The Organ of Meaning

First up at Advance09 was Mark Driscoll who is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. From my understanding Seattle is a hard city for the Gospel, people largely view the Church as irrelevant, bigoted and backwards (unfortunately, the caricature is not inaccurate enough).

The title/question is a significant one. It’s important to understand what this messy thing is that we call the Church. Driscoll first covered what differing views throughout history have said, but what was interesting is that there was no written works from 251AD – 1378AD that talked about ecclesiology (the study of the theological understanding of the Christian church) and there is no historically consistent belief on it.

Is it essentially a visible phenomenon which is easy to define, or invisible and undefinable? Is it about apostolic succession or about faith and faithfulness? What if things are done wrong, is it still really the Church as God defines it?

So, May 31st was “Pentecost Sunday” which celebrates what is considered the beginning of the Church, so if that was the beginning what changed on that day that set it apart from the 50 days prior after Jesus had ascended? The Holy Spirit.

Jesus, while he was on earth, was in constant contact with the Holy Spirit and dependent on him for power, Jesus was constantly praying and depending on the Father to guide his steps as well. You’ll see (especially if you read the Gospel of Matthew) that Jesus as a real human was dependent on the Holy Spirit to do anything. So, as he’s preparing to ascend and giving last instructions, what does he tell the disciples? “Wait.”

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (Acts 1:4-5 ESV)

He tells them to wait until they receive the Holy Spirit because if Jesus needed him to do what he did, the apostles would certainly need him all the more. It’s on Pentecost that the Church is born. The Holy Spirit shows up and Peter preaches a sermon in the middle of Jerusalem that convinces 3,000 people that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and able to save every one who believes.

When you look at Peter’s words they’re not all that eloquent, but they’re exactly what was true. Peter focused on Jesus because the Church is totally about Jesus. It is not about a political brand, it’s not about family, it’s not about charity, it’s not about morality, nor power, money, buildings, missions, empire-building, growth, your best life now, hymns or “praise and worship”, missional living or monasticism and asceticism or anything else – it is all about Jesus.

This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:32, 33, 36 ESV)

Driscoll said this about those of us in the Church: “We’re a one-song band, and we’re going to keep playing it until we see him again.”

Ultimately, the Church is that which comes in the wake of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If it’s not following those Two (Three, really, since Jesus says that he does everything the Father tells him), it is not the Church.

Finally Driscoll listed (not exclusively) 8 things that mark a real Church that is following God:

1. Regenerated Church Membership
   • Members whom God is working within.
2. Qualified Leadership
   • This should illustrate a reality of the Trinity: ontological equality and functional (voluntary) subordination.
3. Gathering for Teaching/Preaching and Worship.
   • Preaching illustrates the Gospel: God is the giver, I am merely the receiver.
4. Sacraments Rightly Administered
   • Baptism and communion.
5. Unified by the Holy Spirit
   • Distinguish between closed-handed (non-negotiable) beliefs and open-handed beliefs & prioritize important things.
   • Centered around Jesus and proclamation of the Gospel.
6. Discipline for Holiness
   • I’m still not sure what this looks like.
7. Obey the Great Commandment to Love
8. Obey the Great Commission to share the Gospel

It’s not just the Church in its gathered state, but when it scatters into the world it is still the Church. It’s where we’re following in the wake of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week in the Durham, NC area at the Advance09 conference. It was a conference about the resurgance of the local church. I’m not talking about a political power and I’m not talking about something that involves violent war metaphors, protests and bait-and-switch events. In the past decades the Church has failed to take it’s role and responsibility seriously and has largely lost its direction.

The conference included some of the most powerful and cogent pastors and teachers who are bringing the message of Jesus into some significant and historically dificult places. Some of this difficulty comes both apathetic arrogance and from innoculated ignorance, both of which are our own fault. In the north and the west we’ve failed to engage the cultural conversation with anything significant to say and in the south we’ve assumed that everyone should know better and have engaged using blunt arguments that don’t address people’s hearts or minds.

I’ve been thinking and dwelling on some of the messages that I heard and I’m hoping to post a series of reactions to the conference and its implications.

I know, I haven’t answered the question on the other one. Again, not ignoring, but I wanted to share this too.

EDIT (3/4/09): Here’s a transcript of it…

There is one God and He is the maker of heaven and earth.

He made us in His image and likeness. Male and female, with dignity, value, worth, and purpose.

He made us to worship. We choose to sin against Him, to rebel against Him, to disobey Him. As a result we are separated from God and we live under the foolish myth that their are other god. Even to some degree we might believe that we are each our own “god,” declaring right and wrong, living our own life, by our own standards.

And that God loving came into human history as the man Jesus. He was was fully God and fully man. He was born of a virgin, and He lived a life without sin though He was tempted in every way as we are. He went to the cross and there He substituted himself.

Our first parents (Adam & Eve) in the garden substituted themselves for sin and at the cross Jesus would reverse that substitution. He substituted Himself for sinners.

When Jesus went to the cross, He took willingly upon Him the sin of those who would come to trust in Him. That means, me as a sinner, Jesus went to the cross and took upon Himself all my sin, past, present, and future. Jesus Christ, God who was a man, died in my place, for my sins, paying my debt to God and purchasing our salvation.

Jesus’ dead body was then laid in a tomb. For three days he was buried. On the third day, a Sunday, which is why we worship on that day, Jesus rose in victory over Satan, sin, death, demons and hell.

He commissioned us with the Holy Spirit to be missionaries telling this amazingly good news, that there is a God who passionately, lovingly, continually, relentlessly, pursues us.

And He ascended into heaven and today He is alive and well. He is seated on a throne and He is ruling and reigning over all nations, all cultures, and philosophies, all races, and over all periods of time. He is ruling over moderns and post-moderns, women and men, children and the elderly, the rich and the poor, the wise and the sinful, the black and the white, those who are living and those who are dead, those who have been born and those who will be born. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and He is ruling and reigning over all people commanding everyone everywhere to repent of everything, and He is coming again to judge the living and the dead.

Those who trust in Him will enjoy an eternity in His kingdom of heaven forever and and those who do not will suffer apart from him in the conscious, eternal torments of hell.

That is what we believe…We believe in Jesus.

For as much time as I spend on here, you’d think I’d update my own blog pretty often. Wrong.

I’d love to. One of my goals for the year was to post something of substance on here every other day. Didn’t happen. Not even close.

Since August 27th, huh? I mean, “Ride the Snake” doesn’t really do anything to update you on me does it? Other than the fact that I love that sketch.

The semester has started crazy, good and crazygood. It’s also been enormously hard. I’ve been working mostly at American University and have been loving working with the three guys that God has put in my path so far as well as leading a small group discussion on some of the less “fluffy” teachings of Jesus – “Eat my flesh and drink my blood if you want to go to Heaven.” (And that was just the first week.)

We’ve had fall retreat and I’ve been working on websites (hosting and designing). I am still planning on voting for Obama.

I’ve been twittering a ton and perhaps that will help me think of what I should update you on (I just want to point out that I am at 600 “tweets” even)…

• I have been doing a lot of office work at Murky Coffee.
• I have been dealing with misplaced self-value.
• Convoy of Hope DC – awesome!
• I haven’t been getting enough sleep.
• I had a wonderful day off that turned into a 6-mile walk.
• Went to Korean Thanksgiving.
• Got to Third Base with Dave and Sean.
• Fall Retreat was great – 11 students from DC. (& the aftermath.)

That’s a decent bullet-point summary of the last few weeks. I have also been reading Star Wars novels and I am not ashamed. Okay maybe I am a little.

This week I am taking a personal retreat and getting alone with God for 5 days. Me in a house/cabin alone – 5 days. Not a vacation, a retreat. Pray for me that it will go well and that I will hear pretty powerfully from God.

Once again, I am indebted to the wisdom and knowledge of Wayne Grudem.

This past week I had the opportunity to sit down with a student at Bowie who threw out some questions about the Trinity that I had a hard time answering. Honestly, I am okay with my faith not being rational, I don’t believe that any worldview is completely rational (people who think that you are completely rational – keep asking “Why?” to your belief system and you will eventually get to circular reasoning), but at the same time I want to be fully informed in my faith and have a need for it to be completely internally consistent.

There are things that I’ve pondered deep in the recesses of my ENTP brain that have never completely come together that reading the chapter on the Trinity in Grudem’s Systematic Theology has helped me more fully synthesize (my brain really is like a computer that is doing something on the screen, but running programs in the background – it’s constantly working on something even if it’s not apparent).

When we realize that the New Testament authors generally use the name “God” (Gk. theos) to refer to God the Father and the name “Lord” (Gk. kyrios) to refer to God the Son, then it is clear that there is another trinitarian expression in 1 Corinthians 12:4–6: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.”

Similarly, the last verse of 2 Corinthians is trinitarian in its expression: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14). We see the three persons
mentioned separately in Ephesians 4:4–6 as well: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned together in the opening sentence of 1 Peter: “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be
sprinkled with his blood” (1 Peter 1:2 NASB). And in Jude 20–21, we read: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

I have, for a long time, wondered if the New Testament writers (particularly Paul) were purposeful in that way of speaking of the Divinity. It has seemed to me that in contemporary Christan culture (whether it’s “Christian” at a heart level or in some nominal way) is specifically referring to God the Father when they say “God” even when God is all three persons of the Trinity in orthodox Christian doctrine. Even in my own prayers (verbally, in my journal and even in my silent prayers) I feel that I am addressing different members of the Trinity when I use “Lord”, “God”, and “LORD” – Jesus, the Father, and the whole of the Trinity in that order.

Thanks Wayne, for helping me understand more… again.