God's Way Works

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God's Way for Our Congregations

A Healthy Congregation or a Toxic Congregation

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I’m going to take a quick break today from our series on the Jerusalem church. I am presently reading Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life* by Susan Forward. A paragraph really jumped out at me yesterday. I’d like to share the paragraph with you.

The single most dramatic difference between healthy and toxic family systems is the amount of freedom that exists for family members to express themselves as individuals. Healthy families encourage individuality, personal responsibility, and independence. they encourage the development of their children’s sense of adequacy and self-respect.

Unhealthy families discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the toxic parents. They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries, a welding together of family members to know where one ends and another begins. In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another’s individuality.

–Read on my Kindle, Location 2644-2653.

As I was reading, the thought came to me about congregations. Doesn’t this apply to congregations to? Consider the following adaptation.

The single most dramatic difference between healthy and toxic congregational systems is the amount of freedom that exists for the congregation’s members to express themselves as individuals. Healthy churches encourage individuality, personal responsibility, and independence. they encourage the development of their members’ sense of adequacy and self-respect.

Unhealthy churches discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the elders/preacher/brotherhood concensus/watchdogs. They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries, a welding together of church members to know where one ends and another begins. In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another’s individuality.

That just really hit me and I thought I’d share. What do you think about it?

By the way, there are definitely associate links in this post. Help a guy with two housepayments out and click on one of them to buy some stuff.

*While I highly recommend Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life to learn about damaging parenting, how to avoid it and overcoming the results of it if you grew up with it, I warn you that some of the content is disturbing as it describes the extremes of toxic parenting. Further, the author did not edit the language of the clients she used as illustrations. Therefore, there is a great deal of what many of us would call foul language.

The Jerusalem Church (Part 7): The Vision–Getting the Workers Needed

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(If you landed on this post without seeing the others in this series, let me explain what is going on here. Thursdays is my day to talk about God’s way for our congregations. Right now I’m in the middle of a series on the Jerusalem church and it’s success. This is the seventh post in the series. I encourage you to check out the introduction to this series to know more about what is going on and to find an index of the posts in this series as they are put up. Enjoy.)

Getting the Workers Needed

Once again it is too easy to get trapped in numbers. As we learn more and more about the Jerusalem church, I’m going to repeatedly come back to the fact that the Jerusalem church had 12 full-time workers, 12 evangelists if you will. Someone might mistakenly think that means to really arrive at being a congregation, the vision is to have 12 evangelists or workers. But that isn’t the point at all. The Jerusalem vision is simply to have the workers that are needed.

As we learned last week, the vision is not to have enough hired hands to do the work, but to have all hands working. And yet, while all hands are working, a congregation will still need fulltime workers, those who have completely devoted their lives to the work of the Lord within the congregation. This goes along with Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4:11-12. While every hand is to be working, God has established certain roles to equip the saints to accomplish their work. These are fulltime workers. The scripture even shows that they can be supported by the congregation to fulfill their work (I Corinthians 9:9).

Antioch had the same idea about multiple workers. According to Acts 13:1, the Antioch church had 5 fulltime teachers. But again, the issue isn’t about the exact number. This is not saying that Antioch was on its way to accomplishing the Jerusalem vision, but hadn’t quite made it yet because it didn’t have as many workers. They were accomplishing the vision because they had the workers needed.

This vision was exemplified by Barnabas in Acts 11:25. Barnabas saw the need for another worker. He went and got him and brought him back to Antioch. To fulfill the Jerusalem vision, each congregation needs to work on having the workers needed.

Let’s face it. Our society has changed over the past fifty years. The work that can be accomplished by an evangelist, a handful of elders and few volunteers has diminished. More women are working. Men are working more hours. Families are involved in more extra-curriculars. There is simply less volunteer time. Yes, everyone of us must work in the church. But, as the pace of our society has increased, so has our need for fulltime workers to train and equip workers and organize and implement the work.

Of course, few of us really have a problem with trying to claim we ought to have 12 full-time workers. Most of us simply can’t imagine having more than one, at most two. The thing we need to see here is that the work for these men is more than preaching a sermon on Sunday. Paul taught from house to house according to Acts 20:20. Can you imagine if more Christians recognized they needed more teaching time than a few congregational assemblies a week and opened their homes for teaching, inviting others in from the congregation and the community, how much work would there be?

What work is really needed? How many workers will that take? To be like Jerusalem, a congregation better get the workers otherwise it will limit its ability to grow.

(Come back next Thursday to learn about the Jerusalem vision of being a closer knit family.)

The Jerusalem Church (Part 5): The Vision–Continual Growth not 10,000 Members

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(If you landed on this post without seeing the others in this series, let me explain what is going on here. Thursdays is my day to talk about God’s way for our congregations. Right now I’m in the middle of a series on the Jerusalem church and it’s success. This is the fifth post in the series. I encourage you to check out the introduction to this series to know more about what is going on and to find an index of the posts in this series as they are put up. Enjoy.)

Continual Growth not 10,000 Members

Jerusalem by mharrschI like to talk about the Jerusalem church a lot. I see it as an exemplary church of growth and work. I know we claim to want to be what they were and do what they did, but how many congregations achieve what they achieved?

As I talk about this example, I’ll mention that according to Acts 2:41 they started with about 3000 members. By Acts 4:4, the number of men came to be about 5000. When you add in wives, widows, and children, this means the congregation could have been between 10,000 and 15,000. Yet, somehow many brethren tend to believe if a congregation gets over 150 they must be doing something wrong. Either they are doing something wrong to attract that many members or simply having that many members is wrong all by itself (after all, how can the elders know everyone in a 10,000 member congregation?). Yet, Jerusalem did it.

A sad byproduct of talking about this aspect of the Jerusalem church is missing the actual vision. Some people have a vision of getting a church to be so large. Maybe their vision is to get to 100. Maybe 500. Maybe 1000. Maybe 10,000. The problem is what happens when you accomplish that number? Will the church continue to reach out and save the lost? Usually not. We have a tendency to reach our goals and then take breaks.

When we look at Jerusalem, however, we don’t see a church with a goal of 10,000 members. We see a church with a goal of saving one more person. More than giving the life-changing gospel to one more person, they made sure they could handle adding one more person as part of the congregation. This is the real issue for us today. Most churches know well enough to claim they want one more convert. What we often miss is that how we run the congregation on a practical level, the kind of facilities we have, the kind of leadership we employ, the kind of relationships we develop all limit our ability to grow.

The Jerusalem church was not simply about baptizing one more person. They were about conducting their work, even changing their work, in such a way as to handle having that one more person be a viable part of the congregation.

If we are going to really grow congregations today, we must do more than simply work on baptizing people. There are many churches that baptize people ever year, but they never grow. We need to be like Jerusalem, expanding and adapting our leadership and work to allow for the growth many of us claim to want.

Keep coming back and we’ll discuss the keys of the Jerusalem church’s success in this growth and expansion.

I hope you are enjoying and learning from this look at the Jerusalem Church. Come back next week as we learn that the Jerusalem vision is not about hiring enough workhands, but about getting all hands working.

The Jerusalem Church (Part 4): The Vision: Exemplary Church not Mother Church

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(If you landed on this post without seeing the others in this series, let me explain what is going on here. Thursdays is my day to talk about God’s way for our congregations. Right now I’m in the middle of a series on the Jerusalem church and it’s success. This is the fourth post in the series. I encourage you to check out the introduction to this series to know more about what is going on and to find an index of the posts in this series as they are put up. Enjoy.)

Jerusalem by mharrschNo doubt, the Jerusalem church is the most successful church in all of history. It grew in times of peace. It grew in times of adversity. It was the start of every other congregation in its day; in essence the start of every other congregation throughout all history. Because of the work the Jerusalem church did, when the first persecution hit in earnest, the members were ready to take their message to other cities and towns. When other churches were started, even after so many were scattered, the Jerusalem church sent helpers to strengthen the fledgling congregations.

As we continue to examine the Jerusalem church, we can very quickly develop some mistaken perceptions. We can highlight the wrong things and miss what really made them so successful. We need to make sure we keep the Jerusalem vision clear or we will not be able to have the success she enjoyed for so long.

The Jerusalem Vision: An Examplary Church, not a Mother Church

Sadly, many modern Christians turn to Acts 15:2 and misunderstand the Jerusalem vision. They see a mother church. They read into this verse 1500 years of Catholicism and 400 years of Protestant denominationalism. They think Paul and Barnabas were traveling to Jerusalem to learn what they were supposed to teach about the circumcision issue or to participate in a meeting to decide what they were to teach. They were going back to the mother church to learn the truth so they would teach correctly. This is often seen as the first “church council” or “synod” in a long line of many.

That, however, is not at all what is going on here. Paul was not traveling to Jerusalem to find out what to teach. They were not having a council to figure out what all the churches should teach. Remember what Paul said in Galatians 1:11-12:

For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, not was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul did not learn what to teach about the gospel by going to the apostles or to the Jerusalem church. He didn’t learn the gospel message from a church council or synod. He received direct revelation from Jesus Christ Himself. The next two chapters are Paul’s detailed explanation of how he didn’t get his message from men.

In fact, look at Paul’s own participation in the Jerusalem debate. There is no question. There is not, “Let us find out what to teach.” There is simply his own teaching that he had confirmed by the work of the Holy Spirit during his ministry. “And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.”

What is going on then? First, notice what prompted Paul’s trip to Jerusalem.

“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved'” (Acts 15:1).

However, the letter the Jerusalem church wrote at the end of this debate gets even more specific.

“Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions…” (Acts 15:24).

Why did Paul and his companions from Antioch travel to council with the apostles and brethren in Jerusalem? Because that was the source of error that had gone out. They were not going to meet with a mother church to find out or figure out what to teach. They were going to a church to find out why teachers of error were coming out from them. Apparently, the Jerusalem church was divided on this issue and hadn’t realized it yet. This was not a debate to determine what all churches would teach. This was a debate to determine what Jerusalem would teach. Paul and Barnabas were not traveling to learn, they were traveling to teach and correct.

Of course, we still ask why this matters. If Jerusalem wasn’t the mother church, who cares what her teachers taught? Even though she wasn’t the mother church, she was an exemplary church. After all, she was the first. Further, she did have the apostles. While other churches did not bow to the church of Jerusalem, they did look up to her.

If we are going to be like Jerusalem, we must not seek to make our congregations mother churches. Sadly, there are organizations of churches cropping up everywhere. Some church has success and starts spreading out satellites all over the nation, establishing themselves as a mother church. We must not do that. Jerusalem did not. Certainly, we can and should seek to be exemplary. We should seek to be an example of godly conduct and proper congregational work and teaching. There is nothing wrong with others looking to our congregation for good advice and council. But each church should be left to govern itself with the shepherds the Holy Spirit has raised up among them submitting directly to the Chief Shepherd (Acts 20:28; I Peter 5:1-4).

Yes, we will be looking to the Jerusalem church. But we will not do so because she was the mother church. Rather, she was an exemplary church who blazed the trail for us in so many ways.

 

Make sure to come back next Thursday to continue learning about the Jerusalem Vision. It wasn’t about having 10,000 members, but about being able to convert one more and continue growing.

The Jerusalem Church (Part 3) What Didn’t Make It Work–Times Were Different Then

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(If you landed on this post without seeing the others in this series, let me explain what is going on here. Thursdays is my day to talk about God’s way for our congregations. Right now I’m in the middle of a series on the Jerusalem church and it’s success. This is the third post in the series. I encourage you to check out the introduction to this series to know more about what is going on and to find an index of the posts in this series as they are put up. Enjoy.)

 

Times Were Not So Different

Jerusalem by mharrschI think we have a tendency to goldenize the past (yes, I just made up that word), or perhaps I should say we engoldify (made that one up too) the past. That is, we look around and see how bad things seem to us today and think the “days of yore” were golden. “Oh, we can’t be as successful as Jerusalem because the times were just different back then. Today, there is so much religious division, there is so much sin, and there are so many enemies, we just can’t have their success.” Baloney.

 

Granted, times were different. Perhaps we won’t have success using every method that seemed to work in those days, but we can still have the same success by having the same attitude and by following their same general example. I’m guessing going to the downtown square of Franklin and starting to preach will not have the same success rating that Paul had when he preached in the Areopagus in Acts 17:22. That sort of thing was common. Paul wasn’t actually standing out so much with his actions as he was with his teaching. Today, if I went down to the city square and started preaching, folks would think I was nuts. Of course, Paul couldn’t use a radio, a television, or a blog to preach. We can. The point for us to learn is not that we have to use the exact same methods and media as the Jerusalem church and early Christians did. Rather, we need to learn that we can keep teaching in ways that are normal today and we can have success as well. The times are not so different that our teaching will be completely and totally ignored–if we are teaching the truth.

 

Religious Division

Not as much religious division? Have you heard of Sadducees and Pharisees? What about Zealots and Herodians? “Don’t be a Christian, ” some would say, “Those guys don’t follow the law enough like us Pharisees.” Or they might hear, “There’s no such thing as resurrection, Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead. Just ask us Sadducees. We know what’s up.” “Christians aren’t political enough,” the Zealots might say. The Herodians might respond, “Don’t get caught up with those Christians, they don’t know which side of the toast their bread is buttered on. The Romans and Caesar are taking care of us. If you keep calling Jesus your king, the emperor will eat your for lunch.”

 

Then there were the pagan worshippers following after all kinds of different gods. We think times are tough because there is a lot of division among supposedly Christian churches. There are numerous people all claiming different ways to be saved in Jesus. During the days of the Jerusalem church, there were numerous people all claiming different gods that would save them. “You don’t have to follow that ‘Jewish god’ Jesus,” some would say, “Instead, follow Athena, Apollos, Zeus, or any combination.” Or they might hear “You don’t want to get mixed up with those crazy Christians, they think their God is the only one.” 

 

Further, and this is very sad, there was even division that occurred among the Christians relatively quickly. The Judaizing teachers kept trying to get Christians to submit to the old law, especially enforcing circumcision on Gentiles. We see that happening in Acts 15. Jerusalem handled that division well, but Galatians demonstrates there was continued division among Christians over this issue.

 

The point being there was religious division, but Jerusalem still succeeded. So can we.

 

Sin

It is certainly true that sin is everywhere these days. The momentary pleasures of sin are lauded on the radio and television. Billboards invite us to sin. The internet provides a seemingly anonymous highway for sin. If we are not careful, we might believe that it is so much easier to sin these days that we just can’t be successful with a message of freedom from sin through Jesus Christ.

 

I’d like to address this by looking at two possibilities.

 

First, I really don’t think it is easier to sin today than it was during Jerusalem’s days. Romans 3:23 applied as much then as it does now. Everyone around the Christians had sinned then and everyone has sinned now. Doesn’t seem that different to me. “Oh, but the effects of sin have increased and the ability to escape sin have gotten harder.” Really? Ephesians 2:1-3 says we all became by nature children of wrath. That was true for them and it is true for us. Romans 7:24-25 says there is only one way to be free from sin and that is through Jesus Christ. That was true for them and it is true for us. There is a lot of sin now. There was a lot of sin then. Sin is hard to overcome now. It was hard to overcome then. 

 

Second, perhaps you are right. Maybe there is more sin and harder sins to overcome now than in Jerusalem’s days. If that is true, does it really mean we can’t have success? Or does it instead mean there will be more people recognizing more quickly how much they need freedom from their sins? Perhaps if we’d quit being worried that people don’t want to escape sin and instead start showing people that we know the way to escape sin through Jesus Christ, we’d have much more success than Jerusalem and than we can possibly imagine.

 

Enemies

People are so mean today. There are just too many enemies. There are too many people who are attacking us. There are the worldly, there are false denominations, there are cults, there are new agers, there are atheists, and on the list could go.

 

Really, you think there weren’t “new agers” in the Bible days? You do realize that most of the New Age movement is going back to the paganism of the early centuries, right? We’re dealing with the exact same stuff they were. Atheists have existed almost from the beginning. We addressed the issue of false denominations in the religious division point above. 

 

Can we honestly make this point after reading Acts 8:1-3? Sure, we have people who put up blogs against us. We have people that say mean and untrue things about us. But very few of us have been chased out of our home towns by our enemies. Here in America, I bet only a handful could even talk about any kind of physical persecution they’ve received. I like to talk about the time I was called by the police after following up on a wayward brother and sister, but that’s the closest I can come to talking about real physical persecution. Do you know anyone that was beaten for their faith? Anyone that was killed for it? 

 

Sure, we have enemies today and they are vicious in their attacks. But we don’t have so many enemies who are being so harsh that we can’t have the success they did. They had just as many harsh, mean enemies, if not more and they still grew. So can we.

 

Wrapping Up

Let’s keep getting rid of our excuses. Let’s keep remembering that God is on our side. He is working through us, so we can’t lose. But that is only true if we’ll rely on Him. He worked through the Jerusalem Christians. He worked through the Antioch Christians. He can work through us.

 

(Be back next Thursday for our continued look at Jerusalem’s success and how we can pursue it.)

The Jerusalem Church (Part 2): What Didn’t Make It Work–Miraculous Gifts

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(If you landed on this post without seeing the others in this series, let me explain what is going on here. Thursdays is my day to talk about God’s way for our congregations. Right now I’m in the middle of a series on the Jerusalem church and it’s success. This is the second post in the series. I encourage you to check out the introduction to this series to know more about what is going on and to find an index of the posts in this series as they are put up. Enjoy.)

 

Peter Healing the lame by Loci LenarIf you’re like me, you can find all the ideas and concepts in the world that won’t work. You can pinpoint exactly why every idea has a flaw. You can examine the failings of every concept and plan. You can know exactly why what worked for others won’t work for you. I can do that with the Jerusalem church. I can sabotage every good thing I can learn from the Jerusalem church by starting to look at all the reasons it won’t work for me or for the congregation of which I’m a part. 

 

Therefore, I want to start by getting rid of those objections. I’ve examined the reasons I think it may have worked for them that we may not be able to emulate and learned that they are empty excuses. 

 

Jerusalem Did Not Grow Because of Miraculous Gifts

The easiest flag to wave to claim we just can’t mirror what Jerusalem did is to point to the miraculous gifts. After all, the whole church got started because the apostles were speaking in tongues (Acts 2:4). People listened because they were amazed at the miracles. As the church grew, people were in awe of the apostles and their miraculous abilities (Acts 5:12-13). Even when Philip scattered and went to Samaria, the sorcerer and the people were convinced because they were amazed by the “signs and great miracles” (Acts 8:13).

 

God doesn’t work that way through His people anymore. (If you are reading and disagree with this point, let me know. I would love to study the issue with you.) We won’t speak in tongues. We won’t heal the sick. We won’t divine or divulge anyone’s inner secrets. We won’t raise anyone from the dead. If we could do all of that, then maybe we could be like Jerusalem. But we can’t. So why bother even trying?

 

We need to understand that the church did not grow because of miraculous gifts. That is, not in such a way that makes growth impossible for those who don’t have those gifts. 

 

First, we need to remember the account of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16:19-31. The rich man was convinced, like so many of us, that miracles were the key to save people. If his brothers saw someone rise from the dead, they would believe. But Abraham’s answer was clear, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” Interestingly, we get so caught up into thinking that if people saw miracles they would believe, that we forget that Jesus rose from the dead yet most of the Jews figured out reasons why not to believe. Do we really think that if we could perform miracles we would convince everyone? Of course not. God has provided the scriptures. If people will not believe the Bible, they will not believe even if they see a miracle.

 

Second, I think we attribute the growth in Jerusalem to the wrong thing. We attribute it to the miracles. Instead, let’s attribute it to the right place. Let’s attribute it to the working of the Holy Spirit. The Jerusalem church grew because people witnessed the work of the Holy Spirit. While they may no longer witness the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, they can still witness the work of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” This passage is not saying these are the characteristics we need to work on. It is actually saying that when we are walking by the Spirit, these are the characteristics we’ll start developing. 

 

People may no longer see tongue-speaking, sick-healing, dead-raising, poison-protecting, miraculous works of the Holy Spirit in us. However, when we are walking by the Spirit, folks will witness what may to them seem no less miraculous. They will witness selfish people become loving. They will witness miserable people develop joy. They will witness impetuous manipulators become patient. They will witness the cruel and mean-spirited become kind. They will witness the untrusting and untrustworthy become faith-filled and faithful. 

 

They may not hear the rushing sound of a mighty wind, but they will be no less impacted as they see the silent working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Not everyone will be piqued. Not everyone was attracted by the tongue-speaking. But some will. Some will see how the Spirit has worked in our lives and they will want part of it as well. 

 

We must not think Jerusalem’s success is beyond us simply because the Holy Spirit no longer grants His miraculous gifts. Instead, we must recognize that the Holy Spirit is still working in us and He will attract people to us as He changes our lives and we bear fruit.

 

Please understand a happy by-product of this recognition. We are not left alone to make Christ’s church grow. His Spirit is working in us and through us. We can have success like Jerusalem because we are not alone.

 

(Make sure you come back next week as we expose and dispose of more excuses about growing like Jerusalem.)