1002--church, as a one-minute commentary

            I recently found that I never posted a number of transcripts of one-minute Simple Church Minute commentaries.  This is another of those.

1002—church

            This is Simple Church Minute.  To the believers in the days of the New Testament, what did the word translated in English as “church” mean?  In Acts 19, when the guys who made statues for the sex cult started a riot against Paul because people coming to follow Jesus was putting a dent in their sales, the word Luke used to describe the mob was the same one used other places for church.  The word was ekklesia; it meant gathering, assembly, group; it did not have any religious connotation.  As the church was illegal, the group of believers who met together to worship Jesus and build up each other was small enough to meet in a home and for each person to know each other and care about each other.  It was basically devoid of ritual, unlike any belief the world had seen. Oftentimes, possibly in some areas even daily, they ate simple meals together informally. Assuredly, they talked and got to know each other.  Today, in our churches we call this fellowship, which is a synonym with the word communion, which is how they would have understood what, over the centuries, has been made a ritual.  The early believers held to what their society would have seen as a quite irreligious religion.  You can find out more about simple church at www.hrscn.org.

2054--communion

This is another five minute (speaking time) expansion of the two minute commentary I posted in December, 2010, which was #54 on communion.

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2054—communion

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Almost all of us are familiar with the fact that the word communion has two very different meanings.  One is a title for a ceremony within Christian churches, others of which call the ceremony the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist.  The other, more secular meaning, is a synonym for fellowship. One interesting comparison of these two definitions is that the ritualistic ceremony usually is done with everyone standing quietly while one person stands in front of everyone and officiates, usually reading from First Corinthians chapter 11.  I suppose one could argue that one is in some spiritual way communing or fellowshipping with God, but, can we get that from what the Bible and what we know of the culture it reports about?

            When Jesus introduced what we call communion, He and the disciples were celebrating Passover. Passover was a meal that featured roast lamb, bitter herbs, apples, nuts, cinnamon, roasted egg, parsley or celery with salt water, 3 unleavened breads and 4 cups of wine. Each of these foods were symbolic of the experience of the Old Covenant chosen people, whose physical experiences were, in turn, symbolic of the new, better, covenant that Jesus was about to establish with His fulfilling of the first one in the next few days to follow.  What Jesus said coordinated with the part of the Passover where one ate the matzoh and drank the third cup of wine.  This was a real meal, and what Jesus said tied the food and fellowship with His imminent death.  The early church recognized it as such.  We need to remember that First Corinthians 11 would not be written for decades, and that book’s writer, Paul, was still a period of time away from becoming a believer.  The communion or fellowship is not just with commemorating what Jesus did for us, but the believers in the early church experienced fellowship with other believers in the course of sharing a simple meal.  It was in a home.  It wasn’t officiated by some religious professionals, because there were no religious professionals.  Most of the early believers were poor, and gave of each other to each other, as they realized that God had brought them, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, into a new creation.  They were the temple of the Holy Spirit, and as much as they ate physical food, the communion or fellowship of the Holy Spirit guiding each other to build up each other was spiritual food.  The idea that the braking of bread in Acts chapter 2 verse 42, the Love Feast spoken of in Jude 1 verse 12, and communion were separate things developed far later in history, not by the early believers.

            Paul’s directions in First Corinthians chapter 11 verse 27 may have had to do with normal spiritual immaturity, some eating too much before poorer believers got off work to join the others, maybe some were drinking too much, and maybe some unbelievers were party crashing for free food—it is impossible to tell by now.  One thing for sure is that it wasn’t what it became after the Roman Empire legalized Christianity, took the meetings of believers out of homes and formalized them in temples, appointed a caste of religious professionals, who then decreed that they had to oversee a ritual, and later had it made illegal to celebrate the ritual without their oversight, with mystical explanations attached to it all.  Communion came not to be a meal, then later an offering, and then later still a symbolic sacrifice, the opposite of Jesus being the final sacrifice for sin.  The Reformation rejected the mysticism, but the “meal” became a small piece of bread and a thimbleful of juice, to be taken with a serious attitude after examining oneself for sin, with nothing that looks like fellowship or friendship taking place.  In traditional churches today in our culture, the church picnic comes closer to the original application of Jesus’ words as practiced by the early church.

  You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-735-xxxx.  If you would wish to go over what I just said at your own pace, I have posted a transcript of this, with footnotes, on my blog, tevyebird (spelled t e v y e b i r d).blogspot.com, at the entry date of October 7, 2011. For more information about simple church worldwide, visit www.simplechurch.com.   For more information on organic church, visit www.hrscn.org.

            What I have written is based on chapter nine of George Barna and Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, which, in turn, has copious footnotes on the history of the evolution of this practice.  The background of Passover I harvested from a variety of sources, with apologies to anyone who feels I overgeneralized my description of the foods, as that was a peripheral point within this commentary.

2010--comparing apples to apples

            This is another five minute commentary for radio, as are most of my posts.  This one, at this time, I feel is kind of special.  I feel that I need an introduction commentary, as is #28 in the two minute commentaries I posted in December, 2010.  With this one, I began by thinking that, as I have examined the critique the ideas behind organic church, that most come down to the misunderstanding rampant in the western world as to what the words “church, pastor, preach, tithe, and communion” mean.  Below, I tie this to an experience I had as a teen, which years later, I realized spoke to a general principle going on in institutional churches today.

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2010—comparing apples to apples

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  When we make a choice in the world, a reasonable person would like to make an apples to apples comparison.  When we go to a grocery store, there are a number of dish detergents on the shelf.  We might choose one by price, or color, or fragrance, or how the package looks on your shelf, or how it affects one’s hands or if they give a nickel to a favored charity, or you could have ordered some via Amway a couple of weeks ago, or bought a book on chemistry and made it yourself.  All these choices have pluses and minuses.  In making comparisons in the real world, as opposed to, say, politics, one needs to compare apples to apples.  Some of those companies wish to make the comparison as easy as possible, particularly with the strategy of offering the lowest price.  The company offering the product at the highest price is attempting to do something to differentiate themselves such that whatever that unique thing is will make you ignore the high price.  In autos, for instance, the companies wish to put so many optional features on a car that you can’t find two identical cars to compare to.

            The reason I bring this up is to present the following question.  Think of the following words:  church, pastor, preach, tithe, communion.  When you hear that word, or read that word or read about that concept in the Bible, are you thinking of the same thing that the writer of scripture was talking about when he was writing it?  Now some might say that that is an unfair question, in that we know that to some minor degree, according to our experiences, we all see the words we use everyday in a very slightly different nuance.  I’m not talking about that.  I’m asking, do we understand these words apples to apples similar or apples to pineapples different?  When Paul wrote the Koine Greek word ekklesia, how similar is that word in how the original receivers of his letters understand it in comparison to our modern English word church, which also includes aspects you have picked up from your experience that you’ve never heard said.

            Let me give you an example from my life.  My parents were honest, moral people, if you asked them, they would have said they believed in God, but I doubt ever really thought through what that meant.  When I was 8, they started having me go to Sunday School at a church a couple of miles away (I lived in a rural area).  When I was 15, I came to faith in Jesus, just a few weeks after the elderly pastor of that church passed away.  About a year later, the new pastor also came to teach the high school class I was in, and asked how many people believed doctrine X, which that church held one view of, and most churches held an opposite view of.  I’d never considered the idea one way or another, and wasn’t sure, although I knew the church’s stand, so, in a show of hands, I stuck my hand out sideways and waved by wrist to indicate that I wasn’t sure.  I was sitting in a front row, and later learned that no one else raised their hand, where raising their hand indicated agreement with the official position.  Given that, the pastor taught about this doctrine for four weeks, and then asked that question again.  This time, no one, including myself, raised their hand.  What was the pastor to do—now no one agrees with that denomination’s position?  You can’t toss everyone out—you need a salary.  The answer is:  don’t talk about it one way or another.

            The thing I am getting at is that what Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, and the apostles taught during the days of the early church, when faith in Jesus spread like wildfire, and also what we have seen in parts of the world where the government or a social group is overtly attempting to persecute faith in Jesus, but faith has been spreading like wildfire, was connected to what Jesus taught the disciples, who in turn taught the early church.  We, here in the West, with all of our money and marketing ideas and media teaching are not seeing people come to faith in Jesus in an exceptional way, and may even be seeing a harvest of criticism and mockery from unbelievers that aren’t always undeserved.  I am suggesting that some of these key words in the Bible have, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally by both well meaning persons and those who were not, have morphed in meaning so significantly that we are not reading our Bibles correctly, that is, we are reading the correct word, insofar as translating the word from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic to English, but we are connecting an incorrect definition to it, as various people in history have leaned on society in ways that have changed how we understand a word, and we’ve added and deleted to the word by what we’ve seen but no one has ever overtly explained.  My time today is done, but this series is looking at a variety of specific instances.

          You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com  or 757-735-xxxx.  Hearing a talk goes really quickly; if you would like to see a transcript of what I just said, I have it posted on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, dated September 1, 2011.  For more information about organic worship in this area, visit www.hrscn.org.

            Almost nothing that I say in these commentaries are my original ideas, but I am putting out in the public because these are ideas spoken of in some evangelical seminaries, and among certain groups of believers in Jesus, but are quite invisible to many believers who are sincerely desiring to follow Jesus, and who are plugged into what is being said and sung in Christian pop culture.  Two books which are an excellent introduction to what will be said in these commentaries are:

George Barna & Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity.

Wolfgang Simson, Houses that Change the World

Many Christian bookstores will not have these in stock.  Many authors sell their works on their websites, and I have not had any problem finding anything I have been looking for on amazon.com.

Come and Go With Me to That Land

            For whatever reason, a song I learned when I was involved with a college group of believers crossed my mind, called, “Come and Go With Me to That Land.”  It seemed as if it had an interminable number of verses, which I felt that I couldn’t remember, so I tried looking it up on other places on the net.  That told me that it was an old Southern spiritual, of which versions were used by Peter, Paul, and Mary and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds.  Those versions were similar, but didn’t have the distinctly Christian meaning of the verses that I was thinking of.  Therefore, before continuing, I’ll write out how I learned it, to the degree that I can remember it.

(Chorus)

Come and go with me to that land,

Come and go with me to that land,

Come and go with me to that land where I’m bou-ou-ound,

Come and go with me to that land,

Come and go with me to that land,

To that land, to that land, where I’m bound.

Gonna be lovin’ in that land,

Gonna be lovin’ in that land,

Gonna be lovin’ in that land where I’m bou-ou-ound,

Gonna be lovin’ in that land,

Gonna be lovin’ in that land,

In that land, in that land where I’m bound.

Milk and honey in that land,

Milk and honey in that land,

Milk and honey in that land where I’m bou-ou-ound,

Milk and honey in that land,

Milk and honey in that land,

In that land, in that land where I’m bound.

Gonna see Jesus in that land,

Gonna see Jesus in that land,

Gonna see Jesus in that land where I’m bou-ou-ound,

Gonna see Jesus in that land,

Gonna see Jesus in that land,

In that land, in that land where I’m bound.

Coke and pizza in that land,

Coke and pizza in that land,

Coke and pizza in that land where I’m bou-ou-ound,

Coke and pizza in that land,

Coke and pizza in that land,

In that land, in that land, where I’m bound.

            I’m see from the net that the artists above didn’t use the verses with overt meaning for believers in Jesus (which, of course, may or may not be correct), and I’m also certain that the last verse didn’t come from the old Southern (don’t we love political correctness!) spiritual.  I am also certain that it came to my mind due to yesterday at church, after our worship, we had pizza and, although there were many choices, I, for one, had Coke.  Part of the reason was that one person there had a birthday, and enjoys pizza (as most of us), so that was featured in the meal.  In other places, I and many others I either have or will link to have pointed out that communion is a synonym for fellowship, and enjoying a meal together is an act that accommodates fellowship, via which the Holy Spirit works, in my experience, far more regularly than any ritual, including theological teaching.  Also, I look back to when I was in college, and one of the campus ministers (as they were called) shelled out to take everyone in the group I was part of over to a local pizza place once a year.  I can now look back and see that, in my spirit and those of my brothers and sisters in Jesus on that campus, that simple act was teaching us something more strongly than if the campus minister tried standing up and saying the point in words (although he would not have described the fellowship as I just did).

As much as that last verse looks at first glance as a throw-in of a creative youth worker, I feel it to be a significant statement about true fellowship, at least in this subculture at this point in history, at least to the point that it was worth a blog post.

Simple Church Minute 86--Simson's Thesis #12

86—WS #12

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            We have been examining Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Thesis #12 is “Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper as a real supper with real food.”  About this, Simson has written, “Church tradition has managed to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face.  However, the Lord’s Supper was actually more of a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning.  God is restoring eating back into our meeting.”  Unquote.

            Another word some flavors of church use for the Lord’s Supper is communion, which is a synonym for fellowship.  Communion as it is done in every institutional church I am aware of is done, as was said above, with tiny amounts of food, everyone being somber.  The Calvinist tradition, for instance, immediately proceeds this by asking everyone to examine oneself for sin.  It was a somber thing.  Conversely, I think back to when I was in college and a group of us from a Christian group went down the street and had soda and pizza.  I can look back and say that doing that together better represented what fellowship is and what true communion should be.  It wasn’t just food, the conversation brought us together as people who were catching what caring for each other is all about.  The Christian life is first about enjoying true fellowship with our fellow believers, the joy of which radiates to the world around us, as opposed to ritual, being somber, and parsing the fine points of theology.  The older I get, the more I see true church in a dorm room, parking lot or tenement versus an expensive building devoted to only the rituals and well meaning man made traditions.

            You can read back and ahead about Mr. Simson’s work at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info about simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 54--communion

54—communion

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Whether one calls in the Lord’s Supper, Communion, or Eucharist—why is there virtually no food?  The words used before this function in almost all traditional churches come from First Corinthians chapter 11.  We have been told that this was the institution of the ceremony, but how similar is it?  Jesus and the disciples were celebrating Passover.  Although it was an Old Covenant ceremony, it was also a real meal.  For the early church, it was celebrated as a festive occasion for a believing community that could potentially be, and in many places was, both Jews and non-Jews, rich and poor, slave and free, men and women.  Jesus’ resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit to indwell them, that they could each be the temple of the Holy Spirit was a joyous thing.  Chapter 11 verse 27 may have had to do with some eating too much before poorer believers got off work to join the others, maybe some were drinking too much, and maybe some unbelievers were party crashing for free food—its impossible to know by now.  It wasn’t just a holy snack.

            Over time, pagan influences took the church out of homes of believers, set up buildings, ceremonies, and set up a caste of religious professionals.  It came to be not a meal, but first an offering, and later a sacrifice, which implies Jesus being a victim over and over again, instead of the final sacrifice for sin.  It went from being the Love Feast to being Eucharist.  Mystical explanations were attached to it.  The Reformation rejected the mysticism, but became a small piece of bread and a thimbleful of juice, to be taken with a serious attitude after examining oneself for sin.  In traditional churches, the church picnic comes closer to the original application of this directive as practiced in the early church.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on organic

 Church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

Simple Church Minute 41--candles, table, incense, quarterly communion

41—candles, table, incense, quarterly communion

NOTE:  I originally wrote a segment for each of the 61 points Frank Viola and George Barna make in their book, Pagan Christianity, about traditions in the institutional church not based on scripture.  After writing it, I chose to not include this segment merely as I felt that in wouldn’t be an interesting radio commentary.

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            In the early church, communion was a joyous, simple meal.  Jesus introduced it at a Passover feast.  Over time, from the early church, this simple mean between believers changed to a ritual, in a church building, presided over by a member of a clergy class, the leadership of which was enforced by secular law, and the meal became smaller than an hor’dourve.

            During that time, it was renamed Eucharist, considered to be a symbolic reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion, with a table called an altar, the ceremony called a sacrifice, and a mystical explanation of the bread and wine becoming Jesus’ flesh and blood upon the ceremony’s leader praying the ceremonial words.

            The Reformation happened—Zwingli promoted the idea, resisted by some Reformers, of having communion four times a year, instead of every service, on the idea that it would be more meaningful if done less frequently.  The altar was renamed the communion table, and was no longer the central feature of the church and service, replaced by the pastor and the sermon.  Many groups eliminated using incense as part of the service. Some eliminated candles sitting on the end of the communion table, a tradition that dated back to the courts of Rome.  Communion was taught to be a memorial.  All these changes were accepted by mainline protestant churches.  The ceremony was done in a solemn manner, and still quite unlike how it started, as a simple meal between believers rejoicing in the joy of salvation and a common purpose in life based on what Jesus did for mankind.

            You…