Ecclesia kai Basileia tou Theou

The Forgotten Ways, pgs 40-41

What are the irreducible minimums of a true expression of ecclesia? We came up with the following -- a church is:

• A covenanted community: A church is formed people not by people just hanging out together, but ones bound together in a distinctive bond. There is a certain obligation toward one another formed around a covenant.
• Centered on Jesus: he is the new covenant with God and he thus forms as the true epicenter of an authentica Christ-ian faith. An ecclesia is not just a God community -- there are many such religious communities around. We are defined by our relationship to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Mediator, Jesus Christ. A covenanted community centered around Jesus participates in the salvation that he brings. We recieve the grace of God in him. But, more is required to truly constitute a church.

A true encounter with God in Jesus must result in

• Worship, defined as offering our lives back to God through Jesus.
• Discipleship, defined as following jesus and becoming inccreasingly like him (Christlikeness).
• Mission, defined as extending the mission (the redemptive purposes) of God through the activities of his people.

It needs to be noted that practically as well as theologically these are profoundly interconnected, and each informs the other to create a complex phenomenon called "church." This definition is important because it distills the core aspects of what constitutes a faith ecclesia. Graphically represented it might look something like this:

(I couldn't find the actual model online, nor could I scan it, so I had to recreate it myself.)

So basically... I'm pretty sure that I read about a concept similar to this in another really good book I read. :-)

The Tangible Kingdom, pgs 147-148

During a recent international consultation on "community" that brought together monastic orders, house church, submonastic orders who work among the poor, and "normal" joes like us who get to thrash out church in the Western suburbs, the entire group realized that everyone shared, in some form or fashing, three primary aspects of incarnational life. As illustrated in Figure 18.1, they are communion, community, and mission. (once again, had to recreate the model)

Communion represents "oneness -- those things that make up our communal connction and worship of God. Community represents aspects of "togetherness" -- those things we share as we forn our lives together. And mission represents "otherness" the aspects of our life together that focus on people outside our community. We believe that whenever you see a group of people who find a rhythm or balance among communion, community, and mission, you will always find the Kingdom. It will be tangible!

I read The Tangible Kingdom this summer and I highly reccoment it, but I just picked up the Forgotten Ways and I'm working my way through it, Alan Hirsch's writing tends to be very systematic, and I struggle through those types of books, but with what I've read so far (and with what I've read in The Shaping of Things to Come) the content tends to be good.

I want to see this picture of God's Kingdom realized.

If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide boundless ocean.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Someone did that for me, and I want to help create a yearning in others to live in the Kingdom.

We're so close, it's almost tangible...

We live like we don't need God.

I have no desire to be here (at Bethel). I have no desire to finish my degree. But it's not just a lack of desire, I desire to be somewhere else. I desire to be doing something besides what I'm doing right now.

What's to be said for a change of heart? If I stay at Bethel I what do I gain? If I leave, what do I lose? On the other hand... What do I gain by leaving? What do I lose by staying?

Here we go again.

What is gained if my ministry stays in the church? What is lost? Doing youth ministry doesn't necessarily mean that I have to do ministry in the walls of a building... but I wonder how much more effective ministry would be if I just did life with people... The way Halter and Smay describe it in The Tangible Kingdom.

No programs. No agenda. Just life.

I want that.

What purposelessness overtakes my present plan. Why?

I want to live spontaneously. I want to live the daring adventure of being totally sold out for Christ. I want to be radical, off the wall, fully committed to the God I love.

I don't want to have a back up plan...

You know what breaks my heart? We... as Christians, or American Christians... or I don't even know... don't have it in us to live radically.

Is it a faith issue?

Why are we so addicted to security?

I'm not seeking that we should be irresponsible, only that we should live in radical dependence on God, and we don't.

If Scripture says:

"Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26)

Then:

Why do we have savings accounts? Why do we have emergency funds? Why do we have life insurance? Why do we save up for retirement?

If Scripture says:

"Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)

Then:

Why is it that we don't even try to heal the sick or to cast out demons or move mountains? Jesus goes on to say, right after this very passage: "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it." (John 14:13-14)

If Scripture says:

"Jesus answered him, 'You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above...'" (John 19:11)

Then:
Why are we so flippin' worried and horrified that Obama is going to be our next president? Even if another Hitler should rise up, what is that to us? If we know Christ then we know what we ought to do. We need to pray for our leaders. We need to pray for our country. We need to share the love of Christ with the world.

You know... Sometimes God doesn't seem real to me. Sometimes, at best, he seems absent and univolved. But I think that's because I live as though I don't need him. He is the genie who might grant my wish if I pray long enough, hard enough, and do the right stuff.

I'm so tired of that kind of living. I want to really, truly live like I need God in my life, because I do, and I wish there were other people who would do the same. I wish there were other people around me who would committ to living radically.

I don't think many people realize that their faith does effect others around them.

I don't know if this blogpost is really going anywhere right now. I just know that something has got to change.

I'm feeling the excitement

Classes were supposed to start today, but I got an extra day because the only two classes I have today were canceled. Dr. Linhart is out of town meeting with denominational leaders in the missionary church and he is the professor for both of the classes.

We had the back to school bash last night. Three people didn't recognize me. Two of the people were ones I lived with last year and one of them I go to house church with, so I had a lot of contact with all three of them last year. I didn't think my appearance had changed that much!

Ruth and I hung out a bit. Ruth graduated in '07, but still lives nearby, so it was easy to give her a call and be like "come see my house!" So she came over at 11pm and we spent an hour and a half talking about summer and I told her stories some of the amazing stories from this summer. She told me about her summer and her struggles to find a church that she likes (she tends to not like organized church structures anyway, and her work schedule makes it hard for her to attend anyway).

She said she wanted to be challenged and held accountable, so we decided that the two of us, and anyone who wants to get involved, will have church together on her days off. I'm really excited because it's going to be different even from the house church I go to. We will meet with one another, I don't know what we'll talk about or study yet, but we've also decided that it won't just be us (and whoever else comes) meeting within ourselves. We've decided that we are going to have times when we go out into the community and be Jesus to people. We haven't completely envisioned what that will look like yet, but we have a few ideas.

I've talked with several people now about The Tangible Kingdom and possibly starting a book study on it. A few people sounded interested, some had good ideas, and one pointed me to an option on how to get it started, so it might actually happen.

I am moving out of feeling apprehensive about this school year and starting to feel really excited about it. I think it's because I feel like a missionary who has been sent out. There are people at Bethel who are moving into viewing the world through kingdom lenses, and moving into the incarnational way of doing ministry, and I feel like this year is a great opportunity to encourage them as I continue my own learning in this area. But not only to encourage them, but also to help awaken the vision in others.

It's not what you get out of it, it's what you bring to it. I plan to bring it.