Eternal Purpose

Today's Simple Church Minute broadcast was on the subject of God's Eternal Purpose.  In reviewing the recording, I see that at the end, I said that is was posted on September 11, 2011.  I actually posted it on September 18, 2011, so it is better that I have reposted it today.

   

 

          I have been attempting to include quotations from a variety of persons writing on simple/organic/house church, and this rewrite turns out to allow me to add quotations from two prolific writers on this subject, Milt Rodriguez and Frank Viola.  In spite of most of these blogs being heavily built on the research from George Barna and Frank Viola’s book, Pagan Christianity, I had not put an actual quotation in any of the commentaries, heretofore.

2012—eternal purpose

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Milt Rodriguez, in his blog entry for July 6, 2011, told an extremely short story, of which I quote:

            A friend recently told me that the eternal purpose of God was so vast that it was difficult to grasp and even more difficult to explain.  I told him that I agreed.  He also said that it’s very difficult to put into one sentence.  I also agreed with that, however, after thinking about this later, I decided to take on the challenge.  So here is my contribution of consolidating the eternal purpose into one sentence:

            “God’s eternal purpose is that the fullness of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, would be displayed and expressed visibly through a vessel that would be a Family/House for the Father, a Bride/Body for the Son, and a Temple for the Holy Spirit.”

 

            What in the world does that mean?  Most believers have never heard anyone overtly speak on this subject—God’s eternal purpose.  Implicitly, most of us who have been part of evangelical or fundamentalist or Bible-believing (choose you favorite phrase) church understand that the thing to do that is most emphasized is wishing other persons to come to faith in Jesus, that is, evangelism.  If I point it out, it is obvious, that in that part of time previous to Genesis 3, the story of the fall, there was no place for evangelism in the whole universe.  At the other end, beginning at Revelation 21, the final judgment, there will once again be a time where there will be no place for evangelism.

            Now, just for a moment, glance at what things would look like from a liberal progressive church position.  There, doing good is the emphasis.  Once again, before Genesis 3, there is no place for that, as sin had not entered the human race, and some period of time before that, the fall of Lucifer that is told us in Ezekiel 28.  On the other end, after the judgment in Revelation 21, there once again will be no room for doing good, because sin will have been banished.  Therefore, neither of those things can possibly God’s eternal purpose.

            Let me go over those items in the Rodriguez quote.  God wants the fullness of Jesus displayed.  That was the plan before the creation of the universe. How do we know this?  Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.”  If we follow Jesus, then we have to take God’s word that what he has told us in the Bible was what he meant to tell us.  He tells us that he wants a family.  The chosen people of the Old Covenant, were a physical, and imperfect, type of a New Covenant chosen people that are a new creation by faith, a people that deep in our hearts want to be his chosen people.  We also are God’s house.  John, in Revelation 21 verse 3 tells us, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.”  On this idea, Frank Viola, in his book, “From Eternity to Here”, wrote,

            “John’s climatic vision in Revelation 21 and 22 gives us an intriguing window into the ultimacy of God’s house.  Therein we discover that the house is a city.  As we read further, we discover that the city is also a bride, and that the bride is also a dwelling place, and that the dwelling place is also a wife, and that the wife is also a temple, and that the temple is also a garden.  All are graphic, mind-grabbing images of the same reality.  All speak of God’s ultimate purpose.”*

            God’s ultimate purpose is that temple of the Holy Spirit from 1 Corinthians 6 verse 19, that bride of Christ from John 3 verse 29, the body of Christ from 1 Corinthians 12 verse 27, that family of God from Galatians 6 verse 10, that house of God from Hebrews 3 verse 6.  That all is us, the saved, the believers in Jesus, who wish to desire to do His will in everything.  Good works are good, communicating the message of Jesus’ love for us is good, it is part of how we desire to honor God, but there is a time coming that those things will be irrelevant, and God’s plan in some way accounts for a time that we only can understand at this point in time quite dimly, and trying to hold onto any chaff that the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit is blowing and burning away is counterproductive.

            I can be reached by email at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or at 757-735-3639.. What I just said went fast; to read what I just said, I have it posted on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, with additional information, posted to September 11, 2011.  To find out more about simple church on a national and international scale, visit www.simplechurch.com and, for this area, at www.hrscn.org.  

            Milt Rodriguez quote from his blog, miltrodriguez.wordpress.com, from 7/6/2011.  Frank Viola quote from his book, From Eternity to Here (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2009) p. 213-214.  This book is an excellent, thorough examination of this subject.  Frank has additional resources at his website www.ptmin.org, and his blog is www.frankviola.org.

Simple Church Minute--on preaching (program 2007)

 On today's "Simple Church Minute" program, I said that the transcript of today's program is located at June 12, 2011, but I have come to realize that, according to the way this blog is programmmed, it would be easier for anyone who might come here to find it under this day's post. 

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2007--preach

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the definition of “preach” is 1) to deliver a sermon, 2) to urge acceptance or abandonment of an idea or course of action; specifically: to exhort in an officious or tiresome manner. These definitions truly indicate the modern understanding of the word “preach” and also, to a degree, the negative attitude a significant segment of our society has towards what we call preaching. Is that what the Bible means by the word? I know—for me to bring this up implies that I’m going to say “no”, and that is correct. Somewhere after the recording of the Scriptures, preaching became a Christian form of the equivalent of Roman oratory, a one-way form of communication. Interestingly, if one looks at pieces of speaking in the Book of Acts and later, one can find that a speech is preceded by words like “said” or “speak”, and not preach. This does, though, vary by translation.

The Bible tells us Jesus preached. What did he do? His style of speaking was like that of the style common to Jewish culture, in that it was two-way communication. We are fully well aware that Jesus had to tell the disciples that it was ok for children to be around him, John 3 and 4 tells of Jesus speaking one-on-one to two extremely different persons with regard to their spirits. The Jewish religious leaders overtly came up to him to ask him tricky questions. It was the style the rabbis had taught the people with.

In Acts and following, we see that preaching was sporadic, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, delivered on special occasions to deal with special problems, and was dialogue, not monologue. A word found in the original Koine Greek that is sometimes translated preaching is dialegomai, which is obviously where we get the word dialogue from. In the early days of the New Covenant, ministry came from all believers, and worship in the early church included teaching, exhortation, prophecy, singing, admonishment, speaking was conversational and even the teaching of local elders was normally impromptu.

For many years, it was something I noticed, but didn’t understand, that all the times that it seemed that the Spirit taught me the most significant things about following Jesus came through situations that were not what we in our western Christian culture consider regular worship services. I must now say that the reason for this is that those informal gatherings of believers, whether we call it a home or cell group, Bible study, prayer meeting, or maybe even no meeting, but just believers living and working together, outside the building walls, are more congruent with what the books of the New Covenant, that is, Acts to the end of the Bible, showed as being church than what we call church in our culture. Conversely, our ritualistic services, and any regular way of a service that is always or almost always the same way is ritualistic, is not taught in the Word. A regular order of worship is common for most beliefs in the world, and the Roman Empire forced buildings, paid leaders, and official structures into the church, and those structures have morphed over and over again over the centuries, An unbeliever can understand that structure, as a strong head person structure is used in government, military, and business, but God gave us, the true church, the Holy Spirit for us to follow where He wills. When we don’t do that, we get messed up. If there is any official titular office in the New Covenant church, it is in Colossians 1 verse 18 and Ephesians 5 verse 23, which mentions what could be a title, head of the church, which is filled by Jesus. I believe a further indication of God’s blessing upon living informally and meeting informally as the proper way to honor Jesus in our lives is how we see the church throughout history in persecuted areas see the blessing of growth, where the organizational church in the West has forgotten the Great Commission for centuries and has tied itself up in its bureaucratic complexity, and has not seen such growth.

You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-735-3639. If you wish to review what I just said, a transcript is posted at my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, at the entry dated June 12, 2011. You can find out more about being church without corporate structure in this area at www.hrscn.org.

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Almost all of what I said here comes from Frank Viola and George Barna’s book, “Pagan Christianity” page 88. That, in turn, has seven footnotes for the person looking to verify the historicity of what I said. As most bookstores in this area, Christian and secular, will not have this book on the shelf, one can obtain it quickest from www.frankviola.com or www.amazon.com.

For reference, the Greek word dialegomai appears in Acts 17:2, 17:17, 18:4, 18:19, 19:8-9, 20:7, 20:9, 24:25. None of the other words translated “preach” imply a speech, oration, or rhetoric, either.

On the words "postmodern" and "existential"

One of the RSS feeds I get is the House 2 Harvest Network, which emphasizes completing the work of the Great Commission through the establishment of simple, organic churches.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have been receiving the blog entries of one a certain blogger who will go nameless here.  While it is clear that this person is traditionally trained in church leadership, and now is part of, and probably one of the leaders of, a house church in northern Virginia, and what he writes does not seem to have any connection to world missions, which is supposed to be the theme of that online group, I do not see that as much of a problem, either.  We have all said or written things that are not quite on topic.

            There is one thing I find disagreement with.  From his writing, it appears that he has been in contact with Frank Viola and some other known writers on the topic of simple, organic church with regard to their functioning as church planters, and is somehow unhappy with them.  To this regard, in every blog I have received over this period of time, without regard to what subject Jim begins to write on, somewhere in the article will be a veiled or not-so-veiled criticism of Viola.  Two specific criticisms of Viola have been applying the words “postmodern” and existential” to describing either him and/or his work, and, to me, it became less and less clear what he was attempting to communicate. 

            Personally, I do not know Frank.  In writing this blog, and preparing for my radio program, I have had the opportunity to communicate with a number of persons around the country involved in simple, organic church.  One difference in communicating with Frank is that the response always comes from a person on his staff, whereas I at least feel that the other persons I have written to were the persons responding to whatever I wrote.  This, in and of itself, is not wrong, only different.  I might say that if I were to send a communication to almost any sizable traditional church pastor, the response would be from a staff person, also. 

            Anyway, this morning, I decided to do one thing I can do passably, and that is research existing ideas.  As you will see, this is not really heavy research, maybe junior high level or lower research.  What do the words in question, postmodern and existential, mean?

            According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Modern, “post modern: Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative.” 

            According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism, “There is no consensus among scholars on the precise definition…”  With all due apologies to the anonymous writers of those definitions, the first defines postmodernism, and the second defines nothing.  Might I suggest, to use that first definition, postmodern is, therefore, a synonym to contemporary culture.

            As for the word “existential”, according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism, “Existentialism is the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual.”  Now, this definition isn’t particularly good, in that, for the believer in Jesus, our experience of the Holy Spirit speaking into our spirit before repentance is certainly part of our life experiences, but the unbeliever cannot truly understand that, and, as such the person we might think of as being existential would not see things that way.

            Another definition I found is from www.thefreedictionary.com/existential, which defines as such:  1. Of, relating to, or dealing with existence. 2. Based on experience, empirical.  3. Of, or as conceived by existentialism or existentialists: An existential moment of choice.

            I went to post this as a comment on the last blog of his I received, but I couldn’t without a Wordpress password.   Just as a note, if you have trouble leaving a comment on my site, send me an email at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com. I’m just curious; I’ve been writing this for nearly two years and never received a comment.  For about the first four months, comments weren’t turned on (my error).

One little error

On today's episode of my radio program, "Simple Church Minute", I quoted Ross Rohde's blog, www.thejesusvirus.org from his post of May 30, 2011 (editing a couple of sentences out to fit the time allotment).  Actually, its the first time that I actually got to hear the program over the air to see how it sounded.  It occurred to me that, unlike the programs that I had written, I should have a link to his post.  Given the fact that this quote is from about sixteen months ago, I can't figure out how to link to it on his site.  This goes only to show that I'm still learning how to use this medium.   I will attempt to have this corrected shortly.
Addendum: the link is http://thejesusvirus.org/2011/05/30/

Simple Church Minute on the air

Some of you know that I originally started my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, to post the transcripts of some commentaries I had written with radio in mind. Today, I can say that I am finally able to get Simple Church Minute on the air. They will appear on WWIP (89.1 in the Hampton Roads area, www.wwip.org online) at 3:15 pm on Saturdays, beginning this week.

Book review: Release of the Spirit, by Watchman Nee

　

Watchman Nee, Release of the Spirit (Indianapolis: Sure Foundation, 1965)--my personal impressions from reading this book (one may or may not consider this a "review" in the formal sense of the word)

Back on August 10, on Frank Viola's blog, he picked what he considered the five greatest ministry books (frankviola.org/2012/08/10/bestbooksonministry). From that, I decided to read one of them, Watchman Nee's "Release of the Spirit." Back in the '70's, I tried reading Nee, but found it to be something strangely difficult to understand.

Have you ever attempted to assemble an item with a large amount of parts, such that you were following instructions like "put bar X into slot on plate BB, then insert nut J into hole at end of bar X and attach nut K"? After one does it right once, the directions finally make sense. Likewise, the more one has actually walked and lived through some of what Nee describes in this book, the more one can learn from what is left that one hasn't gone through. Conversely, when I attempted to read "The Spiritual Man" in college, when I had only been a believer since high school, and still attended what in this culture is traditionally considered a "church", and certainly had not had the years of following God's direction both correctly and incorrectly nearly as much as now, his writing seemed to be to be too difficult to get much out of, in spite of the words being simple.

Likewise, in reading this, what you have already experienced, you can relate to, even though you may never have seen anyone attempt to describe it in a sentence, and what Nee's writings are notable for is teaching for ministry from one's spirit, as opposed to the western norm of teaching God's ways through the intellect or emotion. The more that one has walked through what he is writing about, the more one can learn from the rest. If one has not desired to do what Nee is describing in the beginning, the harder (maybe it is impossible) to learn from what he writes later. I would guess an unbeliever would find this irrational nonsense, or, in the case of some involved in Eastern thinking, come up with some bizarre interpretation of parts.

Early in this book, Nee refers to Brother Laurance's "The Practice of the Presence of God." That book is short, easy to understand, and something of a prequel. I know that Nee was influenced as a young man by T. Austin-Sparks. As Austin-Sparks made his works available such that most of it is now online (www.austin-sparks.net), but I have yet to read any of them, I may someday wish to add some of those to a list of good introductions to this book, but, obviously, I cannot at this time.

I found the first three chapters of this book to be the most difficult to read, but this is where Nee sets up concepts that are necessary for the rest of the book. This is a book where one cannot just sit down and fly through it, even though it is very short, as books go (under 100 pages)(a). You may need to read a paragraph, or even a sentence, and then stop and think about what Nee has said, and compare it to your experience in following Jesus, with regard to both when you walked rightly, and when you didn't. Chapter 3 is about everyday things that can distract us from spiritual things. Albeit a valid point, I don't practically know how one gets around that when one needs to be in the world working. I am saying this in the light of a person who has held a normal job for most of my life (i.e. not in a church position), but am now in a position where I cannot work eight plus hours a day, and have more time to think.

Chapter 4 is about the worker as spiritual doctor. Some readers may recognize this as an early Reformation concept. Nee uses the same words, but approaches this phrase in the manner of discerning another's spirit, as opposed to plugging a problem into a theological answer. Even here, he is not speaking of modern Pentecostal "discerning of spirits", but a more general realization of whether you sense a person is attempting to follow the Holy Spirit, and opposed to plugging everything into an intellectual or emotional or some type of worldly framework. In my opinion, Chapters 4 through 9 are easier to read than 1 to 3, but I believe that the latter part will not make sufficient sense unless one works through the first third.

Chapter 7 gets to the beginning of Nee's conclusions, with this chapter dealing with God revealing his way of seeing things to us. He refers to this as enlightenment (one must note, with no surprise, that this is quite differentment than the western use of the term, both in Christian and the world's circles of thought), and that only that shows us how to divide soul and spirit. Chapter 8 is titled "What Impression Do We Give?" My feeling is that what Nee says gets really simple now, but all of the previous writing was necessary to build up to this. Chapter 9, the last chapter, speaks more on an idea that has been brought up continually in previous chapters, that to truly move in Spirit-guided ministry, a prerequisite is to allow our spirit to be broken of its sinful independence from God's moment by moment guidance, and submitted to the Holy Spirit's guidance, to truly be God's servant. Nee discusses the qualities that indicate that in a person.

Ultimately, this, I believe, explains why there are so many ungodly acts going on in our supposed "churches" and "ministries", particularly among leaders. Nee is speaking about the believer's walking in serving God, which is God's, although not man's, idea of leadership, which is not connected to having a title. Those who are, as Nee describes, are those of unbroken will, be it to favor their intellect, or emotion, or cleverness, or whatever, would misconstrue this criticism. Those who are unbelievers will, or more properly, have considered such books something to be ignored. The last sentence of this book sums up this teaching: "The inward man is freed only after the outward man is broken. This is the basic road to God's service."

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a) Note that most modern books are forced by publishing companies, without regard to genre, with the possible exception of textbooks, to be no less than 160 pages or more than 250 pages. Note over time, if one reads a book in which the material seems to be stretched, that it ends exactly on 160.

I have noticed over the past couple of years that the blog postings of mine that get the most page views are the book reviews. Personally, if I could ask you to read any one of these writings, it would be my post on June 20,2012, entitled "13 definitions of the word 'church'". None of it is my ideas, as indicated by the footnotes at the bottom of it, but I believe that it might make for some stimulating research. If one can read it (if one has not run into it previously) and not look at this idea further, whether to confirm or debunk what I've said, I would question what one cares about.

Larry Norman is dead, and I don't feel so good myself

At my church, one of us is on a gluten free diet, another desires to avoid high fructose corn syrup, and three of us (at least) are taking a fistful of pills per day. For some reason, a little while ago, the concept of the 80's song "American Fast Food" by Randy Stonehill popped into my head. Last night, I went to look it up on the internet, and found four different versions of video posted. Whoever did the one on vimeo (vimeo.com/33369893) really did an excellent job of adding video.

Nonetheless, while glancing through the listings on the search engine, I noticed that Stonehill's mentor in bizarre creativity, Larry Norman, died in 2008. I pulled up the wikipedia entry for Norman, which is long enough to be a short biography. I hadn't heard anything about him since I saw him in concert in the late 1970's, which was billed as his last tour in the area I lived in. As I learned in this reading, he figured that he was on his last tour for the rest of his life, it appears. Some parts of his story are sad, some disappointing, and a lot of it is just creative genius bizarre. I think back and recognize how his music, combined with doing and saying things counter to the Christian cultural norm, made it easier for me, over the years, to at least desire to follow the Spirit without regard to what is status quo, and that, in turn, allowed me to continue to grow in faith. Even though I have hardly anything in worldly possessions, allowing oneself to be free to follow the Holy Spirit is to be free, indeed.

Currently, I am reading Watchman Nee's "Release of the Spirit." I will be posting my thoughts about this book when I am done. I know that the first time I heard of Nee was when Larry told one of the apocryphal stories of what happened to Nee in a Communist Chinese jail on one of his albums. While reading Chapter 8, I couldn't help thinking that what Nee was describing as the person God can use is almost the opposite of Norman's actions, at least as they might be perceived by those who were not his personal friends or acquaintences. Between the two, not that it means anything, my feeling is that Nee is closer to being correct, as to how to be the person God can use. Still, Norman's contribution to the community of believers was important, even for those who had nothing good to say about him.

I have read that, since the last album I was familiar with, he released 27 more. I also realize that the large number had to do with paying medical bills. I don't know if I even want to hear that which I haven't heard already. Yet, again, one of these days, I probably will. His political radicalism which was only there to point people back to Jesus sits well with me. Twice this year, I have been asked what my political alignment is; it's a great question to give a totally unexpected answer to. The last time I was asked that, I said that I have made up my mind who I'll vote for, but I am so unhappy with the choices, I won't tell who it is. Why do I say that? Both major parties have at least one issue in which their stand is roughly congruent with that of one desiring to serve Jesus, and stands on issues that are not, and stands which, if they are congruent with Christian belief, are held for other reasons. That's the reason I have never given a penny to a political cause, and never will--that is unless you consider giving to Voice of the Martyrs, which helps believers in lands where governments punish people for following Jesus.

When I read the article about Norman, I didn't feel too good. Today, I feel better. I know that more of my visit to this planet is over verses what is left to come. Now, more and more, I hear of the passing of those who are my contemporaries. My question is how I can give to the members of the family who are coming up behind me.

For anyone who doesn't know, I am not being insensitive, but the title above is a parody of the title of one of (I think, the last of) comic writer Louis Grizzard's books. I didn't read it, and almost assuredly never get around to it.