Thursday, February 05, 2009

Christianity, Two Realities

Well, it's been a while. I been getting the urge to journal a little outloud so here I am. Within my church family, we have been discussing church structure and how that affects a local body in relating to one another and the world. We have been in home churches now for over two years. It has been a refreshing journey from the church building to homes. Structure is a tenuous thing, not enough of it will cause confusion, too much of it will strangle the life out of just about everything. This move to house churches is born out of a couple of things; obedience to God and the fact that the early church operated within this type of structure. Obviously, this is a topic of debate and well we can certainly do this, but let me elaborate on a couple of thoughts that I have.
I ran across a passage of text from the late Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), a 20th century theologian and Christian apologist. He submitted a position paper to the participants of the 1974 Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland entitled, "Two Contents, Two Realities." This passage was in the conclusion of the paper and read like this,

"We need two orthodoxies: first, an orthodoxy of doctrine and, second, an orthodoxy of community. Why was the early church able, within one century, to spread from the Indus River to Spain? Think of that: one century, India to Spain. When we read in Acts and in the epistles, we find a church that has and practiced both orthodoxies (doctrine and community), and this could be observed by the world. Thus, they commended the gospel to the world of that day and the Holy Spirit was not grieved.

There is a tradition (it is not in the Bible) that the world said about the Christians in the early church, "Behold, how they love each other." As we read Acts and the epistles, we realize that these early Christians were really struggling for practicing community, a community that reached down all the way to their care for each other in their material needs.

Have we exhibited this community in our evangelical churches? I have to say no-- by and large, no. Our churches have often been two things-- preaching points and activity generators. When a person really has desperate needs in the area of race, or economic matters, or psychological matters, does he naturally expect to find a supporting community in our evangelical churches? We must say with tears, many times no!"

It is my belief in this day and age within the American fabric of life anyway, that the church must practice this orthodoxy of community in full view of the world to have any chance of winning it. Let's face it. The American church is losing over a million folks a year. They are walking out of the building. If Christians are walking out of the building, do we really believe that the world will walk in the building? Not happening. So what must happen is that the believers must practice community outside of the building in full view of the world. And the world must say as it said in the early church era, "Behold, how they love each other." This will not happen in a planned outreach. It must be just as natural in the normal course of life as breathing. How then can this happen?

First, there must be real community among the local body. Not something fake or with a facade. Real love in real relationships. How can this happen? It takes long-term relationships that have gone through the fire of trials. Then, you will see the love among the brethren that is truly amazing and attractive. Let's continue this thought the next time that I sit down at the keyboard. In the meantime, think about this.

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