The Church 1:
Mission as Forming Gathered Communities of Christ
Introduction
The evidence of Acts and Paul’s letters demonstrates
that the object of mission for Paul included proclamation of the Gospel
(evangelism), the formation of Christian communities (church planting), and nurturing
the churches in the faith. It also
included remembering the poor (Gal. 2.10).
An understanding of each of these is essential for one’s understanding
of mission. This series of posts will
focus on the church (a community of believers) and the Church (the universal
followers of Christ). It begins,
however, with a third meaning of ‘church’: the church as a gathered community of Christ.
The Gathered Church as a Community for Worship
In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of something special
about the gathered people of
God. We might say that when Christians gather as the church—as opposed simply
to Christians gathering together—this is a spiritually constituted gathering. Thus
Paul can say, ‘When you come together as a church’ (1 Cor. 11.18). The phrase ‘When you come together’ appears
five times in this passage about the celebration of the Lord’s Supper or
Eucharist (1 Cor. 11.17-34). This is not
just a fellowship of believers or a discussion of spiritual things—it is an
intentional coming together as a church (or
assembly)—as the people of God. When Christians have coffee together, or when
Christians have a spiritual discussion with other Christians or non-Christians,
this does not constitute a ‘gathered church’. Similarly, the more we turn worship services
into the equivalent of coffee shop gatherings (and I have nothing against
coffee!), the more our actual church services are not the gathered church.
What Paul says about the gathered Church is that something happens in this context that is
very serious, and serious consequences can follow if people behave in ways contrary
to the practice of worship. If the Lord’s
Supper is, among other things, a celebration of the unity of believers, but the
Supper is actually celebrated with disunity (some persons asserting their
status over others), then divine judgement will follow. Paul says that some are sick and some have
even died as a result of the Corinthians’ sinful performance of this practice
(1 Cor. 11.30), for they eat and drink judgement against themselves (v. 29). This letter, 1 Corinthians, involves several other
passages that speak of the ‘church’ as a spiritually gathered assembly, but the
actual phrase, ‘When you
come together,’ appears one other time in 1 Corinthians—in 1 Cor. 14.26:
When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a
revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building
up.’
Once
again, ‘coming together’ involves Christian worship. So, the question needs to be raised, ‘When
mission activity focuses on the formation of communities of Christian worship
(as it must), what are the characteristics of this worship?’ Indeed, the result of mission is worship, but
we seldom see or experience the spiritual depth of what this meant for Paul in
many churches.
The Gathered Church as a People of Divine Authority, Judgement, and
Forgiveness
Indeed,
one aspect of the gathered church is that
its gathering is in and with the power of the Spirit and the presence and
authority of Jesus Christ. This
authority may involve judgement. In 1
Cor. 5, for example, the gathered church constitutes a judicial assembly. Paul can even join it in spirit when he is
physically absent (1 Cor. 5.3)! Paul
says, regarding rendering judgement on the man in question, who is living with
his father’s wife,
When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the
power of our Lord Jesus, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord (1 Cor. 5.4-5).
In
this passage, the gathered church is
said to be a gathering ‘in the power of our Lord Jesus.’ This appears to be a general notion in the
early Church, since we find the idea in Matthew and in John as well. In Matthew, Jesus teaches his disciples to
exercise judgement in the gathered church
because their gathering involves the presence and authority of Jesus in their
midst:
For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them"
(Mt. 18.20).
The
risen Lord also speaks of the authority to forgive and render judgement in John’s
Gospel:
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn. 20.23).
Since
the English reader is unable to determine whether ‘you’ is singular or plural
in this verse, he or she may well think that this involves some individual—one of
the disciples or someone with ecclesiastical authority—forgiving or retaining
someone’s sins. However, the word is in
the plural, and once again the notion is that gathered believers who have been given the Holy Spirit have an
authority to render judgement.
Paul,
Matthew, and John seem to be saying the same thing, and this understanding
apparently arose from Jesus himself.
Thus, applying the language of John on this matter to what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 5, one might say that Paul is recommending retaining the sinner’s sins because he is unrepentant. In that case, as also in Mt. 18, the result
is exclusion from the community of believers.
In 1 Cor. 5, however, sending the person out into the realm of Satan ‘for
the destruction of the flesh’ is both the rendering of judgement and itself a
redemptive act. Indeed, in both Mt. 18
and 1 Cor. 5, judgement of a sinner is an action that is part of a redemptive
process for the individual and a cleansing process for the believing community,
God’s holy people. There is a slight
difference, though. In Mt. 18, exclusion
is the final act after a series of attempts to redeem the individual
sinner. In 1 Cor. 5, however, exclusion
is yet another redemptive action, since only by excluding a sinner can the
sinner realize that he or she is in reality apart from the community of Christ
and headed to eternal separation from both believers and God. Only then is there hope that the person, now
handed over to the realm of Satan, will repent and be willing to destroy or let
God destroy his or her ‘flesh’—the sinful passions and behaviours. Were a church to permit such an unrepentant
sinner to remain in its midst—as happens regularly today—the sinner would not
realize that his or her behaviour is sinful, would not realize that he or she
was in danger of eternal judgement, and would sully the purity of God’s holy
people.
The Church as a Cleansed People Gathered to Celebrate the Feast of Christ’s Passover
Indeed,
1 Cor. 5 makes the additional point that the gathered community, the church, is a holy assembly. They are God’s holy people, but they are also
a gathering of God’s holy people when
they come together, having cleansed and readied themselves to partake of Christ
their Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5.7). The
more we understand the gathering of
God’s people as the church, the more we will undermine some standard images of
the church that are frequently found in contemporary Western Christianity. Some see the church as a hospital in which sinners are in various stages of cure but, in
general, simply forgiven sinners. There
may be repentance and forgiveness, but there is very little aspiration to
holiness, and there is likely no belief in the transformation of the sinner
through the resurrection power of Christ at work in us (Rom. 6). Some see the church as a field in which wheat and weeds are growing side by side. This image may be combined with one of the
most misinterpreted texts in all of Scripture: the passage where Jesus says
that his disciples should not judge lest they be judged (Mt. 7.1). That passage is warning against hypocrisy; it
is not stating that sinners should not be judged. After all, Mt. 18.12-20 lays out a process
for bringing judgement in the church!
Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds in Mt. 13.24-30 states that
the field is the world, not the church!: the parable is about why God does not
bring judgement here and now into the world and is not at all teaching on how
to handle unbelievers in the church! And
some understand the church to be an audience
in which believers and unbelievers (‘seekers’) passively or actively participate
in singing and listening to a talk or watching some performance on a stage. As
the next section will explore, this could not be farther from an understanding
of the church as a gathered people of
God.
The Church Gathered for Prophetic Words and Spirit Filled Worship
While
unbelievers may be present in a gathered community
at worship, their experience of the Spirit-filled community, says Paul, is that
they come to understand what is being prophetically said to them. Thus, they are reproved and called to an
account by the prophetic word spoken to them by believers with the gift of
prophecy (1 Cor. 14.24). This, once
again, is a community that, in gathering
together ‘in church’ (not a building but the people of God; 1 Cor. 14.19, cf. vv.
28, 35), experiences the prophetic word and power of the Spirit. Paul says,
After the secrets of the unbeliever's heart are
disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring,
"God is really among you." (1 Cor. 14.25).
This
presence of the Holy Spirit in worship involves a ‘filling with the Spirit’ in
the gathered community’s worship. Paul describes this in Ephesians as singing
‘songs and
hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the
Lord in our hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for
everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ and being subject to one
another in fear of Christ (Eph. 5.19-20).
Conclusion
The
local church is, in the theology and experience of the early Church, so much
more than what we often take it to be. We see it as a building—it is not:
believers do not ‘go to church,’ as one of my beloved professors used to say
repeatedly, they ‘are the church’! We also often see the church as a campus that runs various programmes. The result of such a way of thinking is that
the church is thought to be successful if it has numerous, smoothly run
programmes for various groups—a Sunday School programme, a youth ministry
programme, a worship programme, and so forth.
The ‘programme church’ might grow very large—having programmes causes
growth—but such churches inevitably struggle to establish community. More seriously even than that, the programme
church fails to establish itself as a gathered
and spiritual community of Christ
and the Holy Spirit. Indeed, in many
cities around the world today, the successful church is thought to be the large
church, and the large church is a church defined by its programmes.
How
very, very different this is from Paul’s understanding of the church as a gathered assembly in the power of Christ
and the Holy Spirit. The local church
is, first, a worshiping community,
where worship is practiced and experienced as an expression of the power and
presence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Imagine
the gathered Church as a
Spirit-filled assembly overflowing with spiritual worship in songs,
thankfulness, and mutual submission creating unity among believers across the
social divisions of the world. Imagine gathering together on a Sunday morning
with the express thought that we are forming
in our assembling together a Spirit-gifted body (1 Cor. 12) where Christ
and the Spirit will be encountered and where ministry will take place. Imagine an understanding of the local church’s
gathering that involves the fear of
Christ, a holy awe as we encounter the very presence of God. Imagine understanding our gathering in such a way that judgement
may be rendered and sins forgiven or retained.
Imagine understanding the gathered
church as a prophetic community where unbelievers will fall under
conviction of their sins, repent, and find forgiveness—rather than made to feel
comfortable with their coffee mugs and light entertainment from the stage. Imagine all this as the result of mission—the gathered people of God. Paul
did. Matthew did. So did John.
In fact, it seems that Jesus did as well!
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