Simple Church Minute #5--baptism (revised)

This is another update of the transcript of one of the two-minute versions of Simple Church Minute.  In this case, the only correction is the addition of a footnote at the bottom, and that it has a unique posting date.  When I originally posted these, I posted a number of them on the same date, which isn't a good thing when referencing these.
5—baptism

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

In the early church, baptism was a sign of initial confession of faith in Jesus. One can find in the New Testament that baptism and faith are used like synonyms. Somewhere in the 2^nd century, the two started getting divided, with most baptisms taking place on Easter. By the 4^th century, official church leadership had taken over instruction and direction of new believers to the degree that a person had to wait 3 years to be baptized. The baptism ceremony became a rigid ritual that borrowed from Jewish and Greek culture. Somewhere along this path, a teaching got started that only baptism forgave sins, and if one committed a sin after baptism, it was unforgivable. Some, like Emperor Constantine, waited until just before dying to be baptized. With such a weakened physical state among those wishing to be baptized, the idea came about that, since baptism was a sign of belief, as opposed to actually washing something away, if a person was so ill that they would not be able to withstand immersion, a sample amount of water—sprinkling on the forehead—was a sufficient sign.

With the disconnection between faith and baptism, infant baptism came along, being taught as the New Covenant equivalent to Old Covenant circumcision, with reference to a case in the New Testament where someone was baptized (quote) and their entire household. (unquote)

Another interesting connected ritual that has come along this past century has been the insistence of those in some flavors of the church that hold to the literal adult believer’s baptism to call it “water baptism,” as if those who do not follow that direction are somehow not using water. In biblical days, the Greek word “baptidzo” was also used for the process of pickling pickles and dying cloth, but there isn’t any confusion about that anymore—at least, I don’t think so.

You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on organic simple church*, go to http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally, (local website). A transcript of what I have just said is on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, posted May 11, 2012.

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.
Information used in this commentary comes from George Barna and Frank Viola's book, Pagan Christianity, (Tyndale/Barna)  in Chapter 9.  There one can find copious footnotes to back up these statements.

Simple Church Minute 3--origin of the sermon (revised)

Today is a revision (mainly adding footnotes) of one of the two minute commentaries (when read aloud) that I originally posted in December, 2010.

3—origin of the sermon

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            On another day, I mentioned that sermons, as we now know them in traditional churches, did not happen either among the Jewish people in the Old Covenant, or in the early church.  There is indication that if someone like Paul or Apollos visited a church, the visitor might speak, as Acts chapter 20 verse 7 shows Paul in Troas spoke a long time.  Still, the Bible calls in speaking, not preaching.  There is no indication that Paul’s speaking had the fine touches that a modern sermon, or even the rhetoric of his day, had.

            Where did the sermon come from?  Roman/Greek culture.  In about the fifth century b.c., history credits a group of teachers called sophists for inventing rhetoric—the art of persuasive speaking.  They taught others this skill, and delivered speeches for money.  They made a good living, as it became an entertainment form.  They were experts at debate, at using emotional appeals, and added to it by physical appearance—they came to wear special clothes to indicate their position—and by the use of cleaver language.  Over time, style, form, and skill were prized over factual accuracy.  They did not necessarily live by the ideas they spoke of.  In these ways, this sounds like some of today’s entertainers, minus music or cameras.  Some traveled and appeared from place to place, others appeared same time, same place.  Some would walk in wearing a robe called a pulpit-gown.  Some would quote the writings of Homer, and knew passages by heart.  Some would encourage the audience to clap.  Some lived at public expense, were celebrities, the stars of their day.  There were Greeks and Romans who were addicted to this type of entertainment.  After the legalization of Christianity, many orators “converted” and got a regular speaking engagement.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com or phone me at 757-735-3639. For a transcript of what I just said, I have it on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com , posted on March 16, 2012.  For more info on organic church*, see http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at www.hrscn.org .

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.
Footnotes:  Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity, Present Testimony Ministry, and later, Barna/Tyndale, chapters 4 and 6.  There are further and many further footnotes there.

Simple Church Minute 91--Servant leadership

91—Servant Leadership

THIS IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Jesus said, “Whoever would be great in God’s kingdom must be the servant of all.”  The concept of true servant leadership is something that is unique to the church.  Yes, our government workers and politicians are called public servants, but often act like they don’t take that seriously.  From Catholicism, we know “pope” originally meant servant.  It is easy to intellectually understand the concept, harder to actually make it function, especially if one is in a leadership position.

            If I have a business, I can hire employees, and they will follow my direction, without regard to my leadership ability, to collect a paycheck.  Conversely, even among us believers, no one can pay you enough to go to a country which has a law to kill you on sight until the Holy Spirit refuses to give you peace until you go.  Somewhere in the middle are many believers to desire to serve God, and are paid to do so, and ultimately find their service to Jesus compromised by the battle between social expectations, the need for a paycheck, and a lack of any other skill needed by the society around them. 

            The Bible teaches that apostles, believers gifted in establishing new churches, are worthy of being paid, as they must go from place to place.  God gave as the main example of this type of ministry Paul, who had a transportable skill such that he didn’t have to depend on others for his livelihood.  What God did through his obedience is more remarkable when we realize he was working part-time.  Many modern ministries have little fruit with highly intellectually trained leaders, tax-favored status, significant budgets, and marketing plans adapted to target a certain population’s demographics.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can find out more about organic church at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 100--worship

100—worship

THIS IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Today, we look at the word “worship.”  To the early church, worship was how one lived one’s life moment by moment.  First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 17 directs us to “pray without ceasing”.  This indicates that worship and prayer were more a continuous attitude than something that only happened at a special time.  Part of the way the believers stood out from society was that faith in Jesus was a quite irreligious religion.  They had no temple, holy men, ritual, no special times, they weren’t just Jews anymore. They were not united in occupation, in an era of occupational cults.  The church met together informally and regularly.  They gathered to praise God, spoke to each other what the Holy Spirit put upon their spirits, they prayed, encouraged each other.  Fellowship was worship, but all of this was no more so than any other time lived to honor Jesus.

            After the legalization of Christianity, formality and, ultimately, ritualized meetings became known as worship.  Over time, various styles of music have been associated with worship.  So, too, did ethnicity, association to political leaders. Worship became associated, sometimes by force of secular law, with direction by specially accredited individuals, chosen for training in ritual or intellect or music, at various times and places.

            The direction of the Holy Spirit throughout history has not been subject to human dictates and formalities.   The Spirit blows where he wills.  I believe this is why he oftentimes moves powerfully specifically when the situation is worship that is informal or is in a manner than is contrary to whatever human rules are in vogue at a time, and believers allow the direction of worship to move outside human control.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can find out more about organic church at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 99--Karl Marx

99-Karl Marx

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            History tells us that the parents of Karl Marx were Jewish and converted to Christianity at a time when many German Jews did the same.  Whether it was real or something merely socio-political is God’s business.  Be that as it may, Karl himself rejected faith in Jesus, but was still highly influenced by it, as his utopian ideal society was built on the Christian idea of heaven, with the difference being that he was imagining a way of creating such a society as heaven will be on earth.  Incorrectly, he didn’t have a grasp of the reality of sin, much less how imbedded that aspect of the fall of man is in our souls.  Therefore, he came up with the idea that, when his principles were installed in a society, that government would fade away.

            We, having 20/20 hindsight, can see that the opposite of his dream occurred.  His social idea was not attractive to union workers, but instead took hold where backward nations with weak rulers could be overthrown, and the dictatorship that followed grew in power over time, and instead of all people having equality, there was a small leadership class and a large amount of people who had no hope of getting ahead, removing incentive to doing better for themselves.

            Albeit accidentally, Marx got one aspect of Christian life correct that much of the true church is missing.  The head of the church is Jesus, the Holy Spirit speaks into each believer who desires to serve Jesus.  God is a sufficient leader of his people, that, within the church, when properly operating, the idea of the human leader could naturally fade away, in favor of what would appear to a sociologist to be a headless community.  This is an ideal that takes an exceptional amount of commitment from those with gifting for leadership.  Personally, I haven’t seen it, but, then, I live in a land of freedom, for now.

            If you have a comment, and I know this blip should stir up some brothers and sisters, you can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally, (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 98--true and false faith

98—true and false faith

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Recently I was watching some programs on military history of the Middle Ages in Europe.  During that period of time, numerous times one warlord defeated another and forced the people to quote unquote convert from paganism to Christianity, or even Islam, back and forth.  Many of these warlords were looking for a miracle, and considered victory a sufficient miracle.  Many had heard a communication of Christianity which emphasized spirituality in warlike terms, coordinated with alliances between the Roman Empire and its official organizational church.  I can’t read the Holy Spirit’s mind, but will assume minimal true faith was going on there.  Outside the castles, there had been persons who understood faith correctly, and generations forwardly would have persons who would come to true faith.  One cannot totally say one way or another that Martin Luther’s work would have been anything, except for just the right time and place with regard to the politics swirling around him.   The miraculous can be just that; while it isn’t in the words of scripture, Nehemiah chapter 1 happened just at a time when Darius, king of Persia saw a personal political need for rebuilding Jerusalem, which led to his granting Nehemiah’s request. 

            If I mention the phrase, “Remember the Maine” most will recognize the phrase as being part of American history.  I had to look up that it only goes back to 1898, and its aftermath was the Spanish-American War, a battle Spain didn’t want and the U.S. was totally unprepared for, a consequence of outrageous stories in New York newspapers for the purpose of boosting sales. 

             The greater the degree of isolation between ourselves and our leaders, the less we can know whether they are telling us the truth or just being tempted to say something for their benefit, maybe even subconsciously.  In the political realm, that cannot be helped; within the church, it is helped by each of us knowing personally our leaders and their heart, and that can only be done within a small amount of people.  As I’ve said before, Jesus chose to train only twelve.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can find out more about simple forms of worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 97--God's Eternal Purpose

97--God’s Eternal Purpose

THIS BLIP IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            What is God’s eternal purpose?  It isn’t the Great Commission. It didn’t exist before history, in the Old Covenant, and Jesus didn’t deliver it to us until just before he went back to heaven.  At his return and the final judgment, it will again cease to be relevant.  It isn’t doing good, although, again, we should.  That doesn’t make sense as a purpose before creation, and we cannot grasp what that is after God defeats sin finally at the end.  So what is God’s eternal purpose?

            Four things, in no particular order.  Ephesians 2 verse 13 tells us Jesus made peace and broke down the division between Jew and Gentile  so both can be one humanity, one body—the Body of Christ, the church.

            Ephesians chapter 5 verses 25 to 31 tell us that, as a man is joined to a woman in marriage, so Jesus is to be joined to his Bride, the church.

            First Corintians 6 verse 19 tells us God wanted a place to dwell that was greater, more extreme than the Old Covenant tabernacle and temple. We, the Body and Bride of Christ, are that temple of the Holy Spirit.  We believers, as a group, are the dwelling place of God.

Ephesians 3 verse 15 and First Peter 4 verse 17 tell us God wanted a family.  Once again, that is those adopted by faith into the New Covenant family of God, the church.

            In the Old Testament, God directed the building of the tabernacle and the temple. When Israel was in exile, they made the synagogue, but God did not direct its building.  In the Gospels, we find that Jesus taught the disciples, who, after Jesus left and sent the Holy Spirit, taught the New Covenant believers to be the church, the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the family of God.  Church buildings and not for profit corporations, like the Old Covenant synagogue, are well meaning but once again man-made.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on simple forms of worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 96--When is a group a church?

96—When is a group a church?

THIS IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            On these blips, I have discussed a number of practices in which the ways of the early church in the Bible differ from the ways of our traditional churches that are not a function of living in different times and cultures.  This brings up a question:  What about meetings of groups that do not consider themselves to be a church, but function more closely to the ways of the early church than traditional churches themselves.  This includes the pattern of producing, both persons coming to initial faith in Jesus, and believers growing in faith.  Are such groups actually churches?

            In one sense, this is a difficult question.  Can a chapter of a school parachurch organization that overtly states that they are not a church, actually be a church?  Can a small group/cell group/care group that is affiliated with a traditional church actually be a church, and the traditional church not?  Can such a group, if the believers in the group meet to worship Jesus, live their lives as worship, and meet to build up each other in faith, be the church even if they have been told by someone, and they being respectful to their leaders agree, that they are not?  Conversely, can a traditional, institutional church which claims to be the church, even if they have believers as leaders, and even if believers meet to worship Jesus, BUT do not allow any significant amount of the believers building up each other due to their having more persons than can truly know each other, or having substituted one or a few persons attempting to build up everyone for every member ministry—is that actually a church? 

            Many traditional churches have rules on how much academic training one must have to be a church leader.  A little notation is that many of these institutions have a lower standard for groups they support that are either outside of North America, or in the North America inner cities.  Gee, I believe God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and cares for all people the same, without regard to geographic location or economic status.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can learn more about organic worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 93--requirements for leadership

93—Requirements for leadership

THIS BLIP IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            I have mentioned in other blips that for a pastor/shepherd/teacher or any other ministry truly appointed by God, as opposed to any man or organization, that it is a function of gifting—both spiritual and natural, experience, maturity, faithfulness and obedience to the Holy Spirit, according to scripture.  Scripture says nothing about academic achievement or accreditation by any man or human organization.

            Natural gifting is our natural abilities—we believers have no more or less ability to use these as the unbeliever, with the note that occasionally the Holy Spirit will guide a person to specifically not use a natural gift for a reason.  Spiritual gifts are listed in Romans, Ephesians, and First Corinthians without a comment of whether this is a total list, and with the case of a number of gifts, little or no explanation of exactly what it is.  There is no explanation on any of the gifts as to why, other than no one has all of them.  One person I’ve heard has suggested that one of these gifts that seems worthless to the human mind is useful for exactly that reason—if the Creator of the universe wishes to give you something that you don’t see a use for, who are you or I to question his choice to give such a thing to you.  Experience and maturity makes all God’s gifts more powerful, as those are two aspects of wisdom.  Faithfulness is a quality that results in one receiving greater amounts of experience based on doing the right thing.  While God can use even our rebellious acts to His glory, it is a thing far better to be minimized.  Obedience to the Holy Spirit is putting that faithfulness into action.  Given the things we have seen of gifted persons publicly embarrassing themselves and, in turn, dishonoring Jesus and embarrassing fellow believers by their actions, it must be pointed out that obedience trumps gifting.  The Holy Spirit has given gifts of leadership to a sufficient amount of people that there is no need for any one believer to believe that he or she needs to be the mentor to more persons than he or she can physically and psychologically handle.  Jesus poured his life into 12, and possibly to a lesser degree, 70. 

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website)  

Simple Church Minute 92--public wrongdoing

92—public wrongdoing

THIS IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            I’m not telling you what I am about to say is correct, although I certainly believe that it is.   I am asking you to listen to what I am about to say, and search the scriptures for yourself for whether what I say is more in alignment with the Word than the practice of the vast majority of traditional Bible-believing churches today.

            If David was a singer today, at a certain point in his life, most of it actually, his personal life would have gotten him dropped from the artist roster of any Christian label and some secular ones, and I wouldn’t argue for a moment that those companies would be in the wrong.  If one sins, God is willing to forgive.  Over time, a person who has done even a great wrong can reestablish a good character among a small group of people who truly know him or her.    In our instant reporting 24-7 news cycle culture, a public wrong probably can never be overcome among those who only know one as a media silhouette, except via something miraculous.  When I say a small group of people, I don’t mean 2000 or even 200.  Neither you nor anyone else has the time to really know a great amount of people really well. 

            A huge amount of the power of the witness of the early church was among the people nearby a person.  Those people saw the change for the better in a person who went from being just one more neighbor to a believer in Jesus who desired to care for others as Jesus did.  The word Christian originally meant “little Christs”.  While each believer knows that term is a far greater honor than any of us deserve and can live up to, by the Holy Spirit, we can fill those shoes, sometimes unknowingly, never outwardly intentionally, for a few people as we walk through life.  The thing we struggle to grasp is that, that’s what laying up treasure in heaven is.  Almost all of us will never have enough stuff that CNBC cares who you are, but that’s not what is important to Jesus.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website)

Simple Church Minute 90--gnosticism

90—gnosticism

 My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            In First Corinthians chapter 2, as Paul was writing to the church in that city, we was warning about people who were wandering away from true faith in Jesus and toward what would come to be known as Gnosticism. The leaders of the believing church over the centuries have long spoken as if Paul, by the direction of the Holy Spirit, wrote this chapter in such a way that he was unknowingly speaking of many other groups that would claim to be Christian, but were nowhere close to genuine.  Within the past century, Nazism and the KuKluxKlan are most pronounced. 

            There are also groups which, while correct in their teaching 90 plus percent of the time, hold a certain one or few positions which do not align with the historic faith.  Of some, there is general agreement between true believers in Jesus that such groups are cults.  On some other groups, there is honest disagreement, which is fortunately covered by our knowing that God knows men’s hearts. 

            There is one disturbing piece of our fallen human nature that most believers do not struggle with because most are unaware of its existence.  That is the private ethical struggles of institutional church leaders when a leader finds that there is a gap between what he or she has come to see is the teaching of the Bible and what is socially expected of him or her, particularly if the socially expected thing is tied to the person’s paycheck and that person has no other marketable skills.  This doesn’t just affect church leaders who truly believe;  in the traditional churches in which the training institutes have been taken over by unbelievers, that unbelieving leader knows that if the person listening to him or her knew their unbelief, enough would leave as to leave him or her without a job.  Recently, a writer for a major national newspaper predicted that some of those churches will close due to the weight of their payroll and real estate maintenance, and we have begun to see that.

            I appreciate knowledge of the Bible and all the fields that help us understand it and communicate it to a watching world.  We must note that, in the Word, leadership emphasizes practical knowledge in relating to those around us, not cut and dried degrees and titles.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally (local website).

Simple Church Minute 89--Simson's Thesis #15

89—WS#15   

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            We have been looking at a writing by German writer Wolfgang Simson titled, 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today is Thesis #15, The Church comes home.  On this idea, Simson writes, “Where is the easiest place for a person to be spiritual?  Is it, perhaps, hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd, and then disappearing into an office?  And what is the most difficult—and therefore most meaningful—place to be spiritual?  At home, in the presence of their spouse and children, where everything they do and say is automatically put through the spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow.  Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings for from the atmosphere of real life.  As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots—back to where it came from.  It literally comes home, completing the circle of church history at the end of world history.” Unquote

            This is such an obvious thing—that the Holy Spirit works powerfully in everyday situations, and tends to check out when we attempt to cram man made ritual down his throat, to paraphrase an accusation of unbelievers towards the institutional church.  Jesus’ life was a counterpoint to the dead formality and ritual that the religious leaders of the Old Covenant defended.  We must stop asking God to bless what we are doing, and start blessing what God is doing.

            You can find out more of Simson’s writing at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. You can find out more about simple worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 88--Simson's Thesis #14

88-WS#14

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            We have been reviewing Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today Thesis #14—Developing a persecution-proof spirit.  On this Simson wrote, “They crucified Jesus, the leader of all the Christians.  Today, His followers are often more into titles, medals, and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all.  Blessed are you when you are persecuted, says Jesus.  Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money, and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, the natural reaction of the world will be, as it always has been, conversion or persecution.  Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits standing in the way of global humanism, the modern slavery of having fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe.  That is why Christians will and must feel the repressive tolerance of a world which has lost its absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with His absolute standards.  Coupled with the growing ideologization, privatization and spiritualization of politics and economics, Christians will—sooner than most think—have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus.  They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution proof spirit and an even more persecution proof structure.  Unquote.

            Under the right political conditions, institutional churches could be potentially closed with one phone call or fax, and the structure isn’t prepared.  Only a church by the Spirit is prepared.  You can read more about Simson,s 15 Theses at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on house churches, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

                                                        

Simple Church Minute 87--Simson's Thesis #11

87—WS#13

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            We have been mentioning a writing by German writer Wolfgang Simson, 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today, we bring up Thesis #13, From denominations to city-wide celebrations.  On this idea, Simson writes, “Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious corporations with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other.  Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has lost its voice in the world and become politically insignificant, more concerned with traditional distinctives and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world.  Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into factions and denominations, and Paul spoke of it as worldly, a sign of baby Christians.

            In the early days of the church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly his church and vertically converted to God, and they then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth.  This means not only Christian neighbours organizing themselves into neighbourhood or house churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for city-wide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the city or region.  Authenticity  in the neighbourhoods connected with a regional of city-wide corporate identity will make the church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the city church, the sum total of all born-again Christians of a city or an area. Unquote.

            There is a lot in that statement, and you can reread it at your pace, along with the rest of the 15 theses at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. You can find out more about simple forms of worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or for this area at (local website).

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 85--Simson's Thesis #11

85—WS#11

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            These last few days, we’ve been looking at German writer Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today is Thesis #11, Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing church to people.  On this idea, Simson writes, “The church is changing back from being a Come structure to being a Go structure.  As a result, the church needs to stop trying to bring people “to church”, and start bringing the church to people.  The mission of the church will never be accomplished by just adding to the existing structure.  It will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication into areas of the world where Christ is not yet known.” Unquote.

            The idea of bringing people to church is based on the idea that, somehow, each of us believers isn’t competent to direct another to life in Jesus, and that the preacher is somehow more prepared, like people will be wowed by the brilliance of the sermon.  Nothing shows us that that is true.  It our current society, people are hardened to sales pitches and aren’t convinced that ministers are more intelligent than they are.  Many have been sold that secular ideas are more correct, even if that was taught them by smoke-and- mirrors logic.  In Luke chapter 10 verses 1 through 13, Jesus sends seventy people who have been responsive to his words to go to a variety of towns and find people who will receive them and they find peace.  This is the place where Jesus says that a laborer is worthy of his wages.  It wasn’t directed to religious professionals, but towards persons to take the message of Jesus to places that it had not gone before, which appears to align more with the New Covenant’s description of apostles and workers.  This was to be the founding pattern of the apostles, to found a church in the home of a person open to the message of Jesus.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more information on simple forms of worship, visit on the web, www.simplechurchminute.com and locally at (local website).    

Simple Church Minute 84--Simson's Thesis #10

84—WS#10

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Lately we have been examining writer Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today we come to Thesis #10, From worshipping our worship to worshipping God.  On this idea, Simson writes, The image of much contemporary Christianity could be summarized as holy people coming regularly to a holy place on a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual led by a holy man dressed in holy clothes for a holy fee.  Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called worship service requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions.  Statistically, a traditional one- or two-hour worship service is very resource-hungry but produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, i.e. in changing their lives.  Economically, it is a high input low output structure.  Traditionally, the desire to worship in the right way has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism.  This not only ignores the fact that Christians are called to worship in spirit and in truth, rather than in cathedrals holding songbooks.  It also ignores the fact that most of life is informal, and so too is Christianity as the Way of Life.  Do we need to change from being powerful actors and start acting powerfully? Unquote.

            My experience has been that the times that I’ve seen the Holy Spirit actually do powerful acts has been in the informal aspects of everyday life—conversations, reading by myself, challenge situations, when myself or others have erred.  Even when things have happened in an institutional church situation, preparing moments happened previously elsewhere.  John chapters 3 and 4 are excellent opposing examples of how important moments happen.

             The 15 Theses can be found on the web at www.simsonwolfgang.de.  You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally, (local website).

Simple Church Minute 83--Simson's Thesis #9

83—WS#9

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            We have been looking at German writer Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today, we look at Thesis #9, Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity.  On this idea, Simson writes, “The ‘Body of Christ’ is a vivid description of an organic being, not an organized mechanism.  Church consists, at the local level, of a multitude of extended spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network.  The way these communities function together is an integral part of the message of the whole.  What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism.  Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong.  Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue.  Fear wants to control; faith can trust.  Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better.  The body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a special charismatic gift to believe that God is still in control, even if they are not.  Today we need to develop regional and national networks based on trust, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism, for organic forms of Christianity to re-emerge. (Unquote)

            In another place, Simson wrote that if nothing can go wrong, nothing much can go right either.  Personally, I’ve seen that not only does it take letting go of the agenda for the Holy Spirit to work most powerfully, but when something does go wrong, that recognition, and how mature believers deal with it is used by the Spirit to bring everyone to greater maturity.

            You can examine these 15 ideas at your own pace, on the web, at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on house churches, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or  with regards to the local area at (local website).

                                                                                            

Simple Church Minute 82--Simson's Thesis #8

82—WS#8

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Recently we have been speaking about German writer Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses for Re-Incarnation of Church.  Today, we look at Thesis #8, Out of the hands of bureaucratic clergy and on towards the priesthood of believers.  On this idea, Simson has written, No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional holy man dong the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive, religious consumers, Moses-style.  Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament.

            The heavy professionalization of the church since Constantine has been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into an infantilized laity and a professional clergy, and developing power-based mentalities and pyramid structures.  According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), ‘there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’.  God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in between Himself and His people.  The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way.

            To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely.  Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no.  There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life.  This may be all right in politics and business, but not the church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, putting it into the hands of ordinary people whom God has made extraordinary and who, as in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume, or revolution.

            You can read back or ahead about Simson’s 15 Theses at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  On the web, you can find out more about simple forms of worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 81--Simson's Thesis #7

81—WS#7

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Recently we have been visiting a writing by Wolfgang Simson called “15 Theses toward a Re-Incarnation of Church.”  Thesis #7 is “The right pieces—fitted together in the wrong way.”  About this idea, Simson wrote, “To do a jigsaw puzzle, we have to put the pieces together according to the original pattern, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make any sense.  In the Christian world we have all the right pieces, but we have fitted them together in the wrong way, because of fear, tradition, religious jealously, and a power-and-control mentality.  Just as water is found in three forms—ice, water, and steam—so too the five ministries mentioned in Ephesians 4:11,12—the apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists—are found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places.  They are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and independent churches, accountable to no one.  Just as it is best to water flowers with the liquid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new—and at the same time age-old—forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual ministers can find their proper role and place in the whole.  That is one more reason why we need to return to the Maker’s original blueprint for the Church.”(Unquote)

            If one is farming, plants can be helped in growth by potash, phosphoric acid, nitrogen, and lime.  If a plant’s ground is low on lime, adding it will help growth, but if it has sufficient lime, adding it will hinder the plant’s growth.    You can find out more about Simson's 15 Theses at http://www.simsonwolfgang.de/.  You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on simple worship, one can find http://www.simplechurch.com/ and (local website).