BLOG 4.26.19. THE CHURCH: THE RECREATION OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY

BLOG 4.26.19. THE CHURCH: THE RECREATION OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY

One of the first tragic results of humankind’s rebellion agaist the Creator-God was that they immediately knew they were naked and so made aprons of leaves with which to hides from each other, … and it went downhill from there. This brief episode that inhabits the early pages of scripture tells us worlds about the deterioration of the human community, of man’s inhumanity to man, and of our continued attempts to hide our true selves from others. So, that when Jesus announces that he is going to build his church (Matthew 16), what he is saying is that as he fulfills his God-given mission to reconcile us to God by his blood, and to inaugurate the age to come right here in this age, he is also going to recreate the human community and so demonstrate the communal expression of that new creation … to restore human relationships as they were intended, i.e., his followers were to love one another with the same self-giving love with which he loved them.

That said, the quest for privacy and to hide our true selves from one another runs deep. Yet, as the story of his new creation unfolds after his ascension, we find believers together from house around the message of the apostles, in intimate fellowship with one another, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers, and no one considered his possession as his/her own. In short, they abandoned their hiding places and began the emergence of the communal expressions of God’s new creation in Christ.

But, back to us, … that’s easier said than done. Our quest for autonomy, or for privacy is deep rooted, even at times pathological. We can take public baptismal vows and state that we are sinners, but working that out in communal/social relationships is a huge learning-curve. First, enter the huge number of one another passages in the New Testament writings (59 by count). We are to love one another as Christ’ loves us (selflessly), we are to confess our sins to one another, we are to bear one another’s burdens, we are to offer hospitality to one another, we are to be patient with one another, we are to stop passing judgement on one another, … and so much more.

But back to my last blog of the necessity of disciple-making: It’s one thing to say these things and to teach them, but we need mentors who are also practitioners, or who are models of these expressions of our ministry to one another, who show us what that new creation community in all of its local communal expressions look like. This is where the role of pastor-teachers becomes crucial, in which every individual is called by name and equipped to live and to minister according to this one another lifestyle.

In church history, when the very gifted John Calvin, at a very early age, was constrained to become the leader of the new reformation community in Geneva, Switzerland, he began by teaching scriptures every day from the pulpit of St. Peter’s Church, and as people began to respond and be baptized, Calvin knew that they needed teaching-shepherds to both instruct and to model these new reconciling relationships, and so he created what he called a College of Pastors to fulfill this need, and (as oral tradition has it) he wrote his classic Calvin’s Institutes as instructions for these pastors/elders/shepherds. The result, as history shows, was that the church in Geneva became a huge transformation force in the western world as it  modelled God’s new humanity.

But we must never forget that the church is the flesh and blood communal expression of our New Creation message, … and we learn as we attempt to be faithful to such a calling. Stay tuned.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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One Response to BLOG 4.26.19. THE CHURCH: THE RECREATION OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY

  1. Jermaine Ladd says:

    It’s only when we encounter each other daily or often that communism can organically occur.

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