In Search of Awe

We had a look at Ephesians 3:1-13 in a small group study last night and got a chance to see Paul roll out one really big reason that should keep us from being discouraged as Christians. Here’s what I think Paul is doing in this passage…

He’s in prison at the time of writing and as he announces himself in verse 1 as a ‘prisoner of Christ’ he realizes that his current situation could be one of great discouragement to the various churches around the area of Ephesus. This leads him to a little digression from which he only recovers in verse 14 of chapter 3. But its a digression that just frames everything beautifully. Basically Paul tells the Ephesians that God, in Christ, has made his manifold wisdom known to all the powers in the universe through the church – and he Paul is the herald of this great revelation.

Now on face value our eyes can glaze over what he’s saying here as old hat and so I think we need to empathize with the recipients of the letter and see Paul, our apostle, in prison and looking completely unspectacular and so get a sense of the discouragement they were facing. When we grasp this what Paul says should cause us to gaze in awe at the great God who through this weak and beggarly church of reconciled Jews and Gentiles is going to magnify his name through the universe.

The awe of these truths should drive us onward as we go through the numerous unspectacular events that make up the majority of our Christian life. As we go through day to day struggling to be faithful, as we look at our local church which simply gets on with the work of discipleship in ways that are far from glamorous we are reminded of the awesome work of God through his church. Ultimately he’s going to show up the dark forces of this world who will be left gaping in awe of his manifold wisdom. Do we get the same sense of awe as we internalize this passage?

Confidence or Castration

When the world is so broken, and the expression of the solution is too, where do we look to for confidence? The brokenness of the world is fast becoming a no-brainer. A lack of optimism about the inherent goodness of man is evident in so much secular literature and media today, its not even a question of whether or not we’re broken but more about just how broken we are exactly.

And the expression of the solution? The church? Have you been to a church lately? Have you read through the New Testament letters and seen just how screwed up the church got within a decade of the death and resurrection of Jesus? Yet one of those letters, Ephesians, tells us that the church is God’s masterplan to reveal his perfect rescuing character to this broken world (insert groan here). How are we supposed to have confidence?

Confidence can only come from someone who isn’t screwed up and it can only come if that someone does something for the rest of us. That is the simple gospel message – Jesus doing what we can’t. That’s why the apostle Paul wants to castrate people who depart from the gospel – because they’re departing from the only thing that brings real hope and confidence to brokeness.

You call yourself a Christian – really? Is that gospel message really your confidence?

Church and Integration

When planting a church in an area that is culturally, racially, linguistically and economically diverse what principles govern how to get everyone to meet together?

One would hard pressed to demonstrate that the Bible does not call for visible unity in the church that spans across areas of race, culture and class. Ephesians 2:11-22 seems to be clear that the Gospel does not only redeem but it also reconciles together people from these various groups. It would therefore seem obvious that the church is to display integration at numerous levels. Yet some such as Donald McGavran have suggested that in order to increase church growth we ought to arrange churches in homogeneous groups whereby the individual coming to Christ does not have to cross many barriers in order to enter into fellowship. This became known as the Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP – For more discussion on the HUP see Tim Chester’s post here).

Naturally the HUP raises significant theological problems and we soon find that we begin to enter a number of ‘grey’ realms when we ask such questions as: How homogeneous ought the Christian gathering to be? Are there limits to integration? Is the integration of diverse peoples supposed to be evident on a local church level or on a larger scale, like denominations or national churches etc.

My own view is that firstly we must enter this discussion with humility. Paul does not give us specific details into just how integrated the church life was in these early churches, nor is Acts sufficiently comprehensive in providing models of the inner-workings of many of the early churches in this area. What is clear is that there was integration and so any church or mission that does not show any integration is failing to recognize the reconciling nature of the gospel. I would describe my position as being committed to integration but open to the limiting nature of certain pragmatic elements.

How would you answer this question?

Here’s a question that someone asked on the Facebook group:

“From the church tradition I belong to, too much missional activity is predominantly aimed at white people. But the reality is in SA today the vast majority of our population are not white, and therefore not being “reached” by missional churches. And even when there is a multi-racial congregation this does not necessarily equal mulit-cultural. Of course we could do mono-cultural mission and reach separate people separately (the homogeneous unit principle) but that is not the picture that I find of one new humanity that I find in Ephesians 2. Does being missional in South Africa require being multi-cultural?”

 

How would you answer this?

Beynon on Reconciliation

“When we think of Jesus’ work on the cross we usually think of his purpose as being to reconcile us to God; and rightly so. But along with that he has another purpose. Verse 15 states it very strongly: “his purpose was to create in himself one new man out of two’. Jesus forges them together into a brand new humanity.” Graham Beynon – “God’s New Community” p.29

How often do we who have been reconciled to God by Christ’s work on the cross forget God’s other purpose – to reconcile all those ‘in Christ’ with each other. What would our churches look like in South Africa if this truth from Ephesians was really internalized and applied?

Pastor/Teacher???

I’ve always been taught that ‘pastor’ and ‘teacher’ in Ephesians 4 were one and the same thing in the original language. So we don’t have a five-fold ministry but a four-fold ministry. But listen to the comments of Peter O’Brien in his commentary on Ephesians:

The pastors and teachers are linked here by a single definite article in the Greek, which suggests a close association of functions between two kinds of ministers who operate within the one congregation (cf. 2:20). Although it has often been held that the two groups are identical (i.e. ‘pastors who teach’), it is more likely that the terms describe overlapping functions (cf. 1 Cor. 12:28-29 and Gal 6:6, where ‘teachers’ are a distinct group). All pastors teach (since teaching is an essential part of pastoral ministry), but not all teachers are also pastors. The latter exercise their leadership role by feeding God’s flock with his word. (p. 300)