Search

Custom Search

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Sowing seed and church emergence

Was Paul a church planter?

I don't think so.

Heresy? No. If we look at the pattern in scripture, Paul preached Christ. He went to a new city, and he and any partner taught and discussed Jesus. There is no scriptural proof to any claim that he started churches. He taught about Jesus, then left town after leaving that foundation. ONLY on return trips did he do anything with structure - and an open honest reading of the scripture would seem to say he recognized the structure that emerged, not set it up.

So he taught Jesus, left the disciples to their own, then returned to see how they were doing and recognize the structure that grow up.

And speaking of that ...

The Structure

What was the structure of the early church?

Does it matter?

If Jesus builds his church, is it our concern? If the early pattern was to simply be disciples in community, what emerges would be what He wants, wouldn't it?

This thought, and the growing ramifications of it, have been on my mind more and more. The conflict with it was all the thoughts of what we see in Paul's letters of structure, and a background in the descendants of the Restoration Movement (a frontier faith movement from the time when the frontier of the U.S. was Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, etc.)

But reading yet another church's website on trying to be "culturally relevant" made me pause: what if what Paul (and to some extent, Peter) was what would be expected of the church where and when they saw the seed of Jesus was planted. Some quick research and recollection of studies of the synagogues of Jesus time confirmed my suspicions.

The synagogues were overseen by councils of elders, much like the elders oversaw the communities Paul and Peter ministered to. Since the early churches emerged initially alongside Jewish synagogues, it would make sense that the church reflected (in a neutral way) the culture the seed of Jesus was planted in.

Where the church has in the past broken free from the restrictions of "doing it like them over there" or "them back then", we see similar patterns emerge. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, resembles the Roman Empire a lot, right or wrong (the way it sets up a hierarchy between Jesus and "the royal priesthood of believers" is an issue, for example). Instead of an emperor, one has a pope; instead of regional governors, cardinals; instead of local heads, bishops; etc. This pattern of reflecting predominant cultural elements continues to the modern day "non-denominational" churches reflecting modern business - the CEO is the senior pastor, any associate pastors are the vice presidents, there is a board of directors (sometimes called the board of elders for churches), etc.

So this concept is not new to even institutional churches, though I would argue (and have) that their implementation has strayed from some fundamental principles of following Christ with the dichotomy of "professional class" Christians and the laity.

So if we were to accept that what we see in the epistles is a reflection of what the church emerges as from the seed of Jesus in the first century, what does it look like today?

I think there are literally hundreds if not thousands of answers to that, one for each culture in the world. The key is freeing ourselves of being like what we've seen in the past in order to be free for what Jesus wants to build among our community.

I think it begins by not "rushing" to form "something" because we feel "disobedient" for not having "church". Church, in the truest sense, is community. It is community that encourages and equips one another. We all have contributions to that. It doesn't have to be formal gatherings, though it may include that. It doesn't need to rush to find leaders (as Jesus is the head anyway). Just as Paul didn't anoint leaders on his first trip anywhere he went. It doesn't require a formal staff, a building or the trappings that require balancing budgets or capital campaigns.

We've lost something in our rush to "plant" churches. We've discovered churchianity when we rush to form a church, rather than finding Jesus Christ.

Community

Think free of church as you've known it. What has your circle of friends, your communities, looked like? Maybe that's what the seed of Jesus planted in your arena looks like as church.

No comments: