Enchanted Community

BLOG 12/9/13. CHRIST’S INCARNATION AND OURS: RIGHTEOUSNESS

The point I’m attempting to make in these Advent blog posts is: that God was made flesh and blood in Jesus … but it doesn’t stop there. It is also God’s purpose that those who are reconciled to God through Christ, i.e., those who are believers in/followers of Christ, also are to be “conformed to the image of God’s Son” (Romans 8:29). Jesus is the firstborn of God’s New Creation (Kingdom of God), and all who come to him are also to be created anew into the image of God—or in God’s design for his human community. God’s people are to be those in whom God’s glory is continually incarnated and visible to the watching world.

We can extrapolate from a couple of other New Testament texts (Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10) something of what this image consists of: knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness. Each of those descriptions carries enormous freight. In the last Blog I attempted to unpack the knowledge piece of the image. Now let me take a stab at the true righteousness piece—like, if we’re going to celebrate God’s invasion of his creation in the coming of Jesus, then we’ve got to go on and face the consequences of that for those of us who are his followers.

This information age is surfeited with data and web-sites and access to resources—but this attribute of the image of God in God’s people has to do with the modeling of the will of God in the realities of daily life. Most of the folk with whom we mingle are not interested in hearing a sermon, or reading a book … but their attention is drawn to those figures, who incarnate the love and justice of God. Someone has coined the term: orthopraxis, i.e., the doing of the truth. In the Jewish community a person who “keeps Torah” is a tzadik, a righteous person. Such exhibit consistent love of God and love of neighbor. We pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven” and often do not connect that with our own lives. Jesus taught that those who have his word and do it are those who are his true disciples. These become visible gospel.

At the threshold of the Sermon on the Mount is the point that those who do its teachings are those whose good works men see … and glorify God, or know that such behavior has God as its source. Peter also teaches that we are to live such lives among those who are still unaware of God’s love in Christ … that they will see our behavior and ask the reason for the hope that is in us. Righteous lives rebuke the skeptics and those of no faith. It makes them curious.

It is apropos to this understanding of the impact of true righteousness to read the accounts so prominent this past week of the life and career of Nelson Mandela. It was not his personal beliefs, or his counter-cultural activities that ultimately made his quest for justice so powerful. It was, rather, that he demonstrated love, reconciliation, forgiveness, patience, and kindness in a gentle demeanor. I have no idea what Mandela’s Christian profession might have been, but he is an incredible model of what all of God’s sons and daughters should look like, and how they should live out their love of God and love of neighbor—demonstrate in daily life: the strength and sweetness of Christ. Subversive maybe–but always with love and grace.

Such is to be our incarnation. Doers of the word. “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous” (I John 3:7). Got it?

BLOG 12/4/13. GOD’S INCARNATION AND OURS: KNOWLEDGE

 It is not sufficient for us who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ, to allow our observance of Advent and Christmas to be a brief remembrance of the “Holy Child of Bethlehem,” with our candlelight and (often) ‘unreality’ worship services. Rather, we need to remember that the purpose of the incarnation of God in Christ was to inaugurate a whole new creation, and to call forth a new humanity of women and men all conformed to the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. Yes, and one of the dimensions of that new creation of God in us is that we are to be “renewed in knowledge after the image of [our] creator” (Colossians 3:10).

Please remember also that when God chose to reveal himself to his creation that he sent his Son, he took on flesh and blood. Jesus was not a concept, nor was his revelation of God a kind of intangible spiritual thing, but rather, Jesus unabashedly declared that he was the truth. Our modern world has been intimidated by so much of the Enlightenment protestation that if something is not scientifically verifiable, then it can’t be called ‘true.’ But God’s truth is more than a concept, it is meta-conceptual, it is huge and acknowledges the Reality beyond the reality. It declares that Jesus is the reason all things exist. Jesus left people in awe by his miracles, by his death and by his resurrection, by his familiarity with One whom he called: Father. Jesus taxes our minds and our imaginations. Jesus speaks of the divine purpose for this creation.

Part of what makes the church, in its better expressions, such a transforming force is that it reveals the mystery hidden from the ages but now made know in Christ. It speaks of what is not seen, and it stretches the imagination. It is enchanted because it sees and knows beyond what is seen and what is knowable in merely human terms. As the late J. B. Philips rendered Colossians 1:9: God’s new creation people are to “see all things from God’s point of view.”

This is all to say, that we who are called by faith into God’s new creation in Christ are never to be mindless—and unfortunately, the church is quite too often just that: mindless. Mark Noll wrote a book, a few years back, entitled: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and his opening remark was that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind—that evangelical Christians are too often mindless, with their minds in neutral just parroting familiar Christian jargon. The obverse of that would be the late Dallas Willard, who was both a wonderful herald of a profound understanding of Christian discipleship, but also the chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Southern California. I asked him on an informal occasion how he related to his faculty colleagues who were not believers in Christ. I loved his modesty. He acknowledged that he had much to learn from them, but that he also was aware that there were dimensions of intellect that he possessed because of his Christian faith that he had to share with his colleagues.

On this Advent Christian observance, we need to remember that God’s incarnation in Christ also means for us that he calls us to be renewed in knowledge as his disciples. To be a mindless, albeit professing, Christian is an oxymoron. We can never be satisfied with simplistic and mindless pulpit pep talks. We are God’s ongoing incarnation in Christ. God’s love for the world in which we live is far too important for mindless Christianity.

BLOG 12/2/13. INCARNATION: GLORY AND EXCELLENCE

Picking up on my last Blog … Advent and Christmas have such huge implications for you and me. They are, ultimately, not about the baby Jesus or about the manger and wise men (though that was the entrance drama), but about God’s own invasion of his rebel humanity, and doing it in the flesh and blood person of Jesus. It is about God inaugurating his New Creation—his Kingdom. It is about God reconciling the world to himself through the blood of his Son.

But for us, it doesn’t even end with such a comprehension of the drama of the Word made flesh in Jesus, and dwelling among us. That joyous reality begins to get closer to home when we tune-in to what Jesus was saying at Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:16-19), when he responded to Peter’s dawning understanding, by announcing that it was out of this divine purpose that he, Jesus Christ, was going to call out a people—was going to built his church—and that it would be his instrument of destroying the heart of the rebellion, the “gates of hell.” It is not for naught that the church is also referred to as: the body of Christ. Jesus’ purpose was precisely that, namely, that his own incarnation as the Son of God, would be ongoing in his own incarnation in his people. His people are to be the flesh and blood demonstration of God’s New Creation right in the midst of this broken, alienated, often-traumatic human community—and Jesus isn’t talking about attending church meetings.

Paul will say to the Colossian Christians that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled with him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:9-10). Elsewhere the apostle reminds his readers that it is the purpose of God that they be recreated into the image of Christ. The incarnation of God continues in the people Christ calls to be his own: to live their daily lives: in Christ. Our Christian calling (vocation) is not to some profession or occupation—it is our calling to Christ, to be in him, to be his ongoing incarnation. We have come up with a whole subverted concept of vocation, alas!

Face it: This is humanly impossible. Absolutely! Our calling is humanly impossible. The church (as it is intended to be) is humanly impossible. Our daily incarnation is humanly impossible. So, where do we go with that?

For our purposes here, let me refer you to a most remarkable concept of our calling, our incarnation. Here it is: “[God’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that them through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (II Peter 1:3-4).

Our calling is to be the demonstration of God’s glory and excellence, and to live out such in the 24/7 realities of life and work, in unemployment lines and concentration camps, Wall Street or Walmart—you name it. Wherever your daily lot finds you, it is there that you are called to be the incarnation of God, “the radiant display of the divine nature” (borrowed from Gregory Boyd’s definition of ‘glory’). This is where it counts.

If we miss this ultimate design of God’s incarnation in Jesus at this Advent-Christmas season … then we’ve missed the meaning of the whole celebration. “O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today …” Glory and excellence! Yes, amen!

BLOG 11/27/13: IN ALL THINGS, GIVE THANKS

“Let all things now living A song of thanksgiving

To God our Creator triumphantly raise;

Who fashioned and made us, Protected and stayed us,

By guiding us on to the end of our days.

God’s banners are o’er us, Pure light goes before us,

A pillar of fire shining forth in the night:

Till shadows have vanished, All fearfulness banished,

As forward we travel from light into Light.

“By law God enforces. The stars in their courses,

The sun in its orbit obediently shine;

The hills and the mountains, The rivers and fountains,

The depths of the ocean proclaim God divine.

We, too, should be voicing Our love and rejoicing

With glad adoration, a song let us raise:

Till all things now living Unite in thanksgiving,

To God in the highest, hosanna and praise.”

(Hymn by Katherine Davis, 1939)

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This hymn as my Thanksgiving blog for you. I do also commend to my readers Pope Francis’ very recent papal encyclical: Evangelii Gaudium. A superb word. Peace!

BLOG 11/25/13. THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING: IMPLICATIONS.

Yesterday, in the liturgical year, was the celebration of the Feast of Christ the King. Never heard of it? Well, it is a latecomer in the liturgical calendar, having only been introduced in the mid-1920s into the Roman Catholic calendar by Pope Pius XI, and only in more recently has it made its way into the calendars of some Protestant denominations. But I love it! It seems a fitting climax of the long liturgical season called: Ordinary Time.

That at least once a year we should focus intensely on that One who is Lord of All, King of the universe, whose Name is above every name. Here is the One who is the glory of the Father, the One by whom and for whom all things are created. That such a celebration should precede the season of Advent in all the more fascinating.

Let me retrieve the delicious paraphrase from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one of a kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish” (John 1:14).

Then, consider that it is God eternal/eschatological design to call out a new humanity in and through Christ, a New Creation community, each of person of which community is to be conformed to the image of this same Son (Romans 8:29). That has awesome implications. If God was in Christ becoming flesh and blood and moving into the neighborhood, then that means that all of us who have come to that Son by faith, are also to become those who are the flesh and blood demonstrations of that same glory of God, the radiant display of the divine nature, and living in our respective neighborhoods. This means that every believer’s life is sacred, and is purposeful in the eternal design of God.

But let’s go on … we are also instructed to have this mind in us “which is ours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:5-7). And where did this happen? It happened right in the neighborhood, right in the “stink and stuff” of daily life, right in the midst of often intractable and uncontrollable circumstances, in the midst of many unlikeable and often pernicious personalities … along with all of those wonderful expressions of beauty, justice, human love, caring, humor, and courtesy.

Yes, Christ the King is the suffering servant who comes to us where we are—not where we’re not! We are to be the living, breathing incarnations of his life and mission, of his glory, whether we’re executives in the boardroom, or minimum wage employees scrubbing urinals in the restroom of a fast-food franchise. And the celebration of Advent takes us right to that calling. Exciting. Incarnation. God with us. Purpose.
Daily work. Suffering. Hilarious joy. Such implications flow out of such celebrations. The psalmist says that those on their way to Zion make it a place of springs (Psalm 84). That’s precisely what Christ in us is to produce: springs of God’s miraculous New Life in the midst of the often barrenness of this present social and cultural scene. Christ the King! Then Advent, and our own calling as the sons and daughters who are the incarnations of that Light right in our neighborhood.

The late Dick Halverson used to give, as part of his benediction: “Wherever you go, Christ goes!” Amen.

BLOG 11/20/13. CHURCH: “ … FOR WE FORGET SO SOON …”

In the grand old gospel hymn: Tell Me the Old, Old Story, there is the wonderful line, which says: “Tell me the story often, For I forget so soon.” That forgetfulness has been endemic with the Christian church since the beginning, and one would think that we might become alert to such a perennial danger and put in place some ongoing defense, but such seems not to be the case. We see it taking place already in the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor in Revelation 2-3. They were one generation away from their founding in the apostolic period, yet already most were beginning to drift into forgetfulness, or distraction—except for the two under persecution, who seem to have had a clear vision of who they were (reminds one of Samuel Johnson’s comment that the threat of hanging in a fortnight clarifies the mind wonderfully!).

I am always taken with Jacques Ellul’s excellent word to us, that in such a drift into something less than the full, vigorous, transformational, rigorous Christianity set forth in the New Testament the church seems to have become: “the victim of a frightful conspiracy that all the world’s powers and seductive forces have united to transform this revelation, this work of God, into a banal, conformist, and vulnerability Christianity” (for Ellul, the term ‘Christianity’ has been so compromised that he considers it a description of an essentially subverted entity).[1]

Such banality, conformity, and vulnerability are, lamentably and tragically, an altogether apt description of a vast number of venerable the church institutions of my experience. “For we forget so soon!”

Or, maybe Annie Dillard speaks of this same, soon forgetfulness when she asks the question: “Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C. Presumably someone is minding the ship, correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals … the winds seem to be picking up. … Does anyone have the foggiest idea…?”[2] Or, the question of the angel to the seven churches of Asia Minor: “Does anyone have ears to hear?”

And yet in the most banal, forgetful, distracted church communities there are, thankfully, so often those pockets of remembrance: i.e., classes, community groups, home gatherings, informal accountability fellowships, etc. which exist within, but somewhat independent of ,the forgetful church institutions where they have their connections. These tend to exist apart from the formal and ordained church leadership, and express the gifts mentioned in my last Blog. (I wrestle with this in my book Refounding the Church From the Underside.)

Yes, the communities of remembrance, who are formed by the “old, old story of Jesus and His love” are always formed and being formed in unusual and unexpected places. God does not leave Himself without a witness … even in the traditional churches that have, themselves, become mission fields.

But stand by: there is a new generation arising that is marvelously creative and which thinks beyond the parameters of traditional thinking, and may be more Biblically literate. There is arising a generation formed by totally different cultural dynamics, and has the capacity to being into being church communities that are alive, and faithful, and remembering in forms that are contagious with New Creation life, and transformational in their influence—anything but “banal, conformist, and vulnerable.”

At this moment in our history, we are in that cultural whitewater carrying us irresistibly into the unimaginable next form of God’s mission among us. My response: “Whee!”

BLOG 11/18/13. (CONT.) THE CHURCH AND THE MONDAY MORNING WORLD

Continuing on from my last (11/13) Blog … the church, essentially, has two forms: 1) the church gathered for encouraging and equipping, and 2) the church scattered as the sons and daughters of light engaged in the mission of God. These two forms need each other. We need to gather: “teaching and admonishing one another” and so having our vision and purpose clarified for ourengagement in the other six days of the week. But our being gathered is so that we may be faithful and effective in that mission of God for which we are called during the other six days. Each of these two forms is incomplete without the other. A gathering that is rich in causing the word of Christ to become incarnate in our lives is only ultimately purposeful if we, then, are faithful in being authentic as God’s New Creation people when we are scattered. (Have I dinged that theme often enough now?)

Yesterday, with my own ‘church gathered’ I had conversations with: a youth worker, an architect (actually two architects), a graduate student in neuroscience, a tattoo artist (who is also a New Testament scholar), a surgeon, a delivery truck driver, an actress, a script writer, an environmentalist, parents and homemakers, and a machinist (among others). It is thrilling to contemplate their calling to be the light of the world in the ‘ordinariness’ of their other six days.

One of the church’s dimensions is that it is a community of knowledge (see last Blog). But it is also a community in mission, in the praxis of the gospel, and so we need to have a basic grasp of the other three gifts that Paul says (in Ephesians 4) are necessary for God’s people to be equipped: apostle, prophet, and evangelist. The knowledge of the word of Christ (the role of gift of pastor-teacher ) is foundational for the other three gifts. It instills a passion for Jesus Christ along with the understanding of his calling, and the scope of his great salvation in each believer. But it is not an end in itself. The knowledge equips for the mission, for the praxis of the gospel through each believer.

Accept my interpretation of these other three gifts for what they’re worth, but check them out. The apostles in the New Testament are the missionary church planters, i.e., those who formed new Christian communities wherever they sojourned—house churches, conventicles, community groups, small gatherings of believers that were demonstrative of the relationships of love created as expressions of God’s new creation. The church is to be a community of apostles.

The prophets are those who have somewhat adequately ‘exegeted the culture,’ i.e. who understand the social, cultural, political, etc. context in which they operate (in the midst of the “stink and stuff” of daily life). The church is to be a community of prophets.

And, finally, the evangelists are those who have skills in communicating the message of Christ both by their new creation behavior, their good works, … but also are skillful in good purposeful conversation with those whom they meet along the way. This involves good listening, the ability to ask gentle questions, and the capacity to answer gently and sensitively those who ask a reason for the hope that is in us, with grace and good humor. Evangelists are the incarnation of the love of God to their neighbors. So the church is to be a community of evangelists.

These gifts equip the people of God for ‘the other six days’ and are be expressed in the life of every believer. But these gifts are also given substance by the excellence of our daily lives and work and responsibilities. God has called us to his own glory and excellence (II Peter 1:3). If people are to take us seriously, then our lives must deserve such.

Does that sound like a plan? Let me hear from you, and (if you can do it with good conscience) recommend these Blogs to your friends.

BLOG 11/13/13. ONE ALWAYS HAS TO ASK THE BASIC QUESTIONS

One of my favorite television mysteries has been P.B.S.’s Inspector Morse. In a recent episode Morse is exhorting his young aide that in any criminal investigation and about evidence, one always needs to pursue the question: Why? Why was this evidence overlooked? Why did this person do this and not that? Etc. I have the same sense of questioning the purpose of so much of our understanding of the church, its essence and its mission. And we must ask not only why? but also what?, and how?.

Take, for-instance, an interesting implication from the familiar (and often yanked out of context) text of Romans 8, which tells us that God works all things for good to those who are called according to his purpose. And just what is that purpose? Paul goes on to tell us that the purpose is that those whom God loves “be conformed to the image of his Son.” That, in turn, opens the question for us of exactly what that image of his Son might look like? What are the dimensions, or characteristics of that image? Which in turn opens up the question of how, exactly, is that image formed in us? And then: whose responsibility is it to be the equipping agent in that process of conforming? All of which brings us back to my quest for a church for the Monday morning world, a church that produces sons and daughters of light who can function in the often-intractable exigencies of everyday life, and do it knowledgeably and with grace.

We can extrapolate from Paul’s writings that there are at least three major components of the image of Christ that are to be formed in us: 1) in Ephesians 4:24 Paul identifies the image of the likeness of God as true righteousness which pertains to the behavior (or Kingdom behavior) of God’s people; and 2) as holiness, which has to do with our being in synch, or in that unhindered intimacy with God, with the divine nature, as was true of Christ. Then, 3) in Colossians 3:10 Paul again refers to this new self, or new creation person, as one who is “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

In summary, we know that it is God’s purpose to recreate his people in at least these three dimensions of their persons: knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness, i.e., in their thinking, in their behavior, and in their relationship of intimacy with the triune God. So then, how does that happen? Which brings us back to the Ephesians 4 text I spoke of in my last couple of blogs.  There, Paul tells us that the risen Lord Jesus has given to his church four gifts for the equipping of God’s people (his saints) for their works of ministry. It would be the function of one of those gifts: that of the teaching-shepherd/pastor-teacher to equip God’s people with the knowledge that they would need to have about who they are, and about God’s design in them, and about the provisions of his love and grace through Jesus Christ.

First off, then, the church is to be a community that incarnates the knowledge of God’s great salvation, i.e., a community that thinks like God, that sees all things from God’s point of view, that wears the helmet of salvation. Every follower/disciple of Christ needs to have that basic sense of his/her calling into God’s great salvific mission, so that the church can never be mindless if it is to have integrity. The church is the community of the knowledge of God and of God’s salvation. That’s the beginning place.

Next time: that same Ephesians passage says that the church is a community that incarnates the gifts of: apostle, prophet, and evangelist. But it is never, never, never a community of passive consumers of religion!

BLOG 11/11/13. CONCEIVING OF ‘THE CHURCH FOR THE OTHER SIX DAYS’ (CONT.)

Stick with me as I pursue the theme of the 10/31/13 Blog on a ‘church for the other six days.’ One of the initial complications I face in even seeking to address such a church is the fact that a very large percentage of the church, and its leadership are not interested (other than in theory) in such a conception of the church. And there’s a reason for that. Let me refer you back to my Blog of October 2 in which I retrieved Wes Seeliger’s marvelous metaphor from his Western Theology of the two kinds of churches: the Settler church, and the Pioneer church. That imagery was (and is) incredibly insightful.

In that imagery the Settler church wanted permanence and security, and so hunkered down in the town, and the church was the courthouse where they met on Sunday. They have ice-cream socials, get inspiration, and are content with such. God was the mayor, and had everything under control, and so Christians were comfortable settlers. Not so with the Pioneer church. For the pioneer church the church was the covered wagon. Remember?

What we’re dealing with is the reality that a large percentage of the church in the west, which has been formed for over a millennium and a half with a settler conception of the church. The church is a place of spiritual security under the careful control of church professionals. It is focused on the rites held in church buildings. What happens the rest of the week is not at all the focus. And, all too often, the participants like it just that way. To even propose that every follower of Christ is to be engaged in the twenty-four/seven ministry of the church is received with non-comprehension. I am willing to conclude that most don’t even have ears to hear such an alternative conception of the church. Such Settler churches become what one has called: stagnant pools of religious Christianity.

Pioneer churches are quite the opposite. They are those where no one is uninvolved, and where all must be equipped to confront the challenges every day. In the Pioneer church the church is the wagon train, and is about life on the trail of life, sharing goals, dangers, intractable problems, resources, in a mutual life of arriving at a destination. No one is passive. When they circle the wagons at the end of the day, they share their stories and needs and mutual challenges. It never gets dull.

Such a conception of the Pioneer church is a great metaphor for the church that is truly missional. A truly missional church begins with every member knowing what it is that Christ came to be and to do, and knowing why it is that they are called by Christ to be engaged in the mission. It is with such an understanding that the Ephesians 4 passage on the four gifts of the Spirit throbs with relevance for us. It contends that Christ gave four gifts so that all of God’s people be equipped for maturity, “to the measure of the stature of Christ,” i.e., for life on the trail.

The teaching-shepherd gift is the one that equips with the understanding of how Christ and his calling are the determinative reality of all the rest. But the other three gifts speak to the involvement of all of God’s people in the mission of engaging this present scene as the incarnations of the design of God to make all things new.

But you’ve got to have ears to hear such a calling, or else you become a settler, and totally miss the point of God’s calling.

A church for the other six days comes with significant demands by Jesus Christ, it requires a cross! [Invite your friends to subscribe to this Blog and join us in the journey.]

BLOG 11/7/13. A CHURCH FOR THE OTHER SIX DAYS: LEADERSHIP

A church for the other six days must somehow equip and encourage every member to function in a context that is often frustrating, complex, alien, and replete with polluted ethics. There are those omnipresent “thorns [that] infest the ground,” as the hymn states the situation. To even stand at the threshold of conceiving a church that meets such a need is intimidating and multi-dimensional. But such a church community must be totally engaged in the lives of its participants, and this especially involves out conception of church leadership.

I am proposing that we need a whole different, or new, conception of church leadership—a whole more well defined function of those teaching-shepherds, or pastors. He, or she, cannot and must not be one who is detached from the existential lives of those for whom they are responsible. They must not be lost in their spiritual, in-house, clergy world. Such must come up through the ranks and prove themselves as those with the capacity to encourage and equip every member into maturity in Christ. Note that I am using one of the few definitions of how the church function as found in Ephesians 4.

It is a stretch, but we must realize that so much of how we conceive of the church today does not come from the New Testament. Jesus told his disciples that he would build his church, but never gave them a pattern or blueprint other than it was to be a new creation community and a missionary movement. The apostles (especially Paul) give us a sense of how the Holy Spirit equips the church for its communal and missional integrity. For myself, I find that Ephesians 4 is fascinating in its implications. It says that the Risen Lord gives four gifts to the church so that every member attain mature adulthood which is to grow into the stature of the fullness of Christ—no longer dependent children, or those blown about by every cultural zeitgeist—and so equipped to be functioning and reproductive participants in the mission.

There are four such gifts mentioned, but never defined. But they point us to the character of the Christian community: there is the gift of apostle, or the missionary (missionary church-planter?) gift; there is the gift of prophecy, which is the capacity to understand and exegete the cultural context (“the other six days” realities); then comes the gift of evangelist, or those who are equipped to communicate the thrilling reality of the gospel of God’s new creation in Christ; and then there is the gift of teaching-shepherd (or pastor-teacher) gift, which would be the one who forms believers in the Word of Christ. All four are critical in the equipping ministry.

All four of these gifts, then, are necessary for the equipping every member for the other six days. That would mean that a Christian community of integrity would be an apostolic community, a prophetic community, and evangelistic community, and a community deeply formed by the Word of Christ.

I simply want to insist that that teaching-shepherd gift must be a person who has come up through the ranks and is in profound conversation with those for whom he/she is responsible . . . plus, she/he must be one whom is well-versed and knowledgeable of that Word of Christ, and is a practitioner of the same, so as to be able to equip others with integrity and depth. Hence, he must be deeply immersed in the lives and realities of those he is equipping, and in their “other six days” lives, as well as deeply immersed in the message and mission of Christ. Such leaders are not automatically, or usually, a result of an academic degree from a theological school—it is a result of being deeply invested in, and immersed in the lives of those whom she is equipping.

Got it? I’ll come back to the other three equally necessary gifts next time.