Comments on: Just Beyond The 100th Time

By: FRISCOSAN

FRISCOSAN — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:12:41 +0000

I am filled with love for each of you. Your are a community as God is the community into which we are all beckoned. Don’t ever stop your search for the missing ingredient in you and your churches. I found it after much effort. I didn’t leave my church but I did shake much dust from my feet. I found what was missing in a very unlikely place. It is in my heart right where God said He put it. I was led to it by, of all people, Jesus himself. The discovery started when I was ready to learn from Him and I “happened” to read the title of the first chapter in a book: “What did Jesus teach?” Huh, I already know what Jesus teaches, I thought. I was wrong. My knowledge of what Jesus teaches was only as deep as the ink on the paper. So much for my great teachers the clergy of the various churches, the theolgians, the philosophers the modern day Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes who lay heavy burdens on us. These are the only folks that anger Jesus for the harm they do to his sheep with their superficial understanding and preaching. It was St. Thomas of Aquinas himself who said to his amanuensis “Take all these books I have written and burn them for they are worth only but straw”. This happened after Thomas experienced Jesus revelation directly while offering the Eucharist. He never wrote another word of theology. He had received the missing ingredient. So, what did Jesus really teach? So few seem to know. The scriptures have at least ten levels of understanding, according to some medieval scholars. The ink was not deep enough for me. When I mined Jesus teachings, I encountered great treasures of understanding put there for me to find when I became humble enough to ask, seek, knock. I did have to sell all that I had intellectually relied upon but it was only the garbage Paul said it was. It is clear to me that there are some major problems with the translation, interpretation and application of Jesus teaching. The only way to know for sure is to judge by the fruits, as Jesus taught. The fruits of the prevailing churchy scene were not enough for me, or you, I gather. I had to let Him reveal to me understanding of what He taught and then I had live it to see if it worked, which it does. I found it amazingly simple. All great things are simple. Today, I hang out with churchy people in hopes of passing Jesus’ true teaching along. Though the churchy ones clearly love me, they always joke of burning me at the stake for my outrageous, but refreshing, insights into the scriptures and the current secular/religious scene. It must be good because even the churchiest people eventually see at least some of the light I must try to bring. It is said we are all created with a tiny crack in our skulls, that His light might someday penetrate. I am glad that I can readily admit I am the greatest of sinners and totally unable to make myself or anyone else sinless. It keeps me humble enough to remember that God created me worthy and that I cannot improve on His work. What I can do is unlearn what I learned from the ignorant and gullible people who taught me the great untruths they believed in about their and my unworthiness. Today I am first a spritual being, then a Christian, then a church member.
Happiest New Year to you all!

By: SjB

SjB — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:31:22 +0000

I recently converted to conservative Lutheran after wandering in the evangelical wilderness for 10+ years actively looking for relief from the previous decades caught in the hamster wheel of evangelical principles and etc. I was completely burned out by the law diet and Christless Christianity I kept finding.

I love the Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper – it is a means of grace and I receive the body and blood of my Savior for the forgiveness of sins among other benefits. This is why it is central to the worship service. It is word and sacrament together – not one or the other. In Lutheran confessional circles you are forgiven with the absolution and the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Much grace and gospel!

IMonk – have you read Dr. Allen P. Ross (Anglican) book: Recalling the Hope of Glory? He is an OT professor at Beeson Divinity and his book is supposed to be a survey on worship from Genesis to Revelation. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s supposed to cover why the use of liturgy and communion is the scriptural foundation for how God wants to be worshiped. It’s not a Lutheran book, but I ordered it hoping to understand what the bible says about worship.

I am relieved to be out of the evangelical nightmare and very slowly learning the traditional forms of worship, hymns, church calendar, lectionary, and etc.

By: Joe M

Joe M — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:28:28 +0000

“Where are we told in the New Testament that we are producing experiences? Where does it say we are competing for the world’s attention the world’s way?”

I think it says this all over the NT. Signs and wonders are what grabs you into the NT. Wow, imagine walking on water, experiencing healing, feeling the Spirit shake the room… And didn’t Paul say he was “all things to all people?” Was he really a good Jew as he said in Acts, or did he eat whatever was put in front of him? Sounds like he was being flexible and was “competing for the world’s attention the world’s way.”

Churches offer this way of thinking because, on a simple level, this is what so much of the NT says. This is entry level Christianity. It is what Jesus and Paul used to get people’s attention. It gets old quickly, but it is biblical. I know I sound cynical, but every enduring Christian eventually realizes a deeper message when they see the inevitability of the cross and the need to only become all things for Christ.

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:05:56 +0000

I completely agree with everything you’re saying, Michael. I agree with you that personal transformation is at the heart of it, a personal discovery of what it means to follow the person of Jesus. I do think that a big component that’s missing in Evangelicalism is spiritual direction. If all of us frustrated Evangelicals would seek-out a spiritual director (in the truest sense of the word… not a “mentor” or “accountability partner”) to have someone to journey alongside us, be with us when we ask the hard questions, challenge us to look deeper, be a presence of prayer in our lives, etc… I think we would discover a richness in growth and relationship that we’ve been looking for. If churches saw spiritual formation and ALL that that entails as a main focus of ministry, they would be open to asking, “How is this helpful for growth?” of everything they’re doing. I do really see individual spiritual direction and group spiritual direction as a huge aspect that’s missing in current evangelicalism that has the potential to make a huge difference in our growth. Maybe this is a first step.

By: Will S

Will S — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:49:25 +0000

Ragamuffin, first off as I mentioned before Justin Martyr and Didache do not give us a picture of the relative time or importance of the various elements of a Sunday service they offer instruction and description of the various elements (and not exhaustively). But with regards to the changes between first century Christians and second century Christians in general, if you take the faith of a relatively small group of Palestinian Jews and then expand it quickly to millions of non Jews throughout the Roman empire you are going to get some changes. We are talking about a language change, a cultural change, a philosophical and educational change etc. These are big changes. I would be incredulous if there were no changes. Of course there were changes.

And keep in mind that I am not even talking major or malicious changes. I am not saying they started denying the faith or rejecting Christ or any thing radical. I am saying that they went from emphasizing the written word of the God and its exposition (a Jewish practice that Jesus and Paul would have been very familiar with) to emphasizing the Eucharist as central (with sacrificial elements that are foreign to the NT and the Apostolic fathers).

I am no Baptist but I think that we need to realize that if we are imagining that the modern Catholic Mass was even remotely like a first century Jewish service…..well, I can’t help there.

By: Will S

Will S — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:33:26 +0000

imonk, no, I am suggesting that transubstantiation is a later development. Real presence has always been affirmed but the manner and way in which the Christ was present was not defined for many years (actually arguably not defined until Aquinas). But keep in mind that Orthodox and Protestant affirm the real presence in some sense (but both reject transubstantiation). One thing that we don’t find in the early churches is devotion and worship toward the host. This is something that is a result of later thinking. This coupled with the teaching that the sacrament is a sacrifice (something not found in Protestantism) certainly contributed to the change in emphasis from word to Eucharist.

I don’t think that the early church were baptists.

By: Ragamuffin

Ragamuffin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:11:43 +0000

I frankly find it hard to believe…bordering on incredulous…that the same men who were roundly being persecuted for holding unswervingly to the faith the Apostles handed down to them, that argued forcefully to their own peril against heresies and syncretism, completely ditched what the Apostles taught them regarding how to conduct worship services and what was the central element of it. So much so that by the time Justin Martyr wrote his letters or the Didache was put to paper that they utterly missed the boat.

I just don’t find that believable. And two glancing passages in Acts, one of which in context was not a normal Sunday service, aren’t enough to make a Biblical case to change my mind.

By: iMonk

iMonk — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:56:42 +0000

Will S:

Are you suggesting that the real presence is a later development?

Do you believe the early Christians basically had Baptist theology and ecclesiology?

peace

By: Will S

Will S — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:25:22 +0000

Triple A, you do realize that I was not making the case that Acts had any sort of exhaustive description of the early church service. What I did argue is that there are a few touch points (the few services that are described coupled with the terms that were used to describe Christian pastors) that seem to indicate that the centrality of scriptural exposition as a means of drawing near to God and His Son. I then coupled this with the well documented fact that the broader Jewish faith viewed scripture as a way of experiencing the divine presence.

I then made the argument that these two points are helpful indicators that traditional Protestant liturgy that focuses on the reading of scripture and the preaching of the Word are not terribly off base. And I made the argument that the later traditions that played off the development of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist and the increased emphasis on the literal presence of Christ in the bread are the drivers for Eucharistic centrality in the Catholic service (and other apostolic traditions).

It doesn’t seem like a big leap of logic to me and it is pretty consistent with the thoughts of protestant theology over the past 500 years.

By: An Anxious Anglican

An Anxious Anglican — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:55:26 +0000

Will et al: For those of you who are intent on building a liturgy or church service on the texts we find in Acts, there is a very interesting essay in the Guardian this week by Jane Williams (wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a great theologian in her own right) on the question of “when Luke is simply chronicling what his research suggests actually happened, and when he is making theological recommendations.” See the article at this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/dec/29/christianity-acts-apostles-church-ideal. For a more extended discussion of what the early church did with liturgy, try Aidan Kavanaugh’s modern classic “On Liturgical Theology.” Both resources counsel caution in trying to discern what a “real” service looked like from Biblical texts.