Below are some notes on the question we recieved in the "question box" for anyone to ask a question related to God, the bible, the church and anything in it. Or maybe just about anything. If you have a question, submit it in the back of the gym at the small group station or send it to questions@bethechurch.com. We talked about this in part one last wedneday and will finish tonight with church leadership.
What a great question to kick off the Q&A series. By no means was the response drawn up for this question comprehensive. There are so many different possible intended directions with this question. I went ahead and tried to briefly hit the main three (the magic number) possibilities: Church Service, Church Body, Church Leadership.
There are plenty more granular pieces to this within service, like worship, communion, and also women in leadership, megachurch vs. small church issues and methods. When looking at the way church is narrated in the bible, we must keep our focus on the principals set forth as the precedent for "doing" church rather than methods. If we get too wrapped up in methodology, we're going to find that methods do not translate into our current cultural context and are throughout history a vehicle for divisiveness within the church. Further, methods aren't touched on in particular detail in the bible and therefore irrelevent in most cases. For instance, communion wasn't a liturgical ritual that we see today in most traditional church settings. It was a toast and a celebration of believers in the grace of God as well as the sacrificial remembrance. Their was an intimacy in communion in the bible that brought them together in a REAL meal together that transcended our cookie cutter notion of getting out of your pew, walking toward the "communion table" (a sad approach to a real meal table--no one's reclining together there) to individually pick up a cracker and a shot of juice or wine and reuturn inidivudally and somberly remember Christ's sacrifice. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that a lot of American traditional churches are missing the "method" drawn out in the bible. Their method is simply not biblical. But of course, their principal is biblical, at least in part. (leaving out the celebration aspect in most cases of Jesus purpose of rising from the dead).
So, with such an introduction where I spew my own thoughts, here's an outline of
what we talked about where the Bible speaks about what church should look like.
Church Service (Order in worship and attributes of) - 1 Corinthians 14:21-33
Church Body - Acts 2:42
A building? A body? - Acts 7:48-53
Corporate Worship
Preaching God's Word (1 Cor 14/1 Tim 4)
Public Reading of Scripture (1 Tim 4)
Public Prayer (Acts 2/ 1 Cor 14)
Worship (all throughout)
Offering (Acts 2, etc.)
Caution of the trappings of ritualized corporate worship gatherings: complacency,
and a hardened heart at the alter of God. (Amos 5, etc.)
Church Leadership -
Elders (1 Tim, Phil 1:1, Acts 14:23, Titus 1:6-9, 1 Thess 5:12, Hebrews 13:7)
Deacons (1 Tim, Acts 6, Col 4:7, Col 1:7, Eph 6:21, Rom 16:1, Phil 1:1)
We all should be deacons at heart if we truly are the church.
I won't summarize here what the scriptures mean--You'll need to come to small group tonight! If you do want more info on what these scriptures mean or how eldership/deacons are reconciled through scripture here at Oasis and cannot make it tonight, please leave a comment on the post, or e-mail "questions@bethechurch.com" and Chad, Chris, or I can try to answer your questions.
Josh
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