Part 6 is by Seth and can be read here.

And, yeah, they’re really good.  Really.  :-)

Please venture over to Marc Hardy’s blog, check out the article, and leave a comment.

This however, is one of my favorites.  Not only is it funny, it reminds me of how complicated we can make things that often have a much simpler solution.

Click here to enjoy…

The first is Epic Jesus, by Frank Viola.  This was originally delivered as a conference message, and was then converted into a short e-book.  This little book brings a stunning revelation of Christ throughout the scriptures, and brings God’s eternal purpose into view.  The book is about 20 pages, and can be purchased here for $3.99.  The original audio message is available for free at this link as well.

Secondly, I would like to point you to an e-book titled Junia is Not Alone, by scholar Scot McKnight.  It’s another short read, but well worth your time.  Here’s the product description from amazon.com:

In this fierce essay, leading Bible scholar Scot McKnight tells the story of Junia, a female apostle honored by Paul in his Letter to the Romans—and then silenced and forgotten for most of church history. But Junia’s tragedy is not hers alone. She’s joined by fellow women in the Bible whose stories of bold leadership have been overlooked. She’s in the company of visionary women of God throughout the centuries whose names we’ve forgotten, whose stories go untold, and whose witness we neglect to celebrate.

Not only does this book highlight the important role women play in the scriptures, it gives some insight into how we have arrived with our english translations of the Bible.

You can order the Kindle version of the book here.  The Nook version is here.  Both are $2.99.

The life of the church flows from Christ’s life in us, not from our activity.

This sounds obvious, right?  It’s all about Jesus.  Yes, of course.

Except that it is not.  It’s often about many other things, and we don’t even realize it much of the time.  We’ve made a commitment to Jesus (got saved, answered an altar call, said the sinner’s prayer, confessed Christ as Lord, or whatever you prefer to call it) and now it is time to get on with being a good Christian and doing church stuff.  Or so we’re told.

I humbly confess that I spent most of my life with this view of what it means to be Christian.

But does “doing church” and “being good” really sound like what Jesus called us to?

If He called us to something else, what is it?

When I ventured down this path of “organic church” (I’ll define that a little more later) it was hard to give up the priorities that I had placed on other things.  It was actually difficult to make Christ the most important thing in my life because I was so wrapped up in the other things!  I was consumed with studying the scriptures and knowing “proper” doctrine (which changes with the group you meet with), learning what rules I should live by (again, these change with the group) and trying to correct my behavior, taking part in church services, serving in a church ministry, learning what my spiritual gifts are, evangelizing the lost, getting my children involved in church activities, and so on.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to learn together and experience with a group of believers what it really does mean to make Christ the center of our lives and the center of the church.

In our church, we do our best to hold onto Christ as our Life and our Head, willing to go wherever that takes us.  We seek to give Him room to work in us and through us.  We are far from perfect and still have so much to learn as we mature together.  I pray that we continue to keep Christ as Head and at the center of it all.

This willingness to yield to Christ together, to lay down our agendas and aspirations, to listen and rest in Him, and to follow His leading as it is brought forth through the body makes it very difficult to describe what we are doing at any particular time.  We don’t have a list of ministries, programs, or financial campaigns.  We have a Person, and He is our vision and goal.

How do we keep Christ as the center?

I recently adapted the opening lines of the Star Trek franchise as follows:

Christ: the final frontier. These are the voyages of His Ekklessia.  Its eternal mission: to explore endless new worlds in Him, to seek out new life and a new civilization, to boldly go where the old man could never go before.

Our church seeks to explore Christ together and express Him to each other.  We explore Christ through all of life, as He can be seen in all things and all circumstances (Romans 1:20).  We meet together during the week to behold Him and seek Him together.  We read the scriptures and find Him there (Luke 24:27-32).  We meet together as a church weekly and express to each other what He has revealed to us.

We seek to know our Lord.  He is a living and active Being, and while He can’t necessarily be seen or felt physically, He can be known.  He desires to be known and to be loved by His bride.

“There is scarcely a soul that seeks You, that loves and knows You.”  – Michael Molinos

How lonely our Lord must be among all of this activity that is done in His name, yet is often a distraction from resting in Him and dwelling in His sweet presence.  (Even good activities can distract us from knowing Him.)  I like to read biographies.  You can learn a great deal about someone this way, but you can never know them as a real person simply by reading about them.  To have a relationship, to have fellowship, there must be more.

Does this mean that we just sit around and talk about Jesus?

Heavens, no!  I have learned that seeking to know the Lord in an inward and intimate way allows Him to reveal Himself more fully through my spirit (think of it as exercising an internal organ) than my mind could ever comprehend.  It is in this deep spiritual place where true revelation from the Lord is given, for revelation by definition does not originate in man, but in God.

I have also learned that this revelation leads to a choice.  Every single time.  And the choice is this: will I choose my will or His will?  His will may seem difficult to me at times, but it is always in line with God’s good, unchanging purposes, and usually against my fleshly desires.  When we choose to live according to His will as it is revealed to us, we are living by His indwelling life.

As we learn Christ together in this way, we begin to consider ourselves less and love others more.  We have more peace.  We find joy in times of abundance and despite times of suffering.  We do crazy things to help others.  We come to know each other and treat each other as family.  We share Christ with various people in our lives, often in deed, sometimes with words.  We reject legalism and traditions that inprison the Spirit of Christ.  I am learning this as a pattern (not a blueprint) that follows Christ’s life.  Where He is Head and all things are submitted to Him, the fruits of the Spirit naturally blossom and the fragrance of Christ is known.

Out of this relationship with Christ, the activity that He truly desires can be expressed through His body naturally and in season.

But activity without relationship doesn’t lead to much of anything except exhaustion.  If you don’t believe that, think about your marriage, or ask someone who is married.  Activity is not what makes the marriage flourish; it is the relationship, the deep knowing and longing for another person.  This is what “quality time” is really about.  I’ve often heard couples say that they just feel like “roommates”, implying that a deeper connection is not being pursued.  The longer a couple goes on keeping up with activities without resting and enjoying each other, the more the relationship suffers.  So it is with Christ and His bride.

Activities, programs, gifts, knowledge, buildings are not our center.  Nor is meeting in a home, rejecting authority, or criticizing other Christians or institutions.  None of these things will produce an organic expression of the church.

Our center is not found in the external trappings of religion, but in the inward spirit where the Holy Spirit resides in us.  The center and foundation of our community is knowing Christ together through intimate, spiritual fellowship with Him, expressing Him to each other, and following the revelation of Himself that He imparts to us (living by His indwelling life).

All else flows from this, as He guides us.  At least, this is my experience.

May we have eyes to see Him, ears to hear Him, and hearts burning to know Him.

—————————————————————————————————-

Further Resources:

A good definition of organic church.

Living by the indwelling life of Christ.  Also here.  And here.

Other Bloggers in this Series (And Post Dates):

R.C. Babione (2/29/12)

Brigette Babione (2/8/12)

Nathan Burgman

Jackie Dukes (2/1/12)

Marc Hardy (1/25/12)

Mark Lake (1/18/12)

Seth Roach (2/15/12)

Tobias Valdez

Carrie Walters (2/22/12)

Michael Young (1/11/12)

An introduction to the series is here.

The first post is here.

I’ll be posting an article on January 18th (next Wednesday) here on the blog titled “What I’ve Learned in Organic Church: The Life of the Church Flows from Christ’s Life in Us, Not From Our Activity”.

Other bloggers participating and well worth following:

R.C. Babione

Brigette Babione 

Nathan Burgman

Jackie Dukes 

Marc Hardy 

Seth Roach 

Tobias Valdez

Carrie Walters

Amazed (by Jesus)

Jesus that You fill me
Your Spirit lives inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Jesus when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away 

I’ve never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear Your thoughts
I can see Your dreams 

    I don’t know how You do what You do
    I’m so in love with You
    It just keeps getting better
    I want to spend the rest of my life
    With You as Your bride
    Forever and ever
    Every little thing that You do
    Jesus, I’m amazed by You 

The sound of Your Word
Like nothing we’ve heard
The way You whisper in our hearts
Your Spirit all around us
Jesus You surround us
You bind us all in Your heart
Oh, Your love, it consumes us, all of us
We want to spend the whole night in Your eyes 

     Chorus 

Every little thing that you do
We’re so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
We want to spend the rest of our life
With you as your bride
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Jesus, we’re amazed by you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO78oQSSslE

I heard this song (Penguin, by Christina Perri) as I was driving around town today, and I was captivated by the picture of our Lord’s desire to love us and to be loved by us in return.  Truly, our Lord is in love with His family and His bride.

As you watch and listen to the video, imagine our Christ calling you away to fellowship with Him.

The lyrics are in the video (in a very creative way).  I hope you enjoy it, too!

Frank Viola has described organic church as this:

By “organic church,” I mean a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grass roots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (opposed to pastor-to-pew services), non-hierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering.  (Full article here.)

The following illustration is how I have tried to describe what happens when an organic church meets together to express Christ with every member functioning:

Paul says in Ephesians 3:8 that there are “unsearchable riches” in Christ.  Imagine with me that the Louvre Museum in Paris is a picture of all of the riches that are in Christ.  The Louvre has approximately 35,000 exhibits in its massive museum grounds, not to mention the architecture alone is stunning.  Many of the most famous pieces of artwork in history are housed within these walls.

Now, imagine a group of people setting out to explore and experience the riches of this museum.  To give 5 minutes to each of the 35,000 pieces of art would take 243 twelve hour days!  Picture this group entering the museum in awe of its beautiful architecture.  They gather around a famous art display and take in its beauty and uniqueness.  After some time, they share with each other what aspects of this piece of art stood out to them and how it affected them.  As they go around the group taking turns sharing, they find that no one saw quite the same thing, even though they were all certainly looking at the same piece.  Some were astounded by the colors.  Others were captivated by the fine detail in the work.  Some were focused on one particular aspect, such as the expression on a face.  Some wondered about the meaning of the painting.  Others pondered the artist’s motivation for the piece.  As the group shared their varied insights, everyone saw much more of the artwork than any one person saw themselves.  As the group moves through the museum, gazing upon the beautiful art and sharing with each other, they grow closer as they share together, and even begin to see the artwork from other people’s perspective.

It is much the same as this when a group of people gather to express the Lord Jesus Christ together.  Rather than getting only one view (such as from a pastor), many people bring many various views that are woven together into a beautiful picture of Christ that is much more rich than only one person’s view.  In other words, Jesus Christ is the art piece that this group beholds.

Imagine if the same group went to the Louvre Museum, but when they made it into the foyer, they elected only one person to go in and view the artwork and then come back and share with the group what he alone saw.  Without entering in to the museum together, the group’s ability to fully understand what the one person saw is difficult and limited.  Week after week, they gather in the foyer and listen to this one person describe more of what he has seen.  As the weeks and years pass, this person appears to be so much of an expert in the Louvre artwork, the group is intimidated to think about going inside themselves, lest they be expected to come back and expound on what they saw as well as the expert does.

In my view, this is similar to what happens in a church that depends on a select few clergy to minister Christ.  Certainly, there are many pastors and clergy members who have a great depth of knowledge of Christ and a rich relationship with Him.  But when the duty of exploring Him rests completely or mostly on the clergys’ shoulders, the rest of the body becomes passive and underdeveloped.  In an organic expression of the church (as I’ve defined here), this duty is shared among the priesthood of ALL believers.

Issues with this Illustration

Of course, the first objection to this picture is that the non-clergy do not have the skill or education to properly handle the Scriptures.  Allow me to return to our illustration.  As the group enters the Louvre, they are met by a curator of the museum grounds.  This person has spent years among the fine artifacts of the Louvre.  They have beheld many of the pieces in the galleries and can describe them to you in vivid detail.  As your group begins its journey, this person walks with you and guides you in how to observe each piece, how to interact with it, and how to share and interact with each other.  It’s not their task to take you through the whole museum, but to direct and teach you in the beginning stages of the museum.

In organic church, there are similar figures – experienced church planters or workers – who fulfill this role.  They come alongside a group of believers and teach them how to partake of Christ’s life together, and how to express Him together corporately.  They teach them how to do this peacefully so that all can share and participate.

The second objection is typically that the Scriptures will be mishandled without an ordained minister present.  This is also handled by the church planter/worker who teaches the group to find Christ in ALL of the Scriptures.  Jesus said that all of the Scriptures point to Him.  It’s my belief, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, that the highest interpretation of any Scripture is to see it as a picture of Christ.  Reading the Old and New Testaments in this way truly open up treasures of wealth untold.

This is not to ignore the importance of orthodox Christian doctrine.  It is only to put it in its proper place.  We are not called to worship a book; we are called to have a relationship with a Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ.  The highest use of the Scriptures is to reveal, point to, and describe the unsearchable riches of this Person.

You may read this and not believe that Christians can live in this way together with each other.  I can affirm by experience that they can, but only when their focus is learning together how to live by Christ’s indwelling life.  But that, of course, is another story for another day.