Manhandling OR Sharing

Is your Ministry Vision dependent on you individually to maintain its course and development?

Let me ask you this:

'if you disappeared for a year on sabbatical would you return to find the Body passionately fostering continued and innovative growth within the context of your collective vision OR deterioration, discouragement and a burden to maintain and manage your baby?'

In Scripture we find both individually empowered leaders paving the way for the Spirits work in a Body AND we also find more and more in the NT collective groups of Overseers being chosen, called and stepping up to lead the local Body as need and opportunity arises.

Whatever the context, are you singularly man-handling your vision and keeping it from: wolves, detractors, innovators, co-partners and other qualified and called leaders who might also be called to run the race alongside you in your local sphere? That may have been necessary in the beginning but as disciples are born and the body grows, is your shared top-tier Overseer leadership growing as well to form a greater more holistic vision for the Body?

What if you shared the burden?

What if Paul is right to call out a handful of leadership roles in the Church (Eph. 4 apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers) and so expect Jesus to remain the Head of the Church while these called leaders share in the work here on the ground?

What if...what if you and your APEST co-partners discerned the vision for your context and then created a platform: common purpose, language and paradigm for disciplemaking to move and breath and carry the Gospel beyond your knowledge and capacity. What if you release the vision to grow and simply personally model what your vision casts?

Are you man-handling YOUR baby OR are you fostering APEST vision while letting Jesus handle His baby?

Called & Quiet?

There's a new/old tension in the Western Church lately regarding the form and quality of discipleship. A tension in philosophy where on the one hand every disciple is called and gifted to be engaged in incarnational mission while on the other appropriate Christian programming within the church is the focus and scope of discipleship.

Missional communities or small groups?

1x1 disciple making and multiplication or classroom Bible study?

Between Matthew 28:18-20 'Go and make disciples,' and 1 Thess. 4:11-12 'Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.'

There is a real tension, a real division in thought and practice between a local body that sees every individual actually doing the work of ministry as one united body AND a local church whose overseers do the work and invite the body to come and see.

The problem is that Jesus' call to make disciples (Matt 28) is not a different call from Paul's later challenge to live quietly (1 Thess. 4). That while there might be tension built into these dueling passages there's unity of mission. Even where there is a difference of interpretation there is no less a call to fulfill both.

Go & Do: We're familiar with the charge of Christ to go and make disciples of all nations. And we're familiar with the subsequent disciple making movement in Acts. We may even be familiar with the reality that in the following three hundred years after Christ much of the Middle East and most of Europe had converted to Christianity. So the rhythm of personally proclaiming Christ and then personally teaching others to obey His commands = making disciples, may be radical to us but it's not new territory.

But this isn't separate from Paul's charge to aspire to a humble and quiet life. To work diligently with our hands and win over outsiders. What's the context? Is there a reason for this intentionally mild-mannered challenge in light of Jesus' radical call? Probably.

Stay & Be: The Thessalonians turned from their idols to Christ in such a way that they became a model to all of Macedonia and Achaia (1:7). Their faith had become known everywhere (1:8). Despite severe suffering they were infused by the Holy Spirit to endure and so imitate Jesus (1:6). They abandoned their temples, discarded their false teachings, dropped out of trades and unions devoted to false gods and were most likely denied access to many social functions. Culture felt the impact.

Paul thanks God for their 'work produced by faith' - 'labor prompted by love' - 'endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ' (1:2-3)

Even their brotherly love is so extravagant that Paul notes their understanding and lifestyle of love has been directly taught by God and felt all over the countryside (4:9). Paul even urges them to demonstrate it more and more (:10). It's as if the humble and quiet life he goes on to cherish is full of persecution, hard work both in the use of their spiritual gifts and their vocation, a genuine labor of love-lifestyle towards all brothers and sisters and an endurance through all things for the sake of Christ!

Apparently this joyful (5:16), prayerful (5:17), thankful (5:18), zealous (5:19), faithful (5:20), discerning (5:21), aware (5:22) quiet and humble lifestyle is exactly what Jesus meant when He prayed for future generations of disciples on mission (John 17) and then called His own disciples to go and make disciples until the whole world knows of His love.

So, where is this tension? It's not in the Biblical call to make disciples. It's not in a lifestyle that demonstrates His Truth wholly. Where is it?

The tension arises in two places (actually more but I'm writing here and this is all I want to cover):

1. General & Specific Fears
2. Misunderstanding of Gifts / Personality

Fear: We fear all sorts of things but typically we don't live this lifestyle because we're scared. I won't go into detail on this point, if you fear anything or anyone other than God and His divine power then submit and move forward.

Misunderstandings of gifts and personality: We generally agree that the spiritual gifts are given to serve the body and entice the non-believers to Gods grace - but personality is a messy and subjective discussion. That our personalities are given by God and shaped by our circumstances is an important piece of who we are and how the Lord calls us.

I wonder if it isn't within a deeper understanding of our personalities that our humble and quiet life is better discerned. Yes, our culture will shape how the Gospel is lived out and communicated, but so will our personalities. That two very different disciples both with the gift of teaching may very well utilize this gift in very different capacities - one on a stage and the other in a living room.

My wife and are both quite introverted and yet her form of quiet yet intentional living quite naturally looks different than mine and often we're tweaking and shaping and challenging and sacrificing what that means within our household and ministry.

Living quietly and working diligently will be different in different towns, homes and local churches - yet the work of making disciples will always be laborious, faithful and self-sacrificial work requiring perseverance and wrought with forms of persecution.

Who are you in Christ and who are you called to connect with intentionally yet humbly?

Word of Beard

To the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus everywhere - you are loved on purpose.

Grace. Peace. (1:2)
Blessed. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. (1:3)
He chose us. Holy. Blameless. Love. (1:4)
Adoption. Good pleasure. (1:5)
Grace bestowed on us. (1:6)
Redemption. Forgiveness. Riches of his grace. (1:7)
Abound. All wisdom and insight. (1:8)
Making known. Good pleasure. Purposed. (1:9)
Bring together on earth and heaven. (1:10)
Chosen. Purpose. Works all things. (1:11)
Hoped. Praise of his glory. (1:12)
Gospel. Salvation. Sealed. Promised Holy Spirit. (1:13)
Inheritance. Redemption. (1:14)

In these 14 verses of Paul's letter to the Church surrounding Ephesus he overwhelms us with the overflow of the Lords character - He floods with His intentional and gracious love for us. Crazy!

Seriously. Just read through the list above describing what God, through the life of Christ, offers us.

Not only that but all with preemptive purpose and design. Catch that? It's actually been Gods will from before the beginning of time to pull us into His vision of eternity. Check this out:

Chose us before the foundation of the world. (1:4)
Predestined. Through Christ. Good pleasure of his will. (1:5)
Praise and glory of his grace. (1:6)
He caused to abound to us. (1:8)
Making known to us the mystery of his will. According to his good pleasure. Purposed in him. (1:9)
Fullness of times. Bring together in Christ. (1:10)
Chosen. Predestined. Purpose of the One. Works all things according to his will. (1:11)
Promised Holy Spirit. (1:13)

It's not chaos and condemnation that propels the Creator onward in purpose and mission. It isn't anger and distance and disillusion. No.

From eternity past the Father, the Son and the Spirit have found nothing but pleasure in fostering and securing redemption for us. Through the eternal plan and cost of the life of Christ and the seal of the Spirit we are drawn in as heirs, adopted into the family of God the Father with love according to what pleases Him in His Holiness and Perfection.

He chose us and invites us into the divine mystery of His will.

You and I are loved. Read Ephesians 1:1-14. Read it again. Read it once again. You have been loved. You are being loved on. You will be loved forever. Now tell me that isn't just exactly what your heart truly desires?

Uber-Spatial Unity

In Ephesians 4:1 the author, Apostle Paul, acknowledges two Spatial contexts in motion: Physical and Spiritual (both being Relational in nature).

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Every follower of Christ, through salvation, is equipped to live a life worthy of their new place in Fathers kingdom, His family. In fact, living a worthy life isn't something earned but a lifestyle overflowing with the eternal work Jesus HAS done and IS doing in the Christian life. Fantastic!

This new life, this worthy lifestyle according to Paul, takes place simultaneously on two Spatial fronts:

1. Physical Space: (4:2-3) Paul urges the Asian Church to foster and share in awesome community with one-another. Being gentle and humble, patient and intentionally peaceful and united...these take shape alongside other human beings - Physically and thus relational, mental and emotional.
2. Spiritual Space: (4:4-6) Paul goes on to urge unity in the Spiritual realm. A one-ness that encompasses the Body of believers everywhere, the One-ness of The Father, Jesus and The Spirit in the Trinity. The One-ness of Gods Sovereignty in and through everything - of faith and baptism and hope. A Spiritual Unity that surpasses every physical border and boundary.

I wouldn't be off the mark in saying that this Spatial Unity is just as important in the Body today, the Church (universal and local), as it was at the time of Pauls Epistle to the Ephesians.

Uber-Spatial Unity is a call, a charge, an urgent and refreshed word to the Body to be united physically beyond denominations, styles, personal preferences and expressive flavors in such a way that the Love of Christ would be on display on every street corner and in every home in between.

Sounds uber-idealistic I suppose. Yeah, it is.

Uber-Physical Unity only works as it is partnered with Uber-Spiritual Unity. That the very heart of Spatial One-ness that Paul urges for (4:4-6, Philip. 1:27-28, 1 Cor. 12) is first found in the glue of the Spiritual Space holding the very Physical realm together.

Every Physically-spatial relationship is first impacted by Spiritually-spatial truth.

As much as you and I can imagine, discern and intentionally foster spiritual unity on the major doctrinal issues with brothers and sisters in our communities we ought to then be intentional in fostering physical unity for the sake of the world.

Where is the Spirit encouraging you to be unified more and more both in spirit with your Savior and in relationship with the Church?