving you. It creates an invisible social barrier that tells the person that they can not relate on the same level. It is also focused on what you are doing, and not on knowing the person. Many times this is just exactly what both parties really want. Both afraid of what kind of involvement really knowing the other person might require. It’s scary because the deeper you go, the dirtier you can get. But only in the fleshing out of a relationship, however awkward it may be, can real discipleship begin.
Consider the way of of the Savior.
Jesus went to the homes of people with bad reputations and spent time eating and drinking with them. He also went to the homes of proper religious leaders and shared meals there. He sometimes spent the night at the home of friends in Bethany and Capernaum. He even slept in a boat of fishermen. He sat and talked with a man that was considered a monster. When he travelled through Samaria he drank their water and slept in their villages when they let him. He slept outside many, many times…
So what does this mean for us? It means taking the risk and taking the initiative to begin a new relationship with someone we don’t know. It means humbling ourselves enough to make a sacrifice of our time and our privacy. It means placing everyone, even unseemly people on the same level as ourselves. It means going beyond being inconvenienced to changing the direction of our week, or month, or year… or lifetime.
There’s more to the post. Jump over to Stephen’s blog and read the whole thing. Then, join me in considering how often I attempt to “minister to them” and how often I’m actually willing to sacrifice of my time and privacy, among other things, to actually get to know people.
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Strong Group Identity
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the first part of my review: Strong Group Identity.
(This book is a more popularized, readable, and accessible version of Hellerman’s academic book The Ancient Church as Family.)
Hellerman begins this book by describing the strong group identity of the ancient Mediterranean region. From Old Testament, New Testament, and other sources, he demonstrates that the needs of the groups was more important than the needs of the individual. Through various scriptural and historical accounts, Hellerman shows that people often made decisions for the good of the group instead of making decisions for the good of the individual.
Next, Hellerman goes a step further to describe the type of strong group identity that is found in that time and region. The people did not form their own groups, but they instead found their identity in their father’s family – that is, it was a partrilineal group. Thus, father, brothers, and sisters were more important than the spouse or the spouse’s family.
This sounds very strange to our Western, individualistic minds. In fact, it sounds wrong. But, this is not a matter of right and wrong. Instead, if we wish to understand the significance of familial language in the New Testament, we must approach the Scriptures from this point of view.
Thus, when the first Christians began following Christ, they were not just accepting a new God, they were joining a new family – a family that immediately took precedence over all other group bonds and relationships, and a family that immediately became more important than the individual.
How important? Well, to the extent that the new family would make decisions for one another – life decisions such as where a person would live, who a person would marry, what a person would do for a living. Again, this sounds very strange to our mindsets, but that is only because we have bought into an individualistic mindset. Since the new family affected both a person’s life and decisions, I will cover those aspects of the book in separate posts in the review.
Hellerman successfully describes the strong group identity of the first Christians, and he successfully places the New Testament teachings within that cultural milieu. More importantly, Hellerman recognizes how different this way of thinking is to modern American (and other Western) ways of thinking.
For those who recognize the benefit of this kind of life – that is, a life that is focused on the group instead of the individual – it should also become immediately apparent that adding a program or an activity will not affect this type of change. Instead, moving toward “church as family” requires a paradigm shift – a different way of thinking.
While the author covers several aspects of this different way of thinking, two stand out to me: 1) Sharing Life Together, and 2) Leadership and Decision Making. I will examine each of these different ways of thinking in the next two parts of this post as I continue to review and interact with When the Church Was a Family.
Camping Weekend and Elders
We just returned home from camping with the church. Every camping trip is different (this is our sixth camping trip as a church), and this one was different also. I think we all learned alot about ourselves, about one another, and about God.
There were several highlights… really too many to mention. But, a couple of hikes and the baptism were definitely among the top.
I’ve posted some pictures of the camping trip on my facebook profile.
Also, today the church recognized four more elders. When we started meeting together five years ago, we recognized four elders. When Mael moved to Texas last month, I was the only elder remaining. For the last two months, the church has been talking about elders. And, today, as the last step in the process, we recognized four more men as elders. So, I’m excited that I am not the only recognized elder any longer.
Scripture… As We Live It #75
This is the 75th installment in “Scripture… As We Live It“:
Above all, keep loving one another checking one another’s theology earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins right theology will keep you pure. (1 Peter 4:8 re-mix)
(Please read the first post for an explanation of this series.)