What Do We Have Here?

INTRODUCTION

My wife is a big fan of those home remodeling shows. She particularly enjoys shows like Fixer Upper and Home Town. In both of these, a couple comes in with a heart to revitalize their city, so they take old, run down, beat up homes, strip them down, repair the foundational issues, and rebuild and renew. I’ve hardly seen any of these of course (just kidding; I’ve seen almost all of them). But the whole idea of these shows comes down to having a vision for what could be, what should be, in order to take spaces that have a history and a purpose and give them a new chapter for their legacy. For them, the rebuild is the way to restoration.

In January, I shared how I believe 2021 is our rebuilding year. Last year, during the pandemic, we were forced to change our rhythms and habits, our structures and our usual practices, and it caused us to face our weaknesses and our faults head on and to ask with all of the humility and honesty we could muster:

What does it mean to be the church?

What have we got wrong, or have overlooked?

What do we need to do to move forward?

And so, we chose to take 2020, not as a mulligan, or a lost year, but as an opportunity to truly evaluate our purpose and our being. And to make sure that are truly going about the building of God’s church the way he would want, we started from the ground up. Our foundation: the Apostle’s Creed; we want no cracks in our theology, no corners cut in what unifies and solidifies the church throughout the globe. And then we moved to our load bearing walls: The mission of God which Jesus calls for all followers to adopt as our own; everything that we are, and everything that we do, works to fulfill the purpose and aim of making disciples throughout the world by going, baptizing, and teaching, trusting in the authority of Jesus and mirroring his faithful presence with and for our neighbors. These are the who (Jesus) and the why (mission) that define our very being and reason for life. Today, we talk about the last step of building, the framing, the rooms, the furniture. This is the church, the how of our being; it is through the church that God is revealed to the world as it goes out on mission together.

We are launching a new series today called Great Grace: The Acts of the Apostles and the Family of God. This series is a journey through several passages in the book of Acts that describe the life and movement of the early church. As we go, we are seeking to understand how the church was formed and built, and how, as descendants of that first community of Jesus, we might follow in their footsteps.

I will admit here, that while I am looking forward to this series, and tracing through the book of Acts and watching the church and work—I think it’s going to be inspiring and challenging and refreshing to see—I’m also a bit nervous. Because lately, for different reasons, church has become sort of a bad word for both Christians and non-Christians. The thing is, the way to Jesus—to see Jesus and know Jesus and experience Jesus—is through the community of people known globally as the church. But when the church is not working in unity, or in love, or in generosity, or in humility, it colors the search for Jesus. People are either forced to somehow separate Jesus from the church, which is like removing Jesus’ head from him body (sorry kids), or they dismiss Jesus all together, because if his family is acting like this, and claiming Jesus as their leader, then they want no part in that kind of leader. Often, the conversation goes like this: I like Jesus, I’m good with who he is and what he stands for, and I’m ready to follow him; I just want no part of the church, the institution of it, the organization of it, the people I meet within it. I can’t tell you how many I have met just in the past year who have chosen to go it alone or have opted for the smaller intimate community, away from names and pastors and structures, for some version of the reason. And before I rush to the church’s defense, before I get all caught up in the argument, I have to ask the question, what if they are right? What if it’s not their hearts that need adjustment, but the church’s? What if the reason so many people have grown disillusioned with the church is because we got something terribly wrong, or because we’ve lost sight of what’s most important? So I’m inviting you on a journey with me to explore this together, and I have a challenge for you. Whatever we find out, whatever the church is truly meant to look like, let’s do everything possible to go after it. Are you with me?

PRAY

MAKING SPACE FOR GOD

The inspiration for the title of this series comes from Acts chapter 4, which we will spend some time on in a few weeks, but for now, I want to just explore one part of it.

Acts 4:32–33 CSB

Now the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common. With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them.

This is but one snapshot of the early church, but it is indicative of the whole. These people had unity (one heart and mind), humility and selflessness (no one claimed his possessions belonged to him), and love for others (they held everything in common). The witness of the leaders (the apostles) drove the church forward and empowered them to live. And great grace (megale charis) was on all of them. The church was marked by an overwhelming sense that who they were and what they were entirely because God himself was the center of everything.

We can talk through all kinds of nuts and bolts of how to be the church how to act like the church, and that’s great. I hope this is a chance for us to evaluate carefully why we do what we do, why we organize the church like we do, what it means to serve and to give and to assemble together, and what we really mean when we call this a family. I can’t wait to explore all of that in depth. But I tell you what, none of it matters if God is not central to everything we are and everything that we do. That’s something I discovered while reading through the story of Acts this week. So much of how the church formed and acted and taught and lived was reactionary. They didn’t hold church services because they were supposed to. They didn’t give because they were obligated. They didn’t serve people or preach the gospel or suffer persecution because those were the rules of Church. Everything the church did was in response to the movement of God. The Holy Spirit filled believers, and the believers proclaimed truth. God healed the sick and cast out demons and freed disciples from prison, and people believed. Jesus appeared before one of the great inflictors of Christian persecution and blinded him with his glory, saved him on the spot, and transformed him into the greatest missionary the church has ever known. Over and over and over again, the grace of God goes before people and through people and upon and among them, and the church is transformed and shaped by its response. When it comes right down to it, the story of Acts (and the story of the Bible) is how ordinary people were overwhelmed by an extraordinary God.

You will be hard pressed to find much instruction in the Bible on specifically how to do or run the church. There are no books of the Bible or first- century accounts that said, and then the church doth tried this new initiative, and lo, it was 35% more effective at reaching new believers! That doesn’t exist, because (a) it betrays the heart of what the church is, and (b) it assumes that the church is our feeble attempt to make God happy with our puny sacrifices and facetious burnt offerings. I’m not opposed to ministry initiatives or structures that might help or support the mission and vision of the church—I think about them all the time. But the failure is when I see the power or potential to multiply God’s church through initiatives and programs rather than the Spirit of God filling his people and working powerfully through them however he wants.

What if our first and most important job in the church was not, really, anything that we are doing right now, and it was just making space for God to work? What if the main thing that we did as a church was give God the opportunity to do what he wants with us, and we just responded with joy and love and unity because of the great grace that is on all of us? What would that take? What would we have to lose, and what could we hope to gain from it?

I realize that what I’m saying sounds a little risky. Actually, it sounds a lot risky. Movement almost always is. It requires a lot of trust, and a lot of letting go. It means holding on the things of heaven so tightly that you don’t have room in your arms for the things of earth. It means admitting faults, it means allowing that your vision for seeing the world probably needs adjustment, a new set of spiritual frames for seeing your neighbors, your possessions, your job, and every your Sunday mornings through God’s eyes.

This risk and the fear that often goes along with it is often the reason why what we say we believe is often a bit different from what we actually do. Tim Chester and Steve Timmis actually have a name for this: heretical structures. Heretical structures are when we take a biblical belief and then frame it in a way that goes against that, for whatever reason. Francis Chan gives a good example of this. He notes that most churches have a biblical statement that every believer has received a gift from the Spirit that empowers him or her to serve and encourage the church, and that every believer is encouraged to exercise that gift among the members of the church. We have something to that effect in our own doctrinal statement. And yet, who actually gets to exercise those gifts? Maybe two or three people on a Sunday morning? It’s a structural heresy, brought on because if we were actually to let the Spirit operate these gifts through the people of God, how we were to work might be wildly unpredictable and out of our control, and the bigger a church gets, the more order and organizing is needed to keep everything running smoothly and stably and predictably. So we limit who gets to use their gifts, and we limit the kind of gifts that get to be used. We don’t say we believe that, but our actions speak otherwise. Chester and Timmis explain this reality well:

The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice.

With this in mind, here’s what I propose. I propose that we spend the next several weeks looking at our church, the church, God’s church, through fresh eyes. I propose that we lay all of our expectations about church, all of our presuppositions about leaders and ministry and tithing and buildings and bylaws and names and policies, all of it, in a big pile on the floor, that we are honest with what we think and what we have observed and experienced. And then we let God take hold of all of it, and graciously show us the way, even as we may have to rip up our own dreams and ideals for the Christian community. And in the end, I propose that we make every effort to give God the space he needs to create in us a family unlike anything the world has ever known, that he would make us the church we were always meant to be.

COMMUNION PASSAGE

1 Corinthians 1:4–9 CSB

I always thank my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in him in every way, in all speech and all knowledge. In this way, the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; you were called by him into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.