The Church Without Walls

I recently read this article: “Crazy Passion: Francis Chan Keeps Pushing and Pushing to Make More and More Disciples” by John Brandon in Christianity Today, Oct 2009. I like some of the things I hear about what he is doing. Here are some snippets of the article:

“In church, rather than rehab people, we just put them in a wheelchair and say, ‘We will do everything for you,’” says Chan. “‘You don’t have to witness to your neighbors. We will send out fliers and do TV shows and evangelize for you. You don’t have to counsel your neighbors; just give them the church’s phone number. Now we are saying, ‘You be the discipler. You have the Holy Spirit in you, and we want to equip you to reach your neighbors.'

"Chan’s long-term plan involves building the church without having a building. . . . The experiment is a way to find out how the church can grow without the limits of a building. . . . The structure is intended to encourage authentic discipleship, where small churches birth more small churches as believers grow and mature, attracting new members. Vanderstelt says the main challenge with this approach is that it requires a shift in leadership perspective.”

The vision of our church, Highland Christian Fellowship, is also to establish new, reproducing church fellowships. And I agree that the approach described above "requires a shift in leadership perspective." They were talking about pastors moving away from functioning as "managers or directors of programs." While this must be done, I believe a more drastic paradigm shift must occur. The above model will work better (if at all) if we are willing to have local, native, non-ministry-as-career teams of pastors who shepherd small, reproducing churches.

Cyber-"Fellowship"?

“Better is a neighbor who is nearthan a brother who is far away.” Proverbs 27:10b

Communicating long distance is ever becoming easier: long distance calls, online chatting, cell phones, video calls, e-mail, long distance travel, blogging, Facebook, internet communities, etc. We must not be fooled by soaking in cyber-“fellowship.” Nothing replaces consistent, flesh-and-blood, face to face fellowship. Nothing replaces the local body of Christ. And I mean local. We even stretch the limits of this kind of fellowship when we have to drive an hour to gather with God’s people on Sundays and therefore rarely have contact throughout the week.

"The Church is the Church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it would give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The Church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (thanks Alan)

Diversity for the Sake of Unity

Diversity is a popular and powerful word in our culture today. Because many use it to argue for moral relativism, Christians are often wary of the term. However, diversity is part of the beauty of God’s creation. The diversity of language, culture, and race are part of God’s design. Since religious freedom is critical for true faith, a religiously diverse culture should be expected. But affirming and protecting the necessity of religious freedom does not imply that everyone is “right” or that religion is man-made. Even within the church we often struggle with our unity and diversity. Ephesians 4 helps us to understand how they relate (see also 1 Cor 12). Paul teaches that our calling as believers is inherently corporate and that we are unified by our faith in God (vv. 1-5). Within this unity and for the sake of building unity, various gifts have been given to individuals (vv. 6-16). There should be diversity of function and expression within the unity of the church. However, the unity of the faith and the accomplishment of ministry through the body is more important than its diversity, which is the means by which this unity is accomplished. Our culture makes diversity the ultimate value and purpose of individual distinctiveness. Individualism and diversity are indeed a beautiful and functional reality of the church, but they are not the church’s foundation or purpose. They are the means and expression of unity in Christ for the accomplishment of his mission and for the glory to God.

Recognizing Elders

Alan Knox recently described how his church is attempting to recognize elders. We recognized the elders in our church in a very similar fashion. I believe the overall health of local churches would change drastically if we followed the biblical practice of recognizing elders who are actually known by the congregation, have proven their quality, and whom the congregation believes has been called by God to shepherd.

Conclusion on Church Elders' Authority

Here is a link to the conclusion of my dissertation, The Authority of Church Elders in the NT. Aside from the readers on the committee at school, I have not received much in the way of critical feedback. I am anxious for my conclusions to be challenged and improved. I also pray that where ever I have accurately understood the Scripture, this will be an encouragement and challenge to others. I have only uploaded the conclusion. I can also make available the chapters that discuss each relevant passage individually if there are further thoughts or questions.