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Rebuilding the Church on its Original Foundation by Thomas McNabney
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Rebuilding the Church on its Original Foundation |
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Christianity
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If we were able to get inside of the minds of the apostles, what impression and understanding of the church must they have had prior to the Day of Pentecost? The three and a half years they spent with Christ constituted their preparation to be the foundation of the first century church. What they experienced before Pentecost during their training was actually the church in its embryonic state. What were the basic ingredients of the church before the day Peter stood up to speak and 3,000 in Jerusalem repented and were added to their number? One day in Caesarea Philippi, the Lord asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" That was the day that Peter had his revelation that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus immediately responded by saying that flesh and blood had not revealed that to Peter and that it was upon this revelation that he would build his church. This was the first instance in which the word "church" came up in the New Testament. Jesus had plans to do something that had to do with the church, but the apostles probably had a foggy notion, at best, of what he was really talking about. If the "church" meant anything to them at that juncture, the one thing that must have been obviously clear to them was that it centered around Christ, because he was going to build it. Without Christ; without his presence--there could be no church. Boiled down to the most elementary level of understanding, the apostles’ concept of the church must have been this: being with Jesus Christ; following Jesus Christ; being around him, fellowshipping with him; meeting with him; having him as their center; listening to him; interacting with him; and doing this with one another. That was their concept of the church. What the church was not. For the apostles, their concept of church was not dressing up in their best clothes and going to some formal meeting in a building with a cross on top of it every Sunday morning between 10:00 and 12:00 o'clock where there was a prescribed order of worship. Where Christ was and where they were--that was the church. Sometimes they were with him on a mountain; sometimes by a lake. Many times it was at meals. At other times it was in front of a campfire. The location did not matter. Their concept of the church was being with Christ wherever he was. These times with Jesus were informal and intimate. Imagine the disciples walking along a road with him, fellowshipping about different things, listening to him take the opportunity to teach them a lesson or speak to them in a parable. Envision them turning to one another and talking about what he said, laughing at their own ignorance while marveling at his wisdom! A Church Meeting Before Pentecost Visualize those apostles and seeing Jesus heal a young girl one day. Following that miracle they returned to where they were staying at night. They were so excited by the events of the day that they couldn't stop talking with each other about what he had done. Each of them took turns sharing what they saw and heard. One recalled the reaction of the girl when she was made well and that of her family, as their grateful tears mingled with praise. Another picked up the story and recounted how that spark of a miracle ignited a wildfire within that village and how many others believed in the Lord as a result. These kinds of times together -- informal, free, centered around who Christ was, what he did and what he said, and lifting him up in praise -- this grew to be the apostles understanding of the church that they would make known to subsequent believers who would be added to the body of Christ after Pentecost. Let’s now contrast this understanding the apostles must have had of the church by telling two stories: one real, the other imaginary. The Church in Albania After Fifty Years of Communism The first story took place in Albania in 1992. It was told to me by a brother who visited Albania only six months after it had first opened after being under an atheistic, Communist government for 50 years. Albania was one of the most closed countries in the world. Enver Hoxha, the leader of Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, made it his mission in life to put the final nail in the coffin insuring the death of God in Albania. He wanted every trace of a belief in God to be wiped out. So, these were people who had no exposure to the gospel for 50 years. When the government finally toppled and Christian missionaries began pouring into the country, they found Albanians there who were starved for spiritual truth and who were eager and responsive to embrace the message of Christ. If ever there was a first century situation, this was it. Most Albanians had never even seen a Christian. They had never seen or read a Bible. They had no Christian training or heritage. They were a blank sheet of paper to be written on by those who first brought the message of Christ into the country. How the church in Albania would grow depended on the model those first missionaries brought with them. The story that I was told was both bitter and sweet. I was thrilled to hear that so many people were getting saved. Yet there was another side of the story that also needs to be told. My friend happened to be with a group of Christians one day that numbered about 30-40. Most of them were young people who had been saved for less than six months. While they were all together in a home, the atmosphere was one of informality, laughter, and freedom. The young people were just having fun being together and much of their talk and discussion happened to center around their new-found experience with the Lord. But then one of them announced that it was time for a meeting. They were about to have "church." Shuffling out of the living room through a screen door they entered an adjacent room which was where they held their meetings. The informality, the laughter, and the freedom was left behind in the living room and exchanged for a place with hard benches, lined up row by row, a pulpit at the front of the room, and a somber, quiet atmosphere. Silently they took their places on those benches facing forward, staring at the backs of one another's heads. In their relatively new and short experience as Christians, they had already begun to develop an understanding of "church" as a performance in which they were the spectators. They waited there silently for someone to assume the place behind the pulpit and preach at them, tell them what to do, when to stand, when to sit, when to sing, when to pray, when to reach in their pockets, and when to go home. This is the tragedy of 1900 years of tradition and institutionalism. Those Albanian young people did not learn that concept of the "church" from Christ. It was not the concept of the church that the apostles had in the first century. There was an element of pure religion (in the negative sense of that word) that comes from the religious nature in fallen man, that was being expressed in that "room next to the living room." Along with the good news of the gospel, a concept of "church" had also taken root in Albania in those six short months that was light years from the mindset of the early apostles and their understanding of what church was supposed to be. Those young people went from being a happy, free, joyful group of relational participants to a group of quiet, silent, religious spectators. But this is model that they were being taught that "church" ought to look like. A Church Meeting Before Pentecost That Never Took Place The second story--the imaginary one. Earlier I described what the embryo of the early church looked like in the first century. Go back and read the gospels and see all the different kinds of situations those apostles were together with Christ and with one another. That was their church history before Pentecost. But now let’s imagine a story that isn’t in the Bible. If your imagination will stretch far enough to embrace what I am about to tell you, then you live in a realm that I cannot begin to comprehend. Here's the story. The apostles were walking with the Lord on the road from Cana of Galilee to the city of Capernaum. It was around 9:00 a.m. one Sunday morning. All of a sudden Jesus turned to them and said that they would be having a church service in one hour and then dismissed them all to prepare for it. A little known fact in the story of those early apostles is that while they followed Jesus around they each carried two things with them. Each one of the twelve had wooden benches tied to their backs (folding chairs had not been invented yet) which could comfortably seat 4-6 people. They also carried Bibles and hymnals (though most of them could not read, and the Bible had not been put together yet!). At Jesus' command, they abruptly stopped and unstrapped the heavy benches that they had been carrying. The benches were then lined up in two rows of six, with an aisle down the center. Some of the women who followed Jesus with them had been assigned to carry a portable pulpit, which could be taken apart and then reassembled quite easily. The women did their part in assembling the pulpit and placing it in front of those benches, which were set up by the side of the road. After this was accomplished, the twelve, along with the women, went down to the river to bathe (different parts of the river, of course!). Following this, they each went behind a convenient bush and pulled out of the sacks that they also carried with them, their finest tunics and their newest pair of sandals. It was necessary that they look their best when they went to "church." Arriving back where the benches were set up at a little before 10:00 a.m., they took their seats, along with some invited guests, and quietly stared forward in the direction of the pulpit, waiting for the shadow on the sundial to cross the Roman numeral 10. Finally, Jesus appeared and stepped to the front and took his place behind the pulpit. The meeting began with some formal greetings to the new "guests," and then all were told to introduce themselves to someone they hadn't met before or shake hands with the person seated next to them. To the side of Jesus, stood three of the apostles: Peter, James, and John, along with Mary, the mother of Jesus. They formed the choir. They sang three hymns. Then Mary Magdalene came to the front to sing a special solo. Following the singing, Jesus led the group in another prayer. Then Judas Iscariot came forward with a golden plate and passed it down the rows. Every meeting always had an offering. Finally, it was time for Jesus to teach. He taught for exactly 35 minutes. Then there was another song and a prayer. Finally, he closed with a benediction. Jesus left the pulpit, walked down the center aisle, and then everyone filed out behind him. Jesus was there waiting to greet everyone and shake their hands before they resumed their journey for Capernaum. When it was all over, the apostles went back to the bushes, changed into their everyday clothes, and pulled the ropes out of their sacks. They returned to where the benches were, strapped those benches to their backs, and began following Jesus for another week until they could go through the same thing all over again, and once more have "church." If you can believe that something like this ever took place, then you live in a different universe than I do. That is not the Christ that I know. And I do not believe that that is the Christ that the apostles in the first century knew. And that is certainly not the understanding of the church that the apostles had before Pentecost, or initiated after Pentecost. Making the Connection is Not Easy To make the change in our thinking between the concept of "church" that is common in our day, and the concept of "church" that existed in the first century, is not easy. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it takes a revelation. As Christians, we have accumulated a lot of baggage in the last 1900 years. But to get back to a mindset which the first century apostles had and go forward from there to where the Lord wants to take us, requires brushing aside so much tradition and man-made religion. We need to return to the understanding of the church that the apostles had where Christ was everything. He was the center; being with Him, fellowshipping with Him, worshipping Him, interacting with Him and with one another, exulting and praising Him, and having that experience with others in informal, real life settings--that was the church as it was understood in the first century. house of God Solomon's Temple Babylonian captivity Solomons Temple
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house of God, Solomon's Temple, Babylonian captivity, Solomons Temple,
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