Eternal Perspectives

From the first Sunday our church gathered to worship, we were six to eight months behind.

Perhaps caution and prudence would have counseled going slow and waiting, but those of us who left the church to begin another did so out of a sense of obedience - although who knows the true motivation of one’s own heart? Regardless, none of us was willing to stay even one week longer: we - others far more than me - had invested heavily in the previous church only to be, well, what felt like, betrayed. But for whatever reasons, we left.

One of the first unofficial acts of the new church (called “A Church” for long time due to lack of a name) was to appoint five of us to be a formation committee. We were charged with doing whatever was necessary to establish the church on a solid, biblical foundation: Christ Himself and the teachings of the apostles being that foundation.

We followed Malphurs’ instruction, structure, and forms closely. As recommended, we began by identifying the core values of the people: what was it about our group that was essential, if not unique, to us. These were the core values of the church; these would serve as the guides for us now and in the future.

In the end, we identified eight core values:

The Authority of Scripture
The Supremacy and Centrality of Christ
Discipleship
Loving God and Loving Others
Ministry Excellence
Prayer
Stewardship
Family Affirmation

As Malphurs says, the core values are the DNA of the local church: they determine what the church will and will not be, will and will not do. The five of us polled the congregation - with forms provided by Malphurs - and did the best we could in coming up with values that were true to and reflective of the group. Even so, we were the ones who chose the core values: we knew and admitted to one another that the group was likely to go along with whatever we put before them. To a man, each of us in the group were committed to establishing a biblical church.

It was about this time that we (the formation committee) began to feel a great sense of responsibility and humility. Perhaps without realizing it, the congregation had put the future of and nature of their new church in our hands: they had entrusted us with an authority and power much greater than they realized - or than we had initially realized. We went back to them more than once to explain this to them but, truthfully, I don’t think they understood what we were doing. This was new territory for them - as it was for us - and their focus was on the constitution, which they believed to be the critical document.

The next step was the mission statement, which was supposed to be memorable as well as able to fit on a T-shirt. The five of us brainstormed and finally settled on an eight-word sentence that encapsulated what we were about:

“Presenting Christ as Savior; Pursuing Him as Lord“.

The vision statement came quickly and relatively easy: we described what our church would look like if we were faithful to the core values and the mission statement. Seven characteristics were incorporated into our vision:

We envision a body of believers rooted in Scripture and knowledgeable of the truths and principles of the Bible. We see believers in whom the word of God dwells richly and to which they are submitted.

We envision a church filled with people committed to seeking the LORD and desiring to know Him more intimately every day. We see each believer loving Jesus Christ with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We envision Christians living their lives from an eternal perspective, always seeking to glorify God and to approach life with His priorities in mind.

We envision every believer involved in discipleship, desiring to grow in the knowledge of God and to live a life worthy of their calling. We see men and women of all ages walking in the Spirit and pleasing God in their lives.

We envision a loving, committed, and intimate fellowship and communion of Christians. We see a body of believers striving for unity, seeking the good of one another, and dedicating themselves to the spiritual growth of the body which is Faith Bible Church.

We envision a church filled with believers who preach the gospel to the world through the lives they live. We see people committed to doing good to all people, and especially those of the household of faith.

We envision a church that will reproduce itself by establishing like-minded churches in towns and communities throughout the county, state, nation, and even the world. We see a body committed to reaching out to all people through church planting.

The fourth step, according to Malphurs, is to develop a strategy for building on the core values, accomplishing the mission, and achieving the vision. Realizing that we were but an ad hoc committee, we chose to leave such strategizing to the future elders, whoever they might be.

We spent hundreds of hours on the work. We were a committee that none of us would have put together but, we quickly realized, God had pulled together for this single purpose. We grew together not just as a team responsible for a task, but as a group of men committed to Christ but only loosely committed to one another. By the end of our work, our commitment to one another grew to a genuine love in Christ.

Nothing in my previous 33 years of ministry compares with the work I was involved in with Faith Bible Church (the congregation chose a name after two months or so of being “A Church”). The result is an infant church that will need to be shepherded into maturity over the coming years. There are many who are individually mature, but as a body we are quite immature: we don’t know how we fit together and are still in the “exploring my body” stage of neonatal development.

The work has only begun, as many of you know. As our work began drawing to a close, I said to one of the other men that I felt like we had just arrived at Rivendell: an important accomplishment, to be sure, but only the beginning of an adventure that will hopefully continue for years and decades to come.

Thanks for letting me share a little of this journey with you.

Before any motorcycle came along, major changes transpired in the church of which I was a member. The vote on the new constitution, about which I have written elsewhere, finally took place in mid-January. Lacking the two-thirds majority required for adoption, the constitution was defeated.

What the vote was ultimately about, however, was not the constitution; constitutions are necessary but relatively unimportant documents in a church. The vote was a referendum and conclusion to something that began before I ever arrived at the church.

The referendum involved the path that some of us sought to follow and, hopefully, lead others down. Our path was one of believing in the authority of Scripture and submission to it; one of the elders of the church, in contrast, said that he was not going to be bothered by what the Bible says, that he had his tradition and religion, and that was enough for him. Others referred to the Old Testament as “sharia,” a disparaging dismissal of the OT and a misappropriation of a term used for the code of law derived from the Koran. The things Paul wrote were true for Paul, another said, but were not God’s word to us. It goes on and on.

In short, the philosophy apparently subscribed to by the dominant group in the church was a mixture of Catholicism - wherein the church has greater authority than Scripture - and humanism, which winds up practicing the tragedy of the Book of Judges: “In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right” (Jdg 21.25, NET). Without an absolute authority, people are left to their own morality - a dangerous path that winds up wandering - or sprinting - away from God.

The vote was also the final act of a purge that had begun a year before and six months before I arrived on the scene. A popular pastor who taught the Bible from the pulpit had been removed by many of the same people who were instrumental in defeating the new constitution. Whether or not the pastor needed to be removed or not is moot; what resulted following his dismissal was the departure of many of the people who had begun attending the church when the pastor had come to the church. Some of those desirous of biblical teaching and submitting to the authority of the Bible remained, however, and it was these who were finally purged with the vote. The schism in the church was not about personalities but authority, the Bible, and the raison d’être of the church.

One night after the vote a group of us, representing a dozen families or so, met and decided to leave the church and start a new one. Thanks to diligent work by a few, we were able to meet the following Sunday for our first church service. We were roughly organized and it showed in our service - but it was a beginning.

Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to select a formation committee who would do the work necessary for pulling the church together and pointing it in a biblical direction. I was named to the group along with four other men, tasked with doing something none of us had done before: found a church.

Towards the end of last year I had run across a book by Aubrey Malphurs entitled Ministry Nuts & Bolts, which provided a general overview of what he had been teaching (at Dallas Theological Seminary) and practicing for over twenty years. Impressed by what I read there, I quickly ordered seven or eight of his more specific, more detailed books and began reading and studying them. These books became our guide for the work we were about to undertake.

That work, which (I think) was one of the most important things I’ve done in thirty-plus years of being a believer, and which (I know) was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in ministry, will be the subject of my next post.

Someone else has said it better than I ever could. Ever think or feel this way about your own church?

[S]tatus was tied to a variety of factors: ‘occupational prestige, income or wealth, education and knowledge, religious purity, family and ethnic group position, and local-community status . . .’

‘Most individuals tend to measure themselves by the standards of some group that is very important to them - their reference group, whether or not they belong to it - rather than by the standards of the whole society.’ One could possess high status according to certain markers but low status when it came to others, creating a status dissonance that fed an internal restlessness and a greater desire to achieve the dignitas that one believed was one’s due’

[It involves] schmoozing, massaging a superior’s ego, rubbing shoulders with the powerful, pulling strings, scratching each other’s back, and dragging rivals’ names through the mud . . .

Most, if not all, of the problems . . . were hatched from the influence of this setting. Values that were antithetical to the message of the cross - particularly those related to honor and status . . . in which power manifesting itself in ruthlessness and self-advancement is thought to be the only sensible course - percolated into the church, destroying its fellowship and its Christian witness as some members sought to balance civic norms with Christian norms . . . Socially pretentious and self-important individuals appear to have dominated the church. It is likely that they flaunted their symbols of status, wisdom, influence, and family pedigree and looked down on others of lesser status. They appear to have wanted to preserve the social barriers of class and status that permeated their social world but were nullified in the cross of Christ.”

Apparently, they have no religious scruples about being well integrated into a pagan society that is inherently hostile to the wisdom of the cross. . . . Their faith appears not to have created any significant social and moral realignment of their lives. They face little or no social ostracism, and the lack of external pressure contributes to their internal dissension.

‘The church is not a cohesive community but a club, whose meetings provide important moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, but do not have global implications of moral and social change.’

This is not a description of any present-day church but of the church in Corinth to which Paul wrote his letters. It is taken from David Garland’s introduction to 1 Corinthians in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; he quotes from Meeks, Stansbury, and Barclay in the sections above.

In a sense, however, it is a present-day and any-day church: what was true of people then is true of people now and in the future. The struggles of sinful people then remain the struggles for all of us in our own lives and churches, and the solutions proffered by Paul remain the solutions that we need to implement today.

Michael Spencer has a post at The Barth’s Head Tavern about sex abuse scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention. He says, in part:

The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination and it has little or no interest in admitting that a percentage of the many adults who work with its children and youth are dangerous predators. Now the victim’s groups are coming for the SBC churches and leaders who have looked the other way. It’s not an RCC [Roman Catholic Church] thing, and the cover ups by pastors are just as bad.”

Michael is correct about what he says - this is a scandal of horrid proportions - but doesn’t mention (perhaps because it wasn’t his point) a more damning scandal lurking in the shadows. But neither scandal is limited to any particular denomination, theology, or division of Christendom.

The other scandal involves institutional blindness and paralysis. Or worse.

When I was in seminary in the early 1980s, I did some research on sex abuse: its prevalence, nature, origins, etc. Even then it was approaching epidemic proportions: one of the popular books on the matter was entitled The Common Secret. It hasn’t gotten any better in the last couple of decades.

The statistics on such abuse are readily available online: a simple search will return millions of sites having information on the subject. One report says that in a seven-year period (1986-1993) sexual abuse doubled in the United States. How much of that is due to an actual increase and how much stems from increased reporting is impossible to determine. One conclusion is probably pretty safe: the problem isn’t going away.

The not-so-secret scandal in churches is that, as my own research showed, this is not something new: we - the Christian community - have known about this problem for a long time. We have also known that the sexual abuse of children crosses all sorts of lines, whether socio-economic, ethnic, or denominational. Being in a Christian home or a Christian church does not guarantee the safety of our children.

Some churches, including many in the SBC, have begun to screen individuals working with children and to implement policies that greatly reduce the opportunities sexual predators might have. The problem can never be completely eradicated or controlled, but much can be done to make it more difficult for perpetrators and the church much safer for our children.

Given the information available to churches for years and years, however, it must be asked why it has taken the church so long to protect children. Some churches, sadly, only begin to protect after the fact: someone has been caught, a lawsuit has been brought, criminal charges are filed, and now the church acts because it has to act.

I don’t know all the reasons for the blindness and inactivity that have inflicted local churches. Perhaps it is a false sense of security, some naëve ideas about the trustworthiness of people in church, or a preoccupation with missions and building projects that siphons money off for such things. Maybe it’s just that they don’t want to admit the problem or spend money to fix the porous holes of the sheep pen.

Whatever the causes might be, however, the time passed long ago for the church to make sure its own house is not only clean, but safe. Those in positions of responsibility, which includes all of us to some extent, will have to answer to the Great Shepherd one day. Given His devotion to children and the helpless, the matter of sexual abuse in the church is likely to be one of the first things He asks us.

Emergent people tend to wear me out. Not all of them, of course, but only the vast majority, i.e., the ones who run around talking about things they don’t understand and possessing all the qualities of a dog except loyalty.

Here’s what touched off this rant:

Scot McKnight wrote a wonderful rebuttal of Spencer Burke’s A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity, especially rejecting Burke’s contradictory universalism, denial of the Trinity and Personhood of God, and lack of an orthodox gospel. The post above is the fourth in a series on the book and, while all are worth reading, it can stand alone without having read the previous posts.

So far, no rant.

Then I read Andy Jackson’s response and - whoosh! - up goes the blood pressure! Andy says, to begin with,

First, No one should use Burke to condemn everyone in the Emergent movement. Condemnation by association is not right.

First, why is it that everytime an emergent author gets nailed for poor or heretical theology, all the drones start squawking, “Oh, no! Not us! We’re as innocent as lemmings doves!” Well, it seems to me that if you hang out in with charlatans, praise charlatans, and gobble up the books written by charlatans, you’re asking for condemnation by association.

Now it is true that Jesus hung out with outcasts (such as prostitutes) but it didn’t pervert His theology and He didn’t distance Himself from them when they were attacked. Neither, however, did He defend their philosophies or theologies: He sought to change them. Big difference. Critical difference. And I can’t recall Him associating with charlatans, although I do seem to recall Him going off on a rant or two against them.

Just once I’d like to hear someone in the emergent movement - excuse me, conversation - stand beside one of their own authors instead of running like scared little puppies when the big dogs arrive at the fight. Or, at the very least, admit that their leaders are heretical at this or that point and that the conversation needs to change its tone, direction, and assumptions. Getting an emergent to criticize another emergent is like getting a liberal to criticize a liberal - or a conservative a conservative. Actually, it’s more difficult, I think.

Andy does go on to say,

Second, Emergent leaders should continue in their conversation, but also realize that they have biblical leadership responsibility for those they influence. God will hold all biblical leaders accountable for our teaching and ministry. In other words, our ministry effects people.

Third, Recognized Emergent leaders need to ’show their cards’ as it relates to Burke’s theology. We need to hear what key Emergent leaders think, and provide correction. Hopefully, it will start with McLaren.

Second, using the word “biblical” with regard to emergent leaders is akin to the trite Jello and a tree metaphor. Besides, surely God won’t judge them because He just wants everyone to get along with one another: Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, atheist. After all, He’s a generous kinda God, isn’t He? Calling for emergents to adhere to biblical standards is too broad: they tend to pick and choose which standards they want to accept.

Third, Burke is one of the “key Emergent leaders,” being the inspiration of the emergent The Ooze website. So we’ve heard what a leader has to say. Does anyone seriously believe that McLaren will say anything negative or corrective about Burke? If there is but one fatal flaw (this is optimistic: their fatal flaws are legion) it is the total unwillingness of emergents to clean up their own houses.

But my point is this: don’t jump on the emergent bandwagon if you’re going to jump off as soon as it starts to stink. Have the courage to take a stand - somewhere, anywhere. Either get with them - which in this case means leaving orthodox Christianity behind - or get away and stay away from them. You can (as I have) read their books, publicly reject their theology (if you can call it that), and pay attention to their at-times valuable insights into problems in the church.

It must be recognized, however, for all the wonderful exposure of problems they might offer that they have zero solutions that will benefit anyone beyond this lifetime. Denying the Godhead, espousing pantheism, and making the gospel unnecessary is no solution at all; in fact, it is worse: it is snake oil, i.e., it is no solution packaged as the only solution and sold to people dead in their sins.

Addendum: Andy at Smart Christian responded to this post here; I sent him the following email which I’ll reproduce here for anyone who’s interested or has voyeuristic inclinations.

Andy:

“First, a suggestion: you might consider leaving comments open when you mention someone by name in one of your posts. That would allow people like me to clarify a thing or two at your site as well as mine (I’ll be adding a post script shortly).

“Second, my beef is with fence-straddlers, as I tried to make clear (but may have failed). Taking a stand does not mean totally abandoning the emergent group: my role model would be John Stott (I think it was John Stott) who stayed with his own denomination for years and years even though he had serious theological disagreements and concerns. As long as they didn’t depart from the gospel message, he said, he thought he could do more good on the inside than on the outside. But he never hesitated to speak out or write against the errors in his denomination.

“So that’s the main point, although it may have gotten lost in tangential thoughts and ideas.

“Finally - and this is what I’m going to add at my post - my rant was triggered by your post but not aimed at you. Your post was merely the proverbial “last straw” that caused me to break. Sometimes I think emergent churches should meet at a Waffle House, since that’s what they seem to do best - waffle.

“So, sorry if the attack seemed personal; it wasn’t meant to be.”

Related Tags: emergent, emerging, Spencer Burke, Scot McKnight, theology, church

Having been to seminary (twice), I understand the importance of knowing what one believes before undertaking a study of any subject or issue. This all-but guarantees that whatever material is selected for the purpose of research will either support or fail to refute one’s predetermined conclusion. It is one of the many valuable things one learns in seminary and why I recommend a rigorous course of seminary studies to everyone.

Wisely, I have learned to generalize my highly-honed approach to learning beyond the Bible to subjects not specifically or exclusively theological. It is for this reason that, before I actually read and studied Brian McLaren (hereafter, BM), I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like him, that his teachings were dangerous and false, and that I should warn others about him. With my position firmly established and made public, I began to study BM for myself.

Before going any further, however, I must confess two things: first, that I had had some exposure to BM prior to reading and studying him in earnest, albeit accidentally. The initial exposure was strictly visual: the ubiquitous photo of him that seems to be lurking everywhere these days. Whether I was physically perusing books at Barnes & Noble or digitally browsing on Amazon, I could not seem to escape BM’s I-know- something-you-don’t-know grin: it was everywhere, peering out at me like a baptized version of Baba Ram Dass. (more…)

Part One
Part Two

(Following is the third and final part of a proposed paper for elder and leadership development and orientation at my friend Butch’s church, Hole-in-the-Wall Church. Feedback is desired.)

5. What does it mean to be a part of a Mission Church?
(more…)

Part One

(Following is the second part of a proposed paper for elder and leadership development and orientation at my friend Butch’s fellowship, Hole-in-the-Wall Church. Feedback is desired.)

3. What is the Gospel of the Mission Church?
(more…)

One of my best friends - I’ll call him Butch - sent me an email that included a document intended for introducing potential elders and leaders to the purpose of his church. My friend is trying to get his church to intentionally do better what it’s already doing very well.

After a couple of back and forths and 60+ comments and emendations from me, I finally decided to re-write the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself to use the term “missional”: it’s just too trite and trendy.

I’d appreciate any feedback or thoughts you might have on what I’ve written: it may make the paper even better or it may be ignored completely.

Here’s the first of three installments of the proposed paper:

The Mission Statement of Hole-in-the-Wall Church is to build a loving community that follows Christ in order to reach a community that is lost without Him. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on and further delineate how our mission is to be accomplished. (more…)

Considerable discussions are taking place regarding how to determine whether or not a church is still a church, i.e., has a lampstand (Rev 2.4-5). Having raised some questions myself in an earlier post, I thought perhaps the most valuable contribution I could make at this point would be to provide a couple of quotes of by two men who have written commentaries on the passage (Eph 2.1-7) in question.

The first commentary is from Robert Mounce, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen. His commentary is part of the New International Commentary on the New Testament, edited by F.F. Bruce. Mounce writes:

As one who walks in the midst of the churches, Christ is able to say, ‘I know thy works’ . . . The works which Christ knows are not so much separate acts as they are an overall manner of life. The two nouns which follow (toil and patience) give the active and passive sides of this lifestytle. The Ephesians had toiled to the point of exhaustion and borne patiently the hostility of a society at odds with their goals and efforts . . .

“Every virtue carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It seems probable that desire for sound teaching and the resulting forthright action taken to exclude all imposters had created a climate of suspicion in which brotherly love could no longer exist. Barclay conjectures that ‘the eagerness to root out all mistaken men had ended in a sour and rigid orthdoxy’ . . . Good works and pure doctrine are not adequate substitutes for that rich relationship of mutual love shared by persons who have just experienced the redemptive love of God. The Ephesian church had left its first love. The expression includes both love of God and love of mankind at large, but seems to refer mainly to their love for one another . . . A cooling of personal love for God inevitably results in the loss of harmonious relationships within the body of believers. Jesus had made it clear that ‘by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ . . .

“The church is called upon to remember the earlier days in which love abounded in the congregation . . . First love is pictured as a height from which the church had fallen. The present imperative, ‘remember,’ stands in contrast to the aorist imperative, ‘repent,’ and suggests a continuing attitude over against a decisive break. Bear in mind the loving relationships you once enjoyed and make a clean break with your present manner of life! . . . The love that John requires is not an ‘undiscriminating amiability’ (Kiddle, p. 24), but an attitude toward the brethren which expresses itself in loving acts. Moffatt remarks that ‘the way to regain this warmth of affection is neither by working up spasmodic emotion nor by theorising about it . . . but by doing its duties’ (p. 351). Repentance is an active step.”

The second quote is from Alan F. Johnson, Th.D. (Dallas Theological Seminary), writing in the Expositors Bible Commentary, edited by Frank Gaebelein.

The speaker’s verdict shows, on the other hand, that however much had been gained at Ephesus by resisting the false apostles, not all was well there. They had ‘forsaken,’ or ‘let go’ (aphiemi), their ‘first love.’ This was a serious defect. If uncorrected, it would result in their loss of light bearing (v. 5). The majority of commentators take the first love to refer to the original Christian love the Ephesians had for one another. Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian elders to ‘help the weak’ (Acts 20:35) and the warm commendation he gives them in their early years for their fervent love of one another (Eph 1:15) may lend support to this view.

“Other commentators, however, see the ‘first love’ as a reference to their inner devotion to Christ that characterized their earlier commitment, like the love of a newly wedded bride for her husband John R.W. Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958], p. 27; Alf, 4:563). This interpretation is supported by the fact that the letters to the other churches reveal problems of inner betrayal to Christ as subjects of his complaint. Neither view necessarily eliminates the other. Loving devotion to Christ can be lost in the midst of active service, and certainly no amount of orthodoxy can make up for a failure to love one another. ‘First’ (protos) love would suggest that they still loved, but with a quality and intensity unlike that of their initial love.

“The speaker’s command further exposes the problem and offers a way to correct the fault. The imperatives are instructive: ‘Remember…. Repent … do.’ The Ephesians are called on to reflect on their earlier works of fervent love (like the Sardians [3:3]), to look in comparison at the present situation, to ponder how far they have fallen from their former devotion and enthusiasm, to humbly ‘repent’ (totally change) before God, and to do the former works motivated by love. These imperatives are all part of a single action designed to keep the Ephesians from the judgment of Christ, which would effectively remove them as his representatives in the world.

“How many churches today stand at this same crossroads? Do we sense the importance to Christ of not only honoring his name by our true confession but also reflecting his life by our loving relationship to others? This threat of loss of light bearing (or witness) applies doubtless equally to the other four churches, to whom a similar exhortation to repent is given (Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicea).

NOTE: No sooner do I tell “this mob that knows nothing of the law” that I need to study and write about other things than I am accosted by a request for an excursus. Well, OK this time but don’t expect this to happen all the time!

Over the 30+ years I have been a Christian, there have been times when I have heard a preacher say something akin to the following:

“So these people have given up on the church, have they? Well, I’ve got news for them: God [sometimes pronounced as “Gawd” or “Gi-odd”] hasn’t given up on His church! He’s not through with her at all!

And then everyone - who is obviously not the target of this barb, sitting in the pew as they are - responds with shouts of “Amen!” or “Glory!” or “Hallelujah!” The thinking behind this statement seems to be that God is committed to the church and that, no matter how bad it gets, He will always be there to bless them and commune with them.

But I’m not so convinced. I suppose I started questioning the veracity of this reasoning one time when I was reading Malachi. God declares to the prophet,

‘You are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, “How have we defiled You?” In that you say, “The table of the LORD is to be despised.” But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor? Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly?’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘But now will you not entreat God’s favor, that He may be gracious to us? With such an offering on your part, will He receive any of you kindly?’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘Oh that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar! I am not pleased with you,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘nor will I accept an offering from you.’”

“Shut the gates” to the temple? Where does that leave the faithful like Malachi to worship? What are they to do? But, more to the purpose of this post, has God given up on the temple at this point? Is He allowed to do that according to our theology?

Ah, but that was the Old Testament; we live under the New Covenant, where God treats us better. But then there’s that little matter of the Lord Jesus Christ’s warning to the church at Ephesus. With letters from Paul and elders such as John and Timothy, the believers at Ephesus were a shining light during the early days of Christianity. Nevertheless, no more than 60 years later, the Lord warns,

Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” - Rev 2.5

For a church to lose its lampstand was - and is - the equivalent of losing its charter. There are times when a Four Seasons hotel or a Saltgrass Steak House loses its charter for failing to maintain the standard of excellence required by the chain. The hotel or restaurant may continue in business, but they are no longer affiliated with the chain. Whatever they may be in the future, they are neither a Four Seasons nor a Saltgrass Steak House.

It is no less possible for a church to lose its charter, i.e., its lampstand. In the case of Ephesus - to which the quote was addressed - it was for falling from her first love. Most likely the fall involved her singular devotion to Jesus Christ and the love that the members had for one another. Without repentance, the church at Ephesus faced the loss of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit during its worship services and ministries. Believers, of course, remained indwelt but the blessing of God upon the worship and ministry of the church had been removed.

It is foolish for any church today to think that it is not possible to lose its lampstand. I suspect there are more than a few gatherings on Sunday mornings that are lacking a “charter” from God. There may be activity, lively singing, fun fellowship, and strong preaching - but for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit is not participating and the angels are not observing the festivities. Such organizations are little different from secular service clubs from God’s perspective.

The critical question, then, is this: What are the basic requirements for a church to obtain and maintain a “charter” and thereby enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit and the angels in its gatherings? What must be present for Him to be present; what must be absent for Him to remain?

I will suggest two factors that I believe are non-negotiable:

1. A love for God expressed in obedience;

2. A love for one another manifested by active participation in one another’s lives and a commitment to fulfilling the numerous “one another’s” of the New Testament.

Perhaps there are others but I’ll mention only these two. Are there more? If so, why? We would all benefit from having some concept for what constitutes a true church that is still in possession of her lampstand. Otherwise we might find ourselves in a nice gathering of people that lost its charter some time ago.