print page  |  close window

Overlooked Christianity

CHAPTER ONE

The year was 18 A.D.

The place was Nazareth.

Three young men in Nazareth all reached twenty-one years of age, and all decided what to do with their lives. Two of these men made a choice identical to the choice we evangelical Christians make. Their decision was wrong. So is ours. Perfectly acceptable decisions. Human decisions. Logical decisions. Christian decisions, you might say. But still wrong.

The third young man made a divine decision.

Their names were Mathias, Zephan and Jesus.

Mathias packed his belongings one morning and said good-bye to his friend Jesus, then struck out for Jerusalem, rented a room near the temple and began, at age twenty-one, to study to be a scribe. His training was virtually identical to the way you and I prepare to be ministers, but it was and is still man's way of doing things. God's way of raising up workers is not like this, His way may be lost to us, but it still remains God's way of doing things.

Go to Jerusalem, sit under teachers for nine years: Is this really a good idea? It's the way we do it, but it is wrong. This approach to training men kills the faith. We desperately need to stop this way of training men called of God. At least some of us must. It is not just the wrong way- it is also dangerous.

Some twelve years after Mathias left Nazareth and moved to Jerusalem, he helped to crucify Jesus Christ.

And Zephan? Zephan also packed his sack, bade his friend Jesus good-bye and he set out for Jerusalem for nine years of training to become a priest. This training was also wrong. Twelve years later he also helped to crucify Jesus.

These two men were trained in ways too similar to the way we train men today ... Bible schools and seminaries.

Even forgetting seminaries and Bible schools and the way those traditional institutions raise up workers, let's look at the most revolutionary things going on in today's Christianity, the way of the radical, creative, imaginative . . . house church movement.

Let's meet Matt and Pat, who are modem counterparts to Mathias and Zephan.

Matt is called of God. He has raised up a house church. Listen to him. Every other sentence he utters is peppered with phrases like "Know the Bible" and "Be careful, many false teachers are out there who don't believe the Bible is the Word of God," and "The Bible teaches about church discipline."

Sounds good! Here is a young man obedient to God's Word ... or at least let's hope that's what he is obeying. What of the people Matt ministers to in that living room? Matt gives his people all sorts of teachings. Picking a verse here and a verse there, he tells everyone what an apostle, an elder, and a deacon are, "as taught in the pure Word of God. " Matt will soon have elders and deacons in his home church-and they will come into being, based on "what the Bible teaches about these things."

Matt knows the Bible incredibly well, but there is a flaw. Matt knows what he has been taught. (He was never in a house church until he started this one- he started it on theory.) But there is an even greater flaw. Matt does not know Jesus Christ very well. He is also teaching facts ... information... and more information ... but he has little personal experience which is encounter.

Matt was trained well, by today's standard of how we do things, but Matt knows almost nothing of significant value about how to live the Christian life or how to experience Christ. Nor does he know much that is imbedded in reality which has to do with the life of the ecclesia. . first-century style. He also didn't become a worker by first-century means-not by God's way of doing things.

Jesus Christ has a way. A way to raise up workers. A way to learn to five the Christian life. A way to raise up the church And a way for there to be church life ... first-century style.

Matt is so committed to the Bible, or at least to the way he was taught to see the Bible, that he cannot really believe he is dysfunctional. For Matt, commitment to, teaching of, and knowledge of the New Testament take the place of knowing Christ experientially and knowing a living experience of Christ and of church life. Matt might get angry if you tell him this. Matt's reply will be to quote the Scripture in order to defend his methodology. (This is not God's way of doing things.)

Matt knows his Bible, twenty-first century style. But he just might, in circumstances similar to Matthias', crucify Jesus Christ.

Could this be true?

If he met Jesus, and Jesus was not approaching Scripture in the way Matt does, and if Jesus was a threat to the Bible (a la Matt's view), he just might not step in to prevent the crucifying. Matt would defend his position as being "in defense of the Word of God." There is a problem in doing things man's way: We really believe it is God's way.

Dear reader, there is an evangelical Christian mind-set. It is a mind-set which needs to be shattered. One aspect of that mind-set is the way of training Christian workers. It is not God's way. In addition, our n-find-set on the way churches are started and the way we "practice church" are not God's way either. Our way of showing God's people how to have a daily, living relationship to Christ is also the wrong way. Our "how to live the Christian life" is askew. Again, this evangelical mind-set needs to be broken.

This book is about finding again God's way of doing these very things.

Now let's move on to Pat. Pat is the counterpart of Zephan. He is totally clergy-centered.

Pat is also starting a house church. He sees himself as a radical. He will never admit it, but despite all he preaches and all his convictions, he will end up being pastor of the house church he started. How so?

Pat will always be the center-all will look to him. Pat has the answers, or at least that is the general impression of his people. Pat is a modem-day version of a priest. As with all priests, God's people (in this case, the ecclesia meeting in a home) will forever depend on Pat. Wrap it in any kind or shape of box, color it any color, use any vocabulary you wish, but it still comes out sacerdotalism.

Pat has been ministering for four years, after having been in a seminary for three years. None of the training nor the ministry looks much like Jesus' ten years of training that He received in a carpenter's shop or His four years of ministry. Pat's way of doing things doesn't look much like Paul's way of raising up churches or training workers either,

There are many things wrong about Pat's training and his ministry. One thing is this-Pat doesn't act like the rest of us, nor dress like us, nor talk like us. A rose by any other name is still a rose. A priest by any other name, even without the costume, is still a priest.

But there is something in Pat more insidious and subtle. Pat will never see the ecclesia ... that is, he cannot grasp the living entity of ecclesia (i.e., church life). He sees ministry first and foremost. He has a clergy reference, a ministry reference. The church, for Pat and all the sons of Pat, is but an instrument of ministry. God's people are naught but an instrument of ministry. The church of God is but a means to an end, for the minister.

You doubt?

Pat will never let go of ministry. He will minister to those house churches forever. They will listen. Forever, ministry. . . forever listening. . forever! More tragic still, the people listening will forever have a minister reference too. They will never even be able to conceptualize that a minister can depart the church and leave the church totally in the hands of laymen. Pat will never know what it means to be sent; the people of God who sit under him will never know what it means to be left. Neither Pat nor his people will ever see or experience church life; yet such experience is God's way.

This mind-set, this evangelical mind-set of the eternally talking tongue and the eternally listening ear must end. God's way of doing things? It is for you and for me as Christians to first experience church life. If you are a worker, you become a worker after being in ecclesia life.

Should you attempt to minister-having never known church life-then even if you talk about church life, you will never bring forth church life. Not in your own life, not in other lives.

Church life is not a thing. She is a living organism. You encounter her, you grow up in her.

Jesus Christ experienced church life first, then He ministered. So also with all the other Christian workers of the first century. This part is overlooked!

Conversion, Christ-centeredness, experience of church life, then (and only then) ministry. That's God's way of doing things. What we have seen in this chapter is that Pat was trained in a wrong way to be a Christian worker. Further, like Mathias, Matt and Pat know little about how to live the Christian life. This, too, is unbelievably overlooked. How to deeply know and experience Jesus Christ is not really engraved in Matt or Pat. Further, Pat has no long-term exposure to, nor experiential knowledge of, the ecclesia. Neither Matt nor Pat are properly trained, nor have they any idea of the way Jesus or Paul did things.

Pat is great at preaching, great at prophecy, and even greater at discerning the problems of Christendom. Such experience, training and giftedness ... though accepted as the norm . . . nonetheless are worthless in dealing with realms unseen.