Category: Fellowship (Page 14 of 17)

Be Filled With The Spirit

January 12, 2010 / Allan / 1 Comment

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” ~Ephesians 5:21

The context in Ephesians 5 is in the corporate worship assembly.

“Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Submit to one another. Belong to one another. And, in this corporate worship context, Paul says be filled with the Spirit.

When we come together, it’s the Spirit who not only unites us with one another, he unites us to God. We worship in the Spirit. We submit to one another and speak and sing to one another in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God is who gives the Christian life its energy and enthusiasm and endurance and power!

Be filled with the Spirit.

This is an imperative. It’s a command. So we do take some of the responsibility here. This singing together and submitting to one another is either the means by which we pursue this filling of the Spirit or it’s the result of being filled with the Spirit. Or both. Either way, Paul says when we sing together, when we pray together, when we submit to one another, when we really belong to one another, we are filled with the Spirit.

And that tells me that God is not a spectator when we come together to worship. Audience of one? No! God is not an audience of worship. Our God is an active participant with us — inside us — when we worship him together. God is not just sitting on his heavenly throne and soaking up all the hallelujahs and amens. No. Through the Spirit, the Father and Son are engaged with us. Communing with us. Rejoicing with us. Transforming us. Changing us. Growing us. Shaping us more into the image of Christ.

Be filled with the Spirit.

Encountering God together — in the worship assemblies on Sunday mornings, in our Bible classes on Wednesday nights, in our living rooms on Sunday evenings — being in the presence of God together allows us to recognize our own sinfulness and shortcomings. And that always leads to an acute recognition of his marvelous grace. And the power of God’s grace is not just forgiveness. It’s also transformation. New creature. New creation. Christ formed in you. Being saved. It’s a communal sanctification event. We participate in it and we experience it together. We are filled with the Spirit. Together.

Peace,

Allan

A Holy People

December 30, 2009 / Allan / 6 Comments

I’ve heard people talk about church like they talk about the gym. They think about going to church like they think about going to the gym. You know, a person who regularly goes to a gym is more likely to stay in shape than a person who doesn’t. At the same time, though, you don’t absolutely have to go to the gym to stay in shape. There are other ways. So, the logic goes, you don’t have to go to church to be spiritual. You don’t have to be an active member of a church in order to have a right relationship with God. A lot of people think — some people even say out loud — that church is a nice addition to personal salvation, but certainly it’s not essential to that salvation.

Wrong answer.

As we say goodbye to 2009 and anticipate God’s gifts for us in 2010, we need to understand that his church is far too important to his purposes and his plan for the world he created to be thought of as some kind of optional, personal, spiritual gym. The Gospel has never, ever been just about saving individuals. The Gospel has always been about creating a community where walls are broken down and human beings are reconciled not only to God, but also to one another.

We are a people. A holy people. A saved people. A people brought together by God to serve his purposes and fulfill his mission in the world. The church as a people, as a community of faith, as a family of God, a family of brothers and sisters connected to one another by the blood of Christ, and actively engaging the world is critical to God’s eternal plans.

The New Testament Scriptures do not recognize a disciple of Christ who is not an active, involved, all-in member of a community of faith. One of the many facets of baptism is initiation into that Body of Christ, his Kingdom, made up of saved and sanctified people. There are no such things as pew-sitters or occasional attendees in the Bible. We are all holy brothers and sisters, made holy by the poured out blood of Jesus, called to live together before the world as an alternative community.

I know you’re going to lose weight in 2010. I know you’re going to give more and spend more quality time with your family in the New Year. I know. Why don’t you also commit to getting more plugged in to what God is doing with his Church? Why don’t you jump in with everything you have to realize all of what God has in store for you? Live up to your God-created and God-ordained potential. Live into everything God intends when he creates in you that brand new person, full of his Holy Spirit, made to experience everything in a brand new way! Show up everytime the doors are open. Give more of your money than you’ve ever given before. Get connected in a Small Group. Study and pray with your brothers and sisters. Join a ministry. Create a new ministry.

God’s Church is not anybody’s personal spiritual gym. You don’t just show up when you need a boost and plug in your ear buds and work out on your own. It’s the community — the family — in which God placed you when he saved you. It’s where he intends for you to live.

Peace,

Allan

Freedom or the Ghetto?

December 1, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

Our Tuesday morning men’s Bible study group is right in the middle of 1 Corinthians. Today it was chapter eight: Now, about food sacrificed to idols. The conversation in Scripture and in the church library this morning was all about strong brothers and weak brothers, disputable matters and matters of salvation, knowledge and love, freedom and stumbling blocks. Of course, the apostle Paul makes the whole thing rather clear in the first couple of sentences:

“We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.”

Christian love is always the key. Always. No exceptions. Christ-like love. Considering others better than yourselves. Putting the needs of others ahead of your own. Love is more important than knowledge, even correct knowledge. Love is more important than right or wrong. Love, Paul says elsewhere in this letter, supercedes even hope and faith. Love is everything. And love, not knowledge, has to form the foundation of our Christian behavior.

Regarding our contemporary church issues, it’s much easier and requires much less thought and work to just issue blanket prohibitions of certain practices or to indiscriminately accept anything. The hard thing — the correct thing — is to maintain a proper perspective through Christian love. This way, Paul’s way, rings true. It makes much more sense in reality and according to God’s revelation in Christ.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor writes about 1 Corinthians 8 in an article from 1978 entitled “Freedom or the Ghetto.”

“Through fear the Weak would have forced the community into a self-imposed ghetto. Through a destructive use of freedom the Strong would have committed the church to a pattern of behavior indistinguishable from that of its environment. If either group had prevailed, the identity and mission of the church would have been gravely compromised. Paul’s response was to focus the vision of the Corinthians on their roots in Christ and on their responsibility to each other and to a wider world. His passionate prudence is a perfect illustration of ‘love builds up.'”

Love is always at the center of Paul’s ethics. Without love, Paul maintains that all our spiritual blessings from God are worthless. And this love grows as Christians mature in the faith. The more we mature, the more we understand how little we measure up to God’s standards and how much depends on him and not us. That kind of humility naturally leads to the kind of love Paul’s writing about. Without it…

…the Christian who still thinks he knows something, doesn’t really know anything.

Peace,

Allan

Attention All "Moderate" Churches

October 19, 2009 / Allan / 1 Comment

I’ve added Jay Guin’s blog, One in Jesus, to my list of links there on the right hand side of this page. Jay is a long-time elder at the Alberta Church of Christ in Alabama. And I find his writings provocative and inspirational. It’s addicting. I’ll get on his site once a week and easily spend a couple of hours reading his articles regarding our walk with Christ in our American Restoration churches. His scholarship is obvious. His research is more than thorough. And he comes at delicate issues and explosive topics with a humility and grace that reveal Christ in him.

I’ve thought about adding him to my blogrole for several months now. Here’s what put me over the top: an article he wrote in March 2007 about leading a moderate church. The article was just pointed out to me late last week. It’s excellent.

If you’re a preacher or an elder or a ministry leader of a congregation that positions itself as “moderate” or, God forbid, “middle-of-the-road,” you absolutely must read this article. It’s called Overseeing the Moderate Church. After reading this article, you may feel that Jay has been a member of your congregation for 20 years and spends his evenings under the table where your elders meet. Or that he’s tapped your phones.

A moderate church has leaders and members at every conceivable point on that dreadful A-B Line. (Please see my previous posts Jumping Off the Line and Jumping Off the Line: Part Two.) When they come together on Sunday mornings they’re all over the map. And, instead of addressing the inevitable disagreements from Scripture, we ignore them. Or we try to manage them. Or we make political compromises. The inarguable truth of what Guin presents here will frighten you. It may also — possibly — give you great comfort to know that your church isn’t the only one facing the perils that come with a theologically-divided church led by theologically-divided elders and ministers and staff.

The inspiration comes in Jay’s instructions to leaders and members of these churches: “The solution is for the leadership to lead.”

In this case, leading means teaching a version of the Gospel that encourages people to accept one another despite their differences. This means the centerpiece of the church’s teaching has to be love and unity and grace. Now, this shouldn’t be a problem, as this happens to be the centerpiece of the New Testament’s ethical instructions for Christians (read, for example, Romans 12-15).

You simply cannot be Christ-like and care more about your preferences than those of your brothers and sisters. There is no other Gospel. Guin says the key is for elders and staff to insist on this attitude of love and unity and grace, on the Philippians 2 principles of considering others better than ourselves.

This means asking those who refuse to comply to leave. Selfishness is simply intolerable in church. Jesus died to cure it, and if we insist in wallowing in our self-love, we’ll damn ourselves.

Just read the article. It’s called Overseeing the Moderate Church. Get to it by clicking Overseeing the Moderate Church. His website, One in Jesus, is here and in my links list to the right.

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If the Cowboys can schedule three more bye-weeks, they’ll take over the lead in the NFC East and make the playoffs and Wade Phillips can keep his job.

Peace,

Allan

Bold Vision, Bold Men

October 1, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

In 1809, Thomas Campbell’s fiery sermons about Christian unity and his very public convictions that all Christians should return to a pure and simple form of New Testament Christianity got him censured by his presbytery and then fired by the Synod in Western Pennsylvania. A couple of years earlier, Barton Stone, a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky, dissolved his presbytery to unite with everyone who would simply be known as Christians and base their beliefs solely on the inspired Word of God.

Both Stone and Campbell had a bold vision. It was a mind-blowing, earth-altering vision. Christians only. Unity in Christ. For the sake of the world. Putting aside party zeal and tearing down denominational walls, these men dreamed and prayed about the one Church we read about in our Bible. The one Church Jesus prayed for the night he was betrayed. The physical and tangible unity of Christ’s Church that proves to the world that he really is the Messiah.

Bold vision.

It was risky. It was dangerous. It was career-ending. It cost them their jobs. It cost them many relationships with family and friends and professional colleagues. But they valued the Scriptural doctrine of unity more than they valued the denominational things that divided.

Bold men.

They went into this thing knowing how difficult the road would be. But they believed they were acting in concert with the bold moves of Jesus’ disciples who’d gone before. They were only doing what they thought needed to be done in order to be pleasing to God. In Campbell’s Declaration and Address, long regarded as the founding document for Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement churches, he writes that they would never be dissuaded by men from their attempts at restoring the unity of the body of Christ:

“Indeed, should christians cease to contend earnestly for the sacred articles of faith and duty once delivered to the saints, on account of the opposition, and scanty success, which, in many instances, attend their faithful and honest endeavours; the divine cause of truth and righteousness might have long ago been relinquished.”

Knowing the road to Christian unity would be paved with potholes of preference and prejudice, knowing that they would face the intimidating forces of sectarianism and the walls of tradition, knowing they would be basically starting over from scratch with nothing but Holy Scripture and the grace of God, Campbell sums up their charge for unity in God’s Church by saying,

“What, shall we pray for a thing and not strive to obtain it! Sincerely and humbly adopting this model, with an entire reliance upon promised grace, we cannot, we shall not, be disappointed.”

Bold vision. Bold men.

Does their story—no, our story!—have any implications for God’s children today? Does it mean anything? This is our heritage. It’s our history. These are our 200-year-old roots. This is our legacy: unity with God in Christ and unity with all those who call on the name of the Lord; profess Christ Jesus as Savior and King; are baptized into his death, burial, and resurrection; and celebrate that salvation around his table on his day.

“Not that we judge ourselves competent to effect such a thing; we utterly disclaim the thought. But we judge it our bounden duty to make the attempt, by using all due means in our power to promote it; and also, that we have sufficient reason to rest assured that our humble and well-meant endeavors, shall not be in vain in the Lord.”

Amen.

Allan

Intentionally One

September 30, 2009 / Allan / 8 Comments

The American Restoration Movement began 200 years ago with Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address, a call for unity and peace among all Christian denominations based on the pictures of God’s Church we see in the New Testament scriptures and on Christ’s prayer for unity on the night he was betrayed. The founding document of our particular stream of the faith declares that the Church is “essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” He called on all Christians everywhere to drop their denominational tags and creeds and party affiliations and come together as one body in our Lord Jesus. The plea was for disciples of Jesus to recognize that they are “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” Campbell exhorted all believers to speak only where the Bible speaks and to exercise grace and mercy where it didn’t.

Thousands and thousands of people gave their lives to Christ. And hundreds of churches dropped their denominational names and practices in order to embrace this call to Christian unity.

These are our roots. This is our foundation. It’s so simple. And powerful. This document spells out clearly the intentions of our founding fathers.

“…to manifest the realities of Christian unity in their tempers and conduct, to consider each other as the precious saints of God, to love each other as brethren, children of the same family and father, temples of the same spirit, members of the same body, subjects of the same grace, objects of the same divine love, bought with the same price, and joint heirs of the same inheritance. Whom God hath thus joined together no man should dare to put asunder.”

One hundred years ago, in Pittsburgh, over 25,000 members of the Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and Christian Churches came together at Forbes Field to celebrate a joint communion service in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Campbell’s Declaration and Address. This year, this Sunday October 4, bicentennial communion services are being held all over the world. Stone-Campbell Restoration churches are gathering together in Canada, Australia, China, Europe, and in dozens of places here in the United States to celebrate what Campbell called “that great ordinance of unity and love.”

The Great Communion D/FW is being held at the Compass Christian Church in Colleyville this Sunday afternoon. I have no idea how many people will be there. I don’t know if we’ll be sharing communion with a couple hundred brothers and sisters or a couple thousand. I don’t know. I don’t know how many people really know or care about our history and heritage in Churches of Christ and the strong ideals of unity and love that founded our faith movement. I’m not sure how many, if any, of us have ever read the Declaration and Address with its unyielding call to unity. I do know that this joint communion service Sunday at Compass will serve as a sort of family reunion. It’ll allow us to come together on the many, many things on which we agree, including the importance of a weekly communion celebrated on the day our Lord was raised from the dead. It helps us break down barriers and tear down walls. It allows us to live out, if even for a moment, the unity we preach and pray for. It provides a time for us to remember the great contribution of the ones who’ve gone before and to reflect on the call for Christian unity that birthed our movement. And it gives us another way to celebrate together our common salvation in our one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I hope to see you there.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Fellowship (Page 14 of 17)

Be Filled With The Spirit

A Holy People

Freedom or the Ghetto?

Attention All "Moderate" Churches

Bold Vision, Bold Men

Intentionally One

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