When I served as President of the local Toastmasters Club I was
admittedly a little sensitive when the District Office put pressure on us to
increase our membership. I understand the importance and the benefits of having
a larger club; however I’ve never known anyone to place membership because they
wanted to grow the club. Most of us joined to improve our public speaking – to
get over fear, to polish a presentation or to be able to think fast on our
feet. I think the same can be said about
the church. Believers don’t come to Jesus because we want to grow the church;
we come because we want a personal relationship with the Son of God.
2 comments:
Gail;
-----Anyone who studies church history and the letters to the seven churches for what each actually says will notice an amazing correspondence between the two. To us today these seven letters become an accurate sketch of church history. To those who first received the Revelation given John, they were prophetic (amongst the rest of their manifold purposes,) whether or not this was recognized about them. And, as all prophecy is meant to do, these seven letters point toward God’s chosen path for the correction of our feet’s placement.
-----The condition of the general church today reflecting more and more aspects of the Laodicean church, indicates that the church at Ephesus did not then return and has not since returned to its first love. In fact, the problems found in all the other churches (excepting those at Smyrna and Philadelphia) are outgrowths of that church’s failure to return to its first love. Then as Jesus said, her lampstand was removed from its place.
-----More ideas are offered for what that first love was than there are beans in a bowl of chili. Amongst the most popular notions is the one about first belief’s exuberant emotions. It’s cute. And it’s a definite part of the meaning. But it is too little, too shallow, and lacks full historical context to be all of the meaning. It plays up from and rests upon the “personal insight” purpose of the seven letters. We must step to the letters’ prophetic/historical purpose to get another important meaning of first love as well as more meaning of the lampstand‘s place.
-----Acts and the epistles exhibit a rich life in the early church abounding in charity, encouragement, exhortation, forbearance, forgiveness, and all the rest of love’s aspects, including evangelization and obedience to Scripture. These people acted in a community of belief from their hearts, because in their hearts was the Spirit of Christ. Their love for Him was their regard for that Spirit and His Word, and their love and maintenance of one another happened by that regard. But it wasn’t that they were all pure gold nuggets of perfection. They were us. They were faulty. Some were more than others. Those others were noted as ones having more understanding and better knowledge of God and His people; it showed in their behavior. These others guarded the boundaries drawn by the Word for freedom in Christ and allowed the believers to find definition of new life within those boundaries by the operation of the Spirit from their hearts. The leaders did not try to prescribe personal definitions for anyone abiding within Scriptural boundaries. They were just the guardians of the Scriptural shape of the church, while the head of the church was Christ stirring within each acting believer. Both the church mission and what the church did were all the visions of all the believers and all of what they did, the leaders being just believers, also, doing things too. This movement of the church through Christ’s relationship with each individual believer, and trusted by the leaders as being such, was the lampstand in its place, the headship of Christ in His church.
(continued...)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
(...continued)
-----But I suppose by man’s nature to overextend metaphor Paul’s analogies of Christ’s body led to the church’s development of an organization directed by a consciousness centered in its leaders. Popes, cardinals, and priests became the channel for defining the particulars of the believers’ new lives, which were reduced to those of just parishioners by the loving communal maintenance of one another having become mere ritual. It did not happen overnight. The character of the Didache appearing in the latter half of the first century demonstrates that even then leaders were themselves breaching the Scriptural framework calling for no one “...to go beyond what is written.” (I Cor 4:6)
-----This straying beyond Scriptural boundaries increased from then onwards, one brick at a time, until, I think we can rightly say, church leaders were in the place from which the lampstand had been removed. Surely the Holy Spirit still resided in the hearts of Christ’s people, but their minds became consumed by the thinking of others. And although the Reformation crumbled the monopoly enjoyed by the Catholic church (in the Western world, anyway), the Protestant leaders were all too pleased to be in the lampstand’s place. So, neither did they move over for the lampstand.
-----It is not that life in the Lord was extinguished. Note that Revelation 2:5 is specific in stating the lampstand would be removed from its place, not from the church. The lampstand remains in the heart of every believer. It is just that doctrines and prescriptions and programs and visions of the leaders have drawn so much framework within the framework drawn by Scripture that the light of the lampstand is broken into numerous shadows cast by multitudes of denominations and doctrines and ideas and sentiments seeking a life of their own.
-----And that life of their own is fed by numbers. There can be a little pride and pay in leading a little church. There’s more in leading a big church. There’s lots in leading a giant church. And so, you get the drift. And how outstanding amongst all these numbers would be the leaders if they spent their efforts trimming the lamps of the members, keeping the common grounds of the church clear of superfluous constraints, and guarding the church’s Scriptural framework? No. There would be too much light shining for them to be plainly seen. They would look too much like janitors, lowly servants, and not enough like CEO’s.
-----All the conquering is through being led by the lampstand. God promises to those who conquer; seven times He promised.
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