Simple Church

Greetings to All and Prayers for a Happy New Year!

     As we begin the new year, I thought I would start us off with a call to return to simple.  Simple and uncomplicated ministry.  Ministry as Jesus did it.  Ministry stripped off all the ways we try and make it more complex than it really is. Spirituality that's focused on the important.  Being the Church Jesus wants us to be.

 

This was driven home to me in a book recommended by a close friend: Simple Church, by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.  It is a straightforward and down to earth appraisal of how ministry should look. How Jesus intended it to look. If you happen to be struggling with the church as it often is, and want to consider it from a refreshing perspective, I would encourage you to pick up this easy to read book. As you go through it I am sure you will likely find yourself saying on many occasions, "Yes, that IS how it should be."   I offer this excerpt as a mere taste of what is in the book. Enjoy.

     "Simple churches have chosen to align themselves with the way God works. They have chosen to partner with the discipleship process revealed in Scripture. They have chosen to structure their churches around a simple process...  We are not claiming a simple church design is easy. There is a big difference between simple and easy.  Simple is basic, uncomplicated, and fundamental. Easy is effortless...  Leading a local church is neither simple nor easy, but the church strategy does not need to be complicated. The ministry design can and should be simple.

     If anyone knows simple it is Jesus. If anyone is a revolutionary, it is Jesus. He is the simple revolutionary. He stepped into a complicated and polluted religious scene. It was cluttered with Sadducees, Pharisees, Herodians, Zealots, and Essenes. He did not play by their rules.  He could not stand their hypocrisy.  He preferred spending time with tax collectors and sinners.  The religious leaders had developed a religious system with 613 laws. They chose that number because that was how many separate letters were in the text containing the 10 Commandments. Then they found 613 commandments in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). They divided the list into affirmative commands (do this) and negative commands (don't do this).  There were 248 affirmative commands, one for every part of the human body as they understood it. There were 365 negative commands, one for each day of the year. They further divided the list into binding commands and nonbinding commands. Then they spent their days debating whether the divisions were accurate and ranking the commands within each division.

     Enter Jesus. Jesus has the ability to take the complex and make it simple. The prime example is Matthew 22:37-40, where Jesus gives what has become known as the Great Commandment. Here is the scene. Jesus has just stumped the Sadducees. Literally. He silenced them by His wisdom (Matt. 22:34). Next up are the Pharisees. Maybe they can do a better job knocking this revolutionary down. The Pharisees gather for a meeting. They devise a debate strategy. The goal is to humiliate Jesus in front of the crowd. They choose their smartest guy, a lawyer, to take on Jesus. He asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the law. Of all the 613 commandments, he is asking Jesus for the greatest. Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend (are summed up in) these two commandments." Think about the significance of that moment. He said all the Law (and He added the Prophets) is summed up in this simple and perfect phrase. He was not lowering the standard of the Law.  He was not abolishing it.  He was capturing all its spirit, all of its essence, in one statement.  He said all of it hangs on this.  He summed up 613 commands in two.  Jesus took the complexity and the advancement of the Law and made it very simple.

     Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher. In the Jewish culture, each rabbi had a "yoke" of teaching. His yoke was his instructions, his content and his message. Many rabbis put yokes of teaching on the people that were impossible and legalistic. These yokes pushed people away from the grace of God and not toward it.  These yokes burned people out and turned people off.  Jesus stepped onto the scene and said to the crowd one day: "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30). Jesus said HIS yoke was easy. His teaching was in stark contrast to the religious rabbis of the day. He was not offering a complicated and long set of rules, rituals, and regulations. He was offering grace. He was offering a simple relationship with God. As a simple revolutionary, Jesus was bothered by meaningless and distracting clutter.

     On at least one occasion, Jesus cleansed the temple. Many biblical scholars believe he did this twice during His earthly ministry. Mark 11 gives the account of one of His cleaning projects.  Jesus was enraged by what he observed at the temple. The temple had the appearance of being a place where people would seek God, but this was not the reality. People had lost their focus. Mark describes three areas of clutter that infuriated Jesus.  FIRST, people are buying and selling in the temple... The leaders allowed vendors to set up shop in the temple.  Historians reveal vendors were typically set up outside the temple, but (in Jesus day) the makeshift marketplace is inside the temple. Jesus responded by driving out those who were selling doves.  SECOND, money changers were exchanging foreign currency for the Gentiles. The Gentiles needed Jewish money to buy sacrifices and they were being exploited with a fee for the exchange. Instead of the temple being a house of prayer for all nations (including Gentiles) it was cluttered with people robbing them financially. Jesus reacts by throwing over the tables of the money changers.  THIRD, the temple had become a shortcut for people to pass through the city...  Jesus stopped them.

     His behavior in the temple gives us amazing insight into the heart of God. Jesus is adamantly opposed to anything that gets in the way of people encountering Him. He quoted from Isaiah that day saying, "Is it not written. 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?' But you have made it a den of thieves!"  (Mark 11:17).  Many of our churches have become cluttered. So cluttered that people have a difficult time encountering the simple and powerful message of Christ. So cluttered that many people are busy doing church instead of being the church. What about your church?"

     Just some food for thought as we enter the New Year and hopefully "clean out" and "simplify" our approach to God.  For Jesus wants us to know, "[His] yoke is easy and [His] burden is light."  He designed it that way.  He fought to keep it that way.  May He win the fight to do so in your life and in your church.

     With Prayers for a Year Where We Can Learn to Enjoy the Simplicity and Light Load of Being In Christ, Pastor Jeff

Five Reasons Church Members Attend Church Less Frequently

Greetings All!

     This weeks "thought" has to do with a problem that is becoming increasingly worse and very alarming to those who love and cherish the Church of Jesus Christ, as well as it's God-given mission to the world.  It's the lack of commitment among believers to gather together for worship, sharing, instruction, encouragement, accountability and joint-effort in carrying out the commission Christ gave to His Body to bring the gospel to those across the street and across the sea.
     There is a very good reason the author of Hebrews 10:25 says, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing..."  That is, let us not give up meeting together as the gathered church, or the congregation of the faithful, for worship and celebration.  (Yes, it was even a problem back then!)  And the reason he called them to gather was not a legalistic effort to gain more of God's favor by doing so, but because of what such gathering does for us, and the others in the body, in terms of our spiritual health and the strengthening of the Church.  In the immediate context verse 23 suggests it helps us, "hold unswervingly to the hope we profess."   Verse 24 suggests it's one of the ways we can, "spur one another on toward love and good deeds."   And the rest of verse 25 suggests that our gatherings do the opposite of what being absent does -- it enables us to, "encourage one another, and all the more as we see the Day approaching."

     My presence (and yours) on a Sunday morning, encourages others. It gives us an opportunity to carry out our God-ordained ministry of serving, encouraging, and bearing the burdens of others.  If I view my gathering with others as I should (as a time to minister encouragement to others through my words, heart-felt worship, prayers, listening ears, and actions) I have the blessed honor and privilege of being able to love others with brotherly affection, help to the struggling, listen to the lonely, assist the elderly, encourage the young, and share in people's growth as believers.  So let me share the whole verse:  "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, BUT LET US ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER, and all the more as we see the Day approaching."

     That leads us to today's entry from the blog of researcher, Thom S. Rainer, entitled, "Five Reasons Church Members Attend Church Less Frequently." (His small but very good book, "I Am A Church Member," only 77 pages long, is also a great read for further discussion on the reality and effects of this phenomena.)  Enjoy.

FIVE REASONS CHURCH MEMBERS ATTEND CHURCH LESS FREQUENTLY

     "About 20 years ago, a church member was considered "active" in the church if he or she attended three times a week. Today, a church member is considered active in the church if he or she attends three times a month. Something is wrong with this picture. For 2,000 years, the local church, as messy as it is, has been God’s place for believers to gather, worship, minister, and be accountable to one another.

     Yet every time I write something about church membership and attendance, I inevitably hear cries of “legalism” or “the church is not a building” or “the church is a messed up institution.”  But the local church -- the messy local church -- is what God has used as His primary instrument to make disciples. But commitment is waning among many church members.

Why?

     1.) We are minimizing the importance of the local church. When we do, we are less likely to attend. A few drops of rain may keep many folks from attending church, but it won’t stop them from sitting three hours in the downpour watching their favorite football team (and often pay a hefty price to do so).

     2.) We worship the idols of activities. Many members will replace a day in their church with a day at kid’s soccer or softball games or sleeping off the hangover of the previous day’s activities.

     3.) We take a lot of vacations from church. I am not anti-vacation. But 20 years or so ago, we would make certain we attended a church where we were taking a vacation. Today, many members take a vacation from church.

     4.) We do not have high expectations of our members. Any purposeful organization expects and gets much of it members, whether it’s a sports team or a civic organization. It is ironic that most churches do not come close to being a high expectation church.

     5.) We make infrequent attendees leaders in our churches. When we do, we are making a clear statement that even the leaders of the church do not have to be committed to the place they supposedly lead.

     I heard a leader of an organization tell the members he did not want them if they were not fully committed. They could not be AWOL if they wanted to be a part of the group. He expected full commitment [Sounds a bit like Jesus - Luke 14:25-33]. He is a high school football coach. And all the team members follow that high expectation of commitment. If we truly expect to make a difference in our communities, and our families, members of local churches need to have at least the same level of commitment as members of sports teams.  After all, the mission of each local church is far more important.  At least it should be..."

     One of my favorite hymns since becoming a believer is one written in 1800 by Timothy Dwight, "I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord."   You don't hear it much any more, and many would even struggle to sing it if they were required to be totally truthful and honest before doing so.  Yet, although the church is messy, and it's members are (as the Word assures us) sinners in the process of being sanctified, and thus there are and always will be problems (as in any human gathering of diverse souls), it is still the Bride Christ loves. The ones He chose to join to Himself in holy union. The objects of His sacrificial joy and affection, and His chosen means to continue carrying out His work on earth (feeble as we often are at that task).

     That's why this hymn resonates with me. Because when I am loving His church, I am loving those He loves, has redeemed, has laid down His life, and is preparing for an eternity in His presence (Eph. 5:25-27). See if you could sing these words:

"I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord. The House of Thine abode. 

The Church our blest Redeemer saved, with His own precious blood.

I love Thy Church, O God!  Her walls before Thee stand, 

Dear as the apple of Thine eye, and graven on Thy hand.

For her my tears shall fall; For her my prayers ascend; 

To her my cares and toils be giv'n, Till toils and cares shall end.

Beyond my highest joy, I prize her heav'nly ways, 

Her sweet communion, solemn vows, and hymns of love and praise."

     Oh for more members of the Bride who felt the same way about the Bride!  It would be "self-love" of the best kind!  Not because the Church is perfect (it never will be, at least in this age), but because in doing so we are loving those Christ chose as His Bride. We are doing as He commanded when He said to His disciples: "Love one another as I have love you."

Just more food for thought...

In His Service, Pastor Jeff