7/05/12.           QUESTION: HOW ABOUT “ECCLESIAL TELEOLOGY”?

Teleology is the field of philosophy that has to do with design and purpose.

Several of us were engaged in a discussion about the enigma of the church the other day. One of the guys in the discussion is a systems analyst (which is, actually, an information technology field), but he was also fascinated with systems theory in general. He came up with the proposition that any corporate body, or any community, needs to know why it exists. He insisted that a healthy community (or company) needed: 1.) a core-principle, and 2.) a core-discipline. The core-principle has to do with why the community exists, and its purpose. The core-discipline has to do with how it achieves that purpose.

When I was a bewildered new pastoral leader, fresh-out of theological school (where no one had asked these questions), and found myself in a small and essentially dysfunctional church community, I used to wonder about these very questions: What am I doing here? What is this all about? Why am I doing the things I’m doing? What do the folk who called me here expect of me? Does any of it have anything to do with what God purposes for his church, or with Jesus, or with the Great Commission?

Jesus told his followers that he would be building his church, but that they were to be making disciples. OK? So what was this church he would be building? What was its purpose? What would it look like? What did making disciples have to do with whatever that church was that Jesus was building

Good questions?

So during the subsequent 55+ years I have been processing these questions, working on having some integrity, and finding fellow-travellers along the way. Let me share my own persuasion with you here.

First, I am persuaded that the core-principle for the church that Jesus is building has to somehow be vitally expressive the gospel of the kingdom of God, and with Jesus’ word that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to the nations.” That’s the agenda, and the church has to be somehow instrumental in that design.

And, secondly, that would mean that the core-discipline is the disciple-making necessary to equip men and women, i.e., all of Christ’s followers, to be maturely functioning in that purpose. Every believer must be equipped to understand the message, and be responsibly engaged in the design of God.

Along the way I have found others engaged in these same convictions. In the blogs that will follow I will “chase some of these rabbits” and invite your responses, experiences, and questions.

All praise to the Lamb of God. Amen.