Posts Tagged ‘early church’
Church
Posted on: December 15, 2009
- In: my life | thoughts
- 6 Comments
I am in participating in the one word at a time blog carnival, which is being hosted by Bridget Chumbley this week. Today’s word is Church, and as I’ve written quite a few blogs on that topic, I’ve decided to just to a repost. One of the topics we wrote on about a month back was community, and that was also a repost…it was original the post that followed this one in “my thoughts on the church and the Church” series…
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the role of the church, the way i see it…and once again, by church i mean the congragational gathering…is for community. we were made for relationships…God is relational, we were created in God’s image, therefore we are relational beings…we were not created to go through life as loners, and we are not meant to walk this Christian walk alone. Side note a bit: I’m not saying you can’t be friends and have relationships with people who aren’t Christian, but I think there’s something powerful and build-up-ness about having friends/accoutability partners who have the same basic beliefs/morals/world-view as you do.
Ok, back to our regularly scheduled blogpost: Joshua Davidson chose Peter to be the rock that His church would be built upon, but he didn’t send Peter out alone, he had 11 other guys doing it with him (yea, I remember what happened to Judas, they replaced him with Matthius remember?)…and they garnered more and more people to walk with them along the way…even Paul when he went on his many mission trips wasn’t travelling alone…he often went with Barnabas and then there was John Mark and there were times during the travels when Dr Luke would pop in for a spell…and even when he was travelling alone he would always stay with other Christians in the area.
So, as I see it the church (congregation) isn’t there to play babysitter and make sure you do your homework and eat your vegetables…we do the gathering thing for the community – to love one other, share with each other, encourage one another, rejoice with those who rejoice, and cry with those who cry.
As I said in part 1, I don’t think it’s the church’s job to come up with “witnessing/outreach” things for us to do, I think it’s up to me, when I see a need to fulfil that need and then when we meet on Sunday I share with my family what happened the past week, we either celebrate together or mourn together. We share in each other’s lives, pains, etc. We praise God together, we seek Him together and on behalf of each other, we encourage each other to live a life worthy of the calling we’ve recieved, we have the enGAGE pizza together at Gino’s, then we go out into the world and live out that calling by being a witness to those who haven’t seen the light yet. That is your ministry/calling/witnessing…being a light to those who haven’t seen it yet…and it is not necessarily going to happen in mission trips and in street evangelisms and organised outreach things, it might just happen through you living out your everyday life in a way that in “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, [you] do it all in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the father through him”.
which leads me to thoughts on the church in Acts…that will be part 3
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Do stop by the blog carnival and read the other posts…
Please do stop by FredMcKinnon.com for more setlists and sermon recaps from around the world…
Morning
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Come now is the time to worship (Brian Doerkson)
Alles vir my (Afrikaans) (Retief Burger)
Dula le rona (Sotho) (Paul Mpete)
Desert song (Brooke Fraser)
Give us clean hands (Chris Tomlin)
All who are thirsty (Brenton Brown/Glenn Robertson)
How deep the father’s love for us (Stuart Townend)
Firstly let me start by saying how much I love the fact that I live in a country with 11 official language…and how much I love going to a church that realises that and attempts to worship in different languages!
Ronel led worship this morning – was cool having the evening guys leading in the morning service…well, i thought it was cool. Morning service crowd has quite a different vibe from the evening service crowd so it’s very cool for me whenever we do stuff in the morning or when the morning service people visit the evening service.
Speaking of different people doing stuff together, Chris (the pastor) spoke on the church of Acts (chapter 2) in his series of church being community. He talked on unity in diversity…so basically people who are different coming together as one. The term used in the old testament for the trinity is also the term used in the whole the man shall leave his mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one…how cool is that. As the church that is the picture we are supposed to present…different people from different backrounds/ethinicities/tribes/tongues/etc coming together to praise and worship him in our togetherness…living together, sharing together, praying together, showing the world real unity/peace/love…
The vineyard church is very big on the theme of “everyone gets to play”…basically, we have pastors and leaders and etc but everyone is gifted in some way and everyone has a role to play in the church…the pastor has his part and each congregant has their part…if one person doesn’t do his part, we all hurt as the church.
Chris also touched on the church of acts vs the church in Paul’s letters. He talked about how the church in Acts was how it was the intended model (Acts 2: 42ff) and the church in Paul’s letters was the remedial model…the one that God allows because we live in a falled world and get things wrong and etc…and there’s a place for both…but sometimes we get so comfortable and dependent on the remedy that we can’t get back to normal…let’s leave the remedy and get back to health…to realising that church is not the building…we are the church…we are all part of the priesthood…we all have a part to play.
Evening
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For the evening service we had planned to go to the beach and have a jam sesion picnic there but the wind forced us to change our plans. We ended up going to play bingo at a local pub/bar/place and then after that we went to Brett and Val’s place and had game night with crumpets…and lots and lots of laughs…
Love my church family!
Community…
Posted on: November 17, 2009
I’m taking part in a blog carnival over at “One Word at a Time“…and today’s topic is community. I’ve written about community before, so I decided to just do a repost of that post…enjoy…
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[my thoughts are a bit scattered at the moment, so this one will be very reflective of my scatter-brain-ness...i mean more than my other posts have been]
So the early church…Brett’s favorite verse ever is Acts 2:42ff and as he said this past Sunday, all the enGAGE people have probably got it memorised by now cos he reads it so often in our services.
The early church was great at doing the whole community thing. They pretty much lived together and shared everything and everybody got along and sang kum-ba-ya together all night…ok, maybe i just made that last part up. All this to say, the church grew in thousands…people were joining the Church on a daily basis because of what they saw.
I think though today, there are more people talking about community but we’ve misunderstood it. Community is a big christian buzz word – the next new thing – at the moment (that and fighting injustice…think i already wrote on this one), everybody is wanting to live in community and they are throwing the word around like it’s going out of fashion (irony: it probably will be as soon as the next hypeworthy thing comes along)…but the concept of community isn’t new and buzzworthy…communities have been around as long as people have been around.
Community isn’t about a bunch of people living in a house together…that’s MTV’s “The Real World”, community is about people sharing their lives together. Community isn’t about excluding those outside your “culture” (including race, social class, education, etc), it’s about including them into your circle. Community is not about meeting once a week in a church building, it’s about BEING Church together…everyday.
[Point of clarification, I don't have a problem with getting a house with a bunch of people and living together a la SimpleWay style...in fact I would really dig to do that...what I am saying is that community is so much more than that]
The early church didn’t just meet once a week and discuss the bible, sing a few songs and then go back to their normal lives. They lived together, they lived on the word, they followed the Way, the gave their lives for the Way, they lived a life that made those on the outside go “hey, there is something different there, and I want me a piece of that”. They gave up their “normal lives” and chose to live Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-filled lives to the glory of the Father…and He blessed them, and multiplied them. We sit in our wonderfully comfortable pews and wonder why the world is not turning to the Father, it’s because they don’t see it in those who claim to be following Him. The name “christians” was first used in Acts and was used to describe the followers of the way because they were “little christs”…his mini-me’s…imitators of christ…reflections of Him…that’s what the word means. And that’s why the early church was blessed…that’s why their community grew…because they were following the Way…they were living for the way…it wasn’t about them believing a bunch of stuff, it was about them living out what they said they believed.
That’s what we as the church are missing today: the DAILY taking up our cross and following him part. We need to be Christ-followers. The world needs to see Christ in us. The world needs to see the God who is love through us. The world needs to see the broken being restored…the needy having their needs met…the lonely being loved…the untouchables feeling the comfort of human touch…and as we do that, as we display His love and His character to the world, they will inevitably be drawn to Him.
I’ve mentioned before that I think the church I am currently a part of (VCF/enGAGE) is really good at doing the whole community thing…so in part 4 I’m gonna expand a bit on that.
who/what is enGAGE
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a bunch of people who believe in and are aiming to be:
[1] Fully devoted Followers of Christ
[2] Growing in Community
[3] Giving Generously
[4] Witnessing Unashamedly
[5] Worshipping Passionately
[6] Serving Purposefully
The name enGAGE reminds us that church is not that meeting that takes place on a Sunday but it is a body of believers and the four focus points of enGAGE are to:
Engage with God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Engage with the Bible – reading, knowing and doing
Engage with each other – the community of believers, building and living in authentic relationship with each other
Engage with society – people outside of the church, showing them God’s love and grace and pointing them to Him.
(from the enGAGE website)
why the capital GAGE in enGAGE?
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American spelling of gauge…as in to measure…so the name reminds us that “we are constantly needing to Gauge/measure where we are in life compared to where we should be and continually trying to narrow that gap”…we should constantly be measuring ourselves against Joshua Davidson, cos as his followers we are supposed to be trying to be more and more like him daily. “This is a journey we are on, together in community”.
(quotations from website).
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what sets us apart?
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the “broken, but beautiful bride”
Brett loves the saying “Jesus is coming back for his bride, not a harem”. There is no such thing as Churches, it’s all one Church. Anyway, he’s really passionate about bringing together the bride…and he’s somehow managed to rub off that passion on to our congregation. We are all about bringing together the whole church, not just our denomination. We love doing the stuff with other congregations in Stell/Cape Town/Somer Set West…like worship events and camps and stuff like that where we bring together the whole church and just celebrate and rejoice and be the bride together.
We have come across opposition of course, as Jon Acuff said, “only ordinary things ever get full consensus from people. Doing something extraordinary should never make complete sense to everyone in your life”, but we are slowly building bridges, maybe not as the congregation per se, but as individuals from our congregation who see the need to fellowship with other followers outside our little circle…the church is being A Church!
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one of the dudes from our church once said that the thing that sets us apart is that we are the “earthy church”…meaning we are down-to-earth. Vineyard (the international denomination one) has a thing against titles…i mean we have pastors and leadership people but we don’t have titles for them like deacons and bishops etc…we are all members of the church and each member is called to take part and minister and lead and stuff.
for instance we encourage people to share verses or messages or whatever that they feel God is laying on their hearts during worship or whatever and as Brett often says, we are all part of the priesthood so therefore we should all be praying for each other, laying hands on each other, baptising each other, ministering to each other, etc.
In fact, during the preaches there’s often inside jokes and back-chatting and adding on and questionning and aswering each other…interesting services I tell you.
we are also very much about being real…like really real…like confess your sins to each other real…from the pulpit if you feel it’s necessary (and by pulpit I mean the stool that Brett sits on during the preach…hee hee). We hang out together a lot…like outside of church…so it goes without saying that we will turn to each other for accountability and prayer and holding-each-other-up-ness, so it’s very important that we are real with each other and talk to each other and share real stuff.
we believe Christ calls you as you are…not a fake, seemingly perfect version of you…but the raw, broken, failed you. Come to the cross broken – no dressing up, no band-aids – he can’t heal you if you pretend you don’t need healing.
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why i love my church
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we believe in prayer
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there’s been a couple of times where i’ve been in the car with friends and someone tells us of a need or prayer request or whatever and we just pull the car off to the side and pray for them and minister to them right there and then.
one of my youth peoples got stabbed this past week and he came through to church on sunday evening so at the end of the service a bunch of us gathered around him to pray for healing
we believe in living out the stuff
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a friend was telling us of financial troubles and another friend said “well we’ll keep you in prayer, but in the meantime is there anything we can help with practically right now?”
we read a book in our cell about getting out of the pews and actually doing stuff which led to things like starting up “kinetic love” – an outreach group which also started up the 24-7 prayer room – and selling of hotdogs to the homeless…
we are a super funny bunch of crazies
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some of my favorite enGAGE quotes:
“i don’t want to be controlled by my scarves”
“shut up christian and go read your bible”
“every time i have a conversation with a girl i think she’s either going to laugh or fall in love with me”
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one last thing for those who live in Stellies
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wednesday nights 9:30 pm we meet in the prayer room (Neelsie, room T-29 i think, 4th floor in between the loos and TBT and across from the habitat for humanity Shack) and we have a time of prayer then we go out onto the streets and talk to/pray for/minister to people we meet. Great time of kingdom-come type stuff…please join us if you can/want to.
speaking of prayer room…for those who haven’t been there…it’s a room dedicated to 24-7 prayer…it’s open all the time and you can just pop in there and say a prayer if you wanted to.
- In: being Christ-like | NaBloPoMo | thoughts
- 7 Comments
[my thoughts are a bit scattered at the moment, so this one will be very reflective of my scatter-brain-ness...i mean more than my other posts have been]
So the early church…Brett’s favorite verse ever is Acts 2:42ff and as he said this past Sunday, all the enGAGE people have probably got it memorised by now cos he reads it so often in our services.
The early church was great at doing the whole community thing. They pretty much lived together and shared everything and everybody got along and sang kum-ba-ya together all night…ok, maybe i just made that last part up. All this to say, the church grew in thousands…people were joining the Church on a daily basis because of what they saw.
I think though today, there are more people talking about community but we’ve misunderstood it. Community is a big christian buzz word – the next new thing – at the moment (that and fighting injustice…think i already wrote on this one), everybody is wanting to live in community and they are throwing the word around like it’s going out of fashion (irony: it probably will be as soon as the next hypeworthy thing comes along)…but the concept of community isn’t new and buzzworthy…communities have been around as long as people have been around.
Community isn’t about a bunch of people living in a house together…that’s MTV’s “The Real World”, community is about people sharing their lives together. Community isn’t about excluding those outside your “culture” (including race, social class, education, etc), it’s about including them into your circle. Community is not about meeting once a week in a church building, it’s about BEING Church together…everyday.
[Point of clarification, I don't have a problem with getting a house with a bunch of people and living together a la SimpleWay style...in fact I would really dig to do that...what I am saying is that community is so much more than that]
The early church didn’t just meet once a week and discuss the bible, sing a few songs and then go back to their normal lives. They lived together, they lived on the word, they followed the Way, the gave their lives for the Way, they lived a life that made those on the outside go “hey, there is something different there, and I want me a piece of that”. They gave up their “normal lives” and chose to live Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-filled lives to the glory of the Father…and He blessed them, and multiplied them. We sit in our wonderfully comfortable pews and wonder why the world is not turning to the Father, it’s because they don’t see it in those who claim to be following Him. The name “christians” was first used in Acts and was used to describe the followers of the way because they were “little christs”…his mini-me’s…imitators of christ…reflections of Him…that’s what the word means. And that’s why the early church was blessed…that’s why their community grew…because they were following the Way…they were living for the way…it wasn’t about them believing a bunch of stuff, it was about them living out what they said they believed.
That’s what we as the church are missing today: the DAILY taking up our cross and following him part. We need to be Christ-followers. The world needs to see Christ in us. The world needs to see the God who is love through us. The world needs to see the broken being restored…the needy having their needs met…the lonely being loved…the untouchables feeling the comfort of human tough…and as we do that, as we display His love and His character to the world, they will inevitably be drawn to Him.
I’ve mentioned before that I think the church I am currently a part of (VCF/enGAGE) is really good at doing the whole community thing…so in part 4 I’m gonna expand a bit on that.
Worship setlist: August 2, 2009
Posted on: August 3, 2009
- In: NaBloPoMo | thoughts | worship setlist
- 4 Comments
Week 2, for me at least, of the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at FredMcKinnon.Com…
Morning
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o praise him (david crowder)
Great in Power (Russell Fragar)
You’re Beautiful (Phil Wickham)
let me found at your table (brad klynsmith)
Above all else (Vicky Beeching)
Be the center (Michael Frye)
The same team that led last week led this week, which would account for the repetition of the songs from last week.
Went to youth again this morning so missed out on the sermon. My heart was broken in youth…one of the girls broke down as she told about the difficulties she’s having with her dad… aaarrrrgggg… everytime I hear another story about another youth person that has to deal with father issues it makes me want to scream…I don’t know if I could deal with this on a regular basis…don’t think I will ever go into full-time youth ministry…my heart just can’t take it.
Anyway, Brett was back this week so he led youth and he talked on relationships with emphasis on true (real) love…it went great, the youth were very interactive, which always makes it more fun.
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Evening – enGAGE
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Lord reign in me (Brenton Brown)
We cry out (Brian Johnson)
From the inside out (Joel Houston)
Consuming Fire (Tim Hughes)
O Praise Him (David Crowder)
The Wonderful Cross (Chris Tomlin)
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful (Keith Green)
Tonight was great. We had a whole lot of first time visitors, which is weird…I mean cos it’s in the middle of the year…you expect a lot of visitors at the beginning of the year, and maybe a couple during the year (it’s a student service so most peple who come there have been around for the year and you’d presume by now they’d have found a church to call home) but tonight I think half the people who were there were visiting…interesting.
Worship was great…I felt it was one of those services that we did not do all that well as the worship team (I for one made a whole lot of mistakes) but God kinda took over and made it a worship-filled service so it was really great.
Then afterwards, a friend was giving us a lift home and when we asked him how he was doing he just broke down and so we just prayed for him right there and then as he was driving…It was such a beautiful God-moment.
I have been super encouraged lately by the people in my church who have just taken a stand and become Church when others are in need. enGAGE is totally reminding me of the early (acts) church and giving me hope we can really be that in this day and age.
this is intended to be part 1 of a series, then again it might be the only part…we shall see
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for the purpose of this blog, when I say church i mean congregation or the people you gather with or whatever, not the universal church.
is it the church’s job to reach out or is it the individual…as in is it the hand’s job to pick up the paper on the floor, or is it the whole body’s. Granted, the brain has to send the message to…uhm…the place it sends messages to…and the legs have to bend to get you closer to the floor…but it’s the hand/arm that actually does the picking up right?
So I’m thinking it’s not the church’s job to organize a mission trip, or an outreach program, or whatever it is that you feel the church should be doing to reach out…it’s the church’s job to enable/equip you to do it…(how)…so basically the brain sends a message (matt 28:20, acts 1:8) (the brain would be Christ as he is the head of the church) and then the limbs (individuals) take heed and do the work…yes, we work together to help each other out – we need to work together as the body – but there’s a sense, I think, that each individual has a responsibility to do the stuff. We shouldn’t wait for the pastor to organise stuff for us to do.
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Being raised in a church where everything went from top-down (you come up with an idea and then you have to pass it to whoever is your direct leader then they pass it on to the pastor/board who then has final approval and then a committee would be created to organize – with someone on the board being heading the committee ofcourse – and then you’d maybe be asked to volunteer as one of the grounds people making it happen) coming to vineyard was kinda frustrating at first. you’d come up with a random suggestion (like “ohh, we should give homeless people hotdogs”) and all Brett says “ok, do it”. I don’t know, I kinda expected him to sit down first with the leadership and ask for approval, go through the necessary procedures…for hotdogs mind you…then get back to us…but, no – just do it is all you get…actually, now that I think about it, we didn’t even consult anyone about the hotdog thing, we just kinda did it. Imagine if we had gone through that long line to get approval, it might have never happened. That’s sad. (And I’ve left the original topic…)
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Christ calls individuals to do his work…Christ works through individuals…when we went out give hotdogs to homeless people, we weren’t going there representing vineyard, we were representing Christ…we wanted people to see the love of God, not the wealth or kindness of our church. That is our mission…to draw others to Christ, not to our churches. Having said that, I love my church, I really do…and I do invite people to come to my church…and I would invite all of y’all to come visit Stellenbosch Vineyard Christian Fellowship if you are ever in Stellenbosch and looking for a place to go on Sundays at 9:30 or 18:00.
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So then, what is the purpose of the building, and the gathering and all that…stay tuned for part doux.
God of Justice
Posted on: April 22, 2008
What if Jesus really meant what he said to the rich young man when he told him to “go sell all his posessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me”. That’s the question Shane Clairborn asks in his book “Irresistible Revolution”. It was probably one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Made me think about my walk with Christ. Made me want to be a follower of Christ. Now I’m not saying I’m gonna sell all my posessions (not that I have a lot of them anyway) and be poor, but it means letting the things that break God’s heart break mine. Jesus wasn’t too concerned with the rich and religious people of his day – I mean he did want them to see the light of course, but his main purpose is seen in the people he chose to reside with, the broken, poor, and untouchables. The people society had rejected. As he said, its the sick that need a doctor not those that think they are healthy.
Jesus could have chose to come into this world into a royal family – and maybe more people would have been his followers then (no matter how shallow their following would be) but he chose to come into the world in a manger as the son of a carpenter and become homeless with “no place to rest his head”. Makes you think…
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We live in plenty. There’s more than enough for what the world needs but not for our greed. –quote from Mother Theresa paraphrased by John Ellis in the song Revolution (Sunday, Tree63 – and by the way that is my favorite band if you ever feel like giving me a little prezzie).
What would the world look like if we all unselfishly shared what we had with our neighbor? This is what the early church was all about. This thought kinda follows on my train of thought on living in community – real ubuntu, or at least my understanding of it. It looks really beautiful in my head.
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Matther 25: 34 – 36 and 40 gives us a very practical way to live church and to live all out for Christ. Isaiah 58: 6 – 8 tells us how to let our lights shine before all men that they may see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.
I have fallen in love with 2 songs that talk about this topic – I’ll just give you a little taste.
search my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like you have loved me
break my heart for what breaks yours
everthing i am for your kingdom’s cause
as i walk from earth into eternity
God of Justice (we must go) by Tim Hughes
freely we’ve recieved now freely we will give
we must go live to feed the hungry stand beside the broken
we must go stepping forward keep up from just singing
move us into action, we must go
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I had a revelation the other day – thanks to a friend of mine (Josh Ratiani). For a while my mindset was, live all out for Christ cos if you do then you’ll be covered even if Christianity turns out to be a hoax. Think about it: you’ll be ok with Allah cos you’re a good person, you’ll get to come back as something really good cos you’ll have good karma build up if bhuddism turns out to be true, etc. Here’s the revelation: live so all out for Jesus that if you were to die and find out its all a lie you would want a do over. Paul says we should live our lives so much for Christ that if Christianity is a hoax we should be pitied above all others. In a sense we should live our lives so all out for Christ that even if we are good with Allah, we should look back and say “dude, in that time I was serving JC, I could have [fill in whatever here]“. So that’s my goal: to let my light shine, to do for the least of these, and to recklessly abandon my life to him.
I am gonna need lots of prayer.
The link, by the way, leads you to Josh’s blog. If you have questions on the topic of “God of Justice” I would refer you to him cos that is his passion so i’m sure he’ll have something to say on it. He has unknowingly been instrumental in my spiritual growth in the last year and 4 months that I’ve known him. So yea, even though he’s not gonna read this: thanx Josh.
