One of my new year’s resolutions was to limit the amount of multi-tasking that I do and try to focus more on the task at hand. Akin to the “Long Slow Distance” training that has reshaped my body and my health the last two and half years, I am intentionally trying to go slower and longer at things, stay focused on doing less but doing it better and trusting that the process will lead to greater depth of soul and understanding. But, if I am losing too many readers along the way with my less frequent and longer postings (pretty unbloglike, I will admit) I hope that the posts, when they come, are worth the wait.
So, to the task at hand...
In response to George Barna’s book Revolution and his assertion that the local church is at best an “abiblical” option among many different forms of expressing one’s own personal commitment to Jesus Christ, I have been (slowly!) posting a list of the “marks of the church” in a kind of “ecclesiastical ABCs” That is, biblically speaking, what makes a church a “Church?”
Is it enough to simply “hang out” with some saints of my choosing or does Christianity require a kind of “gatheredness” or community life that is not left to our own devising? And Biblically-anchored qualities differentiate the church from every other “gathering” in the culture? Is there something different about the local church besides being the Kiwanis club with better music?
The whole list, of which I have thus far only offered longer comments on the first two marks is:
Apostolic Authority
Biblical (“Berean”) Faithfulness
Covenantal Relationships
Discipline
Elimination of Social Boundaries
And… (skipping to the letter “K” here…) Kingdom Witness
I was going to hold off responding to some of the comments until the end, but some of the good questions are certainly worthy of more consideration (and I don't want to seem as if I am ignoring the small cadre of folks who actually read this blog):
- Does “apostolic authority” necessarily imply “institutional” authority?
- Does being “biblical” mean that we only practice what the Bible commands or permits OR does being “biblical” mean that we only forbid what the Bible forbids or condemns?
Now I have answers to these questions, (and many others asked in the comments) but to give those answers would be beside my point. In fact, I am unintentionally leaving these things ambiguous because I believe that “true churches” can disagree on the particulars and at the same time be in fact true churches. Just because I am a pretty institutional, Presbyterian “Senior Pastor” of a large staff with a large budget, property, a pension and some pretty detailed agreements of doctrinal convictions and polity, doesn’t mean that I think that a small home church with none of the above (including paid clergy) are any less a church, but that what makes a church a church is a commitment to something more than a loose association of like-minded folks who for whatever time is convenient, in whatever way meets my particular needs spend time together. And that those commitments can be expressed in quite different ways.
But, and this is my point, for a church to be a church, there needs to be submission to something more than me and my needs, aspirations and convictions (even MY “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”—an “abiblical” concept if there ever was one!). And while I am not defining the particulars about the “marks” of a true church, I contend that part of the submission necessary is not just to “authority” and the “Bible” but to “one another” in a more formal and intentional way (see Ephesians 5:21-24 for biblical example of an "institution" that many have thought unneccessary and out of date).
Which leads to the next “letter” in our list (for, alas, next post!) Covenantal Relationships. (Tomorrow, I promise.)
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