By Michael Tummillo There’s gonna be…an Evolution? In September of ‘68, the Beatles released a song entitled “Revolution.” The first verse goes like this: “You say you want a revolution Well, you know We all want to change the world. You tell me that it’s evolution Well, you know We all want to change the world But when you talk about destruction Don’t you know that you can count me out Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right” As the song implies, like the remodeling of a home, sometimes the only way anything can get to the next step is for destruction of the old stuff to occur.George Barna (Barna Research Group) is a respected author, speaker, researcher and sociologist. He has a new book out that I highly recommend. It’s called “REVOLUTION.” It’s about the current state of the Church and is loaded with eye-opening, very sobering statistics about what’s happening right under our noses, good and bad. In my car, as I often travel hundreds of miles daily in my job as a Workplace Chaplain, I have been listening to Mr. Barna’s CD recording of himself reading excerpts from his book. I believe I’ve listened at least 20 times, probably more. I think the book was misnamed. It should not have been “Revolution.” Instead, I think the appropriate title should have been “EVOLUTION.” I like the dictionary definition of the word which reads: “…a process of change in a certain direction.” To many Christians, to revolt against the established, prescribed ways of traditional Christianity smacks of a rebellious spirit. Christians - especially Christian leaders - despite their own major differences from denomination to denomination - don’t appreciate that. On the other hand, some Christians, a smaller group of people like myself, have discovered the fun of tipping sacred cows (it’s where we’ll find the best cuts of meat actually). Why do I prefer the title “EVOLUTION” to “Revolution”? Because the Church IS in a state of evolution, currently undergoing some of the most dramatic changes it’s ever undergone in its 2,000 year history, all across denominational lines. It’s changing and the direction, at least from Heaven’s perspective, is certain. Jesus wants His Church back. It appears God is actually taking Her back to square one all over the planet. Read what Scripture says about the early Church. No buildings, no church staff, no paid clergy or passive laity. Take a look: Romans 16:5 (”Likewise greet the church that is in their house”) 1 Corinthians 16:19 (”The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house.”) Colossians 4:15 (”Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.”) Philemon verse 2, (”…to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home.”). Based on a regular series of national surveys conducted by his company, the Barna Research Group, during the past 25 years, Barna discovered that discontent with congregational churches, changes in lifestyles, and even a desire to get closer to God, have caused many people to seek new ways of being in relationship with God and other God-seeking people. In 2000, most of the nations organized religious activity took place at or through local churches. Barnas research reveals that. Today, the action is shifting to different forms of corporate religious commitment. Different, yes, but by no means are they new. Barna found that, in a typical week, 9% of all American adults participate in a house church. An even greater proportion 22% - engages in spiritual encounters that take place in the marketplace (e.g., with groups of people while they are at their place of work or play, or in other typical daily contexts). At the Workplace Bible Studies I lead, many attendees confess that they are not, or can not, attending an organized, traditional church, either because of time constraints, schedules or perceived hypocrisy or pressure to conform or face rejection. Even the Internet serves as the foundation for interactive faith experiences for more than one tenth of all adults, usually in tandem with other forms of religious group experiences. I can attest to that as well. People are flocking to the web for answers and we Christians had better be there when they come knocking. The cults certainly are! Jon Zens, editor of the quarterly publication, “Searching Together,” and an advocate of New Testament church life being lived-out today, has observed a growing exodus of people from institutional churches across America. He explains. “After years of starving in the institutional church, they leave to find New Testament realities. People study their Bibles and come to perceive a huge chasm between the New Testament and the traditional church and often they leave after the institutional church disregards their pleas for change.” GOING TO vs BEING THE CHURCH The New Testament writers referred to the PEOPLE of God as God’s building (1 Corinthians 3:9, Ephesians 2:19-22), God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17), God’s house (1 Timothy 3:15, Hebrews 3:6, 10:21, 1 Peter 2:17), God’s household (Ephesians 2:19, Galatians 6:10) and Christ’s body (Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12, Ephesians 3:6, 5:23, 30). Though most Christians - even ministers - would say ‘Amen” to that, such a response is generally little more than mere lip service. Did Christians in the New Testament GO to church? No, for the first three centuries of her existence, the thought never entered their minds. They WERE the Church! They understood that they WERE God’s dwelling place - everywhere they went. They were His temple! As Howard Snyder writes in “The Problem of Wineskins Today,” “A church building cannot properly be “the Lord’s house” because, in the new covenant, this title is reserved for the Church as people. So, if church buildings have any justification, it can only be practical; simply a place to meet and carry on essential functions, as necessary.”The Book of Acts is STILL being written, my friends. RUNNING THE CHURCH LIKE A BUSINESS What we in the West typically refer to as “The Church” is taking its toll on the people we hire to run these organizations. Zens said, “Divorce, suicide, nervous breakdown, burnout, etc. abound among clergy. The average pastorate in the Southern Baptist Convention is under 18 months. The high-pressure altar call tactics have proven to produce “converts” that rarely last. Even with all the empirical evidence that many things are amuck in the traditional model, the real issue is ‘what does the New Testament teach?’ If any model contradicts or stifles the New Testament pattern, it should be jettisoned for those reasons alone. The early church had no clergy and no sacred buildings, and in this regard was radically different from all other religions, including Judaism. The proliferation of expensive church buildings constitutes a fundamental compromise of what Christ intended to build. Thus, believers gathering in informal settings [in] homes, rented store-fronts, outdoors and apartments apparently provides the best context for the 58 “one anothers” [in the Bible] to be fleshed out.” In his article entitled “Four Tragic Shifts in the Visible Church, 180-400 A.D.,” Zens writes. ” I think the primary theological point of the New Testament in this regard is that under the New Covenant there are no holy places. Contemporary Christianity has almost no grasp of this significant point. Taking a cue from the Old Covenant, people are still lead to believe that a church building is ‘the house of God.’ Believers are free to meet any place in which they can foster, cultivate and attain the goals set before them by Christ. The problem today is that many church structures neither promote nor accomplish Christ’s desires for His body. Homes are a neutral place for believers to meet, and the early church flourished well into the first and second centuries without erecting any temple-like edifices. But the issue is still not in what type of place believers gather, but what shape their committed life together takes as they wrestle with the many duties and privileges flowing out of the priesthood of all believers.” Christian Smith, writing in the journal “Voices In The Wilderness,” adds, “God intends church to be a community of believers in which each member contributes their special gift, talent, or ability to the whole, so that, through the active participation and contribution of all, the needs of the community are met. In other words, what we ought to see in our churches is ‘the ministry of the people,’ not ‘the ministry of the professional.’ The role of the clergy is essentially the centralization and professionalization of the gifts of the whole body into one person. The problem is that, regardless of what our theologies tell us about the purpose of clergy, the actual effect of the clergy profession is to make the body of Christ lame. This happens not because clergy intend it (they usually intend the opposite) but because the objective nature of the profession inevitably turns the laity into passive receivers.” Simply put, the Body of Christ is a living organism, NOT an organization. THE CORPORATE PYRAMID IN THE CHURCH Passive laity? Pew potatoes? Their existence is borne out in such passages as Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12, and in 1 Corinthians 14:26, the latter stating: “What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” Ministry in the New Testament church was not centered on one individual, but involved each member of the “ekklesia” (that’s you and me, “the called out ones”) as a functioning “priest” (1 Peter 2: 5, 9) under the headship of Christ and directed by the Holy Spirit exercising his/her gift for the mutual strengthening of the body. The New Testament refers to no spiritual hierarchy, but calls all Believers ’saints.’ Neither does it recognize a special priesthood in distinction from the people, as mediating between God and the laity. Clearly, there is only one high-Priest, Jesus Christ, and the New Testament clearly designates a universal royal priesthood, as well as universal kingship of believers (1 Peter 2:5,9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). So, what are we afraid of? Most Christians react more out of fear and a sense of loyalty to tradition than a commitment to Biblical truth as they poo-poo any such notions as being nearly heretical. Throughout Church history, anyone who bucked the system has been severely persecuted, ostracized, excommunicated, executed or shunned in one form or another. The Jesus Movement of the late 60s - early 70s comes to mind as one such recent period where God was attempting to stretch the traditionalist beyond recognition. Some more recent “moves” include the Toronto Blessing and Brownsville and Kansas City Revivals. The criticisms of these events are legion for they are many. From the Great Awakenings till today, like a ball of clay being prepared for use by the Master Potter, America’s “legacy churches” have always been pounded, stretched, kneaded and spun repeatedly as God challenged her to get on board with what He’s doing. There has NEVER been a tidy move of God as the wheat grows up right along with the tares. When Moses turned his rod into a snake, the Egyptian magicians were quick to counterfeit God’s miracle. But none of us are called to whip out our Flesh-O-Meter and determine what was of God and what was purely of the flesh or of the devil. If we do that, we must turn that meter on ourselves in order to gauge when it is that we, too, might be preaching, singing, serving or tithing completely from a carnal perspective. The only standard of Truth? The Doctrine of Jesus Christ, His teachings and nothing more or less. Anything else is doomed to perish anyway. So, when did the original Church start to change into what we see now in the western world? It happened in 312 AD when the Emperor Constantine was dubbed Pontifex Maximus, head of all things spiritual, including paganism and Christianity simultaneously. When he made institutional Christianity the state religion in Rome, he converted pagan temples into Christian “churches” and used state funds to support the clergy making ministry another elite “job” to which many would aspire. In this atmosphere, politics reared its ugly head in a supposedly Christian context as wealthy people would lobby to get “junior” a coveted post in the church world. Howard Snyder, in his book “Radical Renewal: The Problem of Wineskins Today,” writes, “A Biblical conception of the church will make it clear that the church is essential to the Gospel, for it is the body of Christ…At the same time, it will be clear that human institutions and structures are not themselves the church; they are not hallowed. These are days when Christians must be clear about what the church is and what it is not. Just as many false Christs will come in the last days, so many counterfeit and apostate “churches” will litter the spiritual landscape. The church must be prepared, both as persons and as the Christian community, for the lash of persecution and the lure of the antichrist. This means the necessity for doctrinal clarity and authentic community - for both orthodoxy of belief and orthodoxy of community. Under the threat of persecution, life in community becomes both more difficult and more essential. Thus the priorities of structures which are flexible, mobile, inconspicuous, and not building-centered.” A THING OF THE PAST RESURRECTED What we are so committed to here in the Western Church is simply not working. That should be our first clue. Anyone can read the facts regarding the church: Most modern conversions are taking place in third-world nations. Our churches close at a rate of 3,800 annually. Eighty percent of what we refer to as “church growth” is little more than “transfer growth” as people leave one organization for another like we change political parties, sports teams and spouses. 53,000 Christians are walking out weekly, many claiming they had to leave the traditional church in order to find God. Is this “house Church” thing just a fad? No, it’s been around a long time. A significant home church movement began in Australia in 1968. For decades, home meetings have been the norm in China, Latin America and other places. If persecution erupted in America, the house church model could suddenly be very common, as churches that require immense weekly overhead to operate could fold virtually overnight. It will take a catastrophic event to awaken the church to what is important in the Kingdom. The Church flourishes under persecution. When that happens, the shape of believers’ lives together will change rapidly. Zens writes, “As long as our affluence continues, the informal approach to church will remain. But whether something is minority or majority is hardly the issue. Our concern must be, ‘how will we follow Christ in all areas of our lives? Are we going to obey the New Testament or not? One brother in our assembly has said, ‘our way of doing church is not popular. It requires hard work and commitment.’ The home church movement, of course, is not monolithic,” Zens pointed out. “… no movement will prosper long if it does not center on exalting Jesus Christ and obeying His Word.” Mike Morrell, zoecarnate.com, writes, “What we’re witnessing is nothing less than the return of the 1st Century church in a 21st century context. We’re rediscovering the peculiar genius of Jesus and His earliest apprentices afresh today.” Although it goes by many names (e.g. house church, simple church, open church, organic church, etc.), it is simply a group of people getting together with Christ as their center, and the Bible as the ultimate authority. These groups can gather anywhere–homes, workplaces, coffee shops, anywhere that people naturally gather! “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am, in the midst of them,” Jesus said. I know one thing, God’s still has a plan for good, Jesus is Lord and, just as the Beatles “Revolution” songs says “…it’s gonna be all right.” Michael A servant of God t.e.a.m. ministries A Ministry of Discipleship & Encouragement to the Body of Christ across Planet Earth P.O. Box 633 Stephenville, Texas 76401 Your Town For Jesus! Philemon 2 …and to the church that meets in your house: Colossians 4 …and the church in her house. Romans 16 …also the church that meets at their house. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael’s mission is to bring Discipleship and Encouragement to the Body of Christ. Since 1999, he has broadcast over six hundred inspirational articles and a dozen booklets on subjects that will interest the thinking Christian, all designed to accelerate the process of spiritual development in God’s people. He is the founder of t.e.a.m. ministries (team1min@aol.com). An Author, Pastoral Counselor and Teacher, his eMail broadcasts, known as “Your Town for Jesus” are reaching millions around the globe WEEKLY. Write team1min@aol.com if you’d like to SUBSCRIBE. A licensed/ordained minister, a Certified Workplace Chaplain, and a Professional Member of NIBIC, he has ministered in Methodist, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Baptist, Disciples of Christ, College and Cowboy churches. He is also a Speaker on the Christian Speaker Network and may be available to speak to your church or Christian group. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Tummillo http://EzineArticles.com/?Theres-Gonna-Be…-An-Evolution?&id=330788 buy mexican valium buy cheap valium without a prescription mail order valium buy xanax valium online florida
