Shared Church in Manila

• How can we open church worship services to congregational participation?

• When did the church buy into the idea that one-anothering, which forms the very core of Jesus’s new command, must be mostly barred from larger congregational settings?

I raise those two questions in the Introduction to my book, Curing Sunday Spectatoritis. Not only there but also in this website I have called for making our Sunday meetings a participatory, shared-church experience. But conventional wisdom frowns and says no. That kind of involvement can happen in small groups on weekdays. But it’s a nonstarter in a large congregational meeting.

Is that true? Does a medium-to-large congregation require the one-way, monological meeting format? Are we locked into audience mode? Must any significant speaking always come from the platform?

Dialogue in Manila

If any doubt still lingered in my mind about participation in groups of hundreds, such uncertainty got knocked flat during the Lausanne Global Workplace Forum in Manila. Each morning, 720 of us met in the main meeting room of a multi-story church building—home of the Greenhills Christian Fellowship. A camera captured part of the room in this photo:

Our morning sessions included both speakers and panels. Messages from the platform took anywhere from 3 to 25 minutes. How could we have meaningful dialogue in such a crowd?

The secret lay in the seating arrangement. We sat in groups of six around small, rectangular tables—120 of them. Each table had a host. I served in that role for Table 18. The organizers had arranged it so people from similar occupations sat together. Engineers around this table. Artists at that one. Software designers over there. And so on. After each major presentation, a couple of questions flashed onto the screens. We then spent the several minutes discussing those questions and processing what the speakers or panelists had covered.

Echoes of Corinth

With 720 in the room, we clearly outnumbered any house church in first-century Corinth. Yet we were able to encourage, build up, instruct, and strengthen one another, much like they did in those meetings that followed the participatory pattern Paul describes:

“When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight. If prayers are offered in tongues, two or three's the limit, and then only if someone is present who can interpret what you're saying. Otherwise, keep it between God and yourself. And no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other. If you choose to speak, you're also responsible for how and when you speak” (I Cor. 14:26-33).

Table Groups Well Received

The presenters in Manila spoke the truth powerfully. But in our table discussions, what they said became up close and personal as each of us told how the teaching meshed with our own experiences. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who benefited from those discussions. Others said:

• “The bonding with my table members was excellent. We have kept the communication since we left.”

• “The table groups were very well planned (six was the ideal number) and were a highlight of the Forum.”

• “The speakers and my table group discussions were encouraging. Now I understand why I have been encountering delays in finalizing my retirement plans.”

• “Connecting with others was the most significant part of the overall week.”

In that table-group setting, the body of Christ was set free to grow and build itself up in love as each part did its work (Eph. 4:16). Changes that would never have come about through just listening to speakers—good as they were—began to emerge as members of the body opened up to each other.

Table Groups in Sunday Meetings?

Once I returned from Manila (and after recovering from jet lag), no doubt remained in my mind: churches of any size can include table-group discussions in their Sunday meetings. “Why,” I asked myself, “would any local church not adopt this table-group arrangement?” Here’s what came to mind:

• Our tables aren’t the right size and shape. And, anyway, we don’t have enough of them.

• Doing it that way would take a lot more work.

• We prefer to remain in audience mode. It’s more comfortable just to sit in rows and listen.

• Visitors might not want to speak up among strangers.

• Table groups? We’ve never done it that way before.

Taking issue with these objections would likely make no headway. But suppose, instead, you were to ask any doubters to visualize this “what if” scene?

What If . . . ?

What if, on a given Sunday morning, the pastor speaks from Col. 4:5-6—"Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone” (NLT). After the message, the pastor posts these questions on the screen: (1) In the context of your life, how can you live out the gospel as Paul urges in this passage? (2) Among your unbelieving peers, what have you found to be difficult in making the most of every opportunity?

What if, on that same morning, table groups discussed these questions. What if one table group included: (1) a college student majoring in elementary education, (2) a junior-high-school principal, (3) the mother of a third-grader, (4) a retired school superintendent, (5) a high-schooler considering a teaching career, and (6) a school counselor. What do you imagine might take place in the conversation around that table?

• What can you hear those young people asking?

• How do you think the older ones with school experience might respond?

• What kinds of ongoing relationships—on beyond the table and that Sunday meeting—might be forged?

And finally, if the message had simply concluded with no table discussion, what might never have happened?

Participatory Baptisms and 5-Question Strategy

Lowell Bakke

While serving as pastor in Bethany Baptist Church in Puyallup, WA, Lowell Bakke began to see a whole new way to make baptisms an opportunity for those in the congregation to serve one another. He also introduced a “five-question strategy” to make Sunday meetings more participatory. Bakke explains both in the following excerpt from Chapter 6 of my book, Curing Sunday Spectatoritis.

In those days I was baptizing around eight to ten people a year. Why, I wondered, should a pastor do all the baptizing? Jesus himself had his trainees baptize others (John 4:1-2). Apparently, Paul did not consider baptizing disciples a part of his job description (1 Cor. 1:13-17).

As a Baptist pastor, I had no interest in claiming exclusive authority to baptize as a symbol of power, which is so common in Baptist churches. So I went to the church board and said, “I’d like to give away this responsibility to those who have actually done the ministry in the lives of those being baptized. Can you show me biblically that I am the only one who should do the baptizing?” They thought about it and said, “No—it’s just that we’ve always done it that way.”

The Church Hears the Stories Behind the Baptisms

Behind every baptism is a story of God’s working, but I didn’t want to be the one knowing and telling that story. So I began meeting with baptismal candidates, asking them to tell me their stories so they could tell them publicly. Some needed a bit of coaching to help them know the best way to communicate their story. “Who might you want to baptize you?” I asked each one. Usually it was the person who had had the most spiritual impact on their coming to faith. For some fathers, it was sometimes a child or wife who did the baptizing. Ballplayers baptized coaches. Students baptized teachers. In one case, an employee of a car company baptized the owner of the firm. But by far the most dynamic part of the service was the story of the relationship of those being baptized and the one who had the spiritual impact on their life.

In less than a year, the church witnessed more than 100 baptisms—and heard the story associated with each one. We actually had one Sunday morning where in three services all we did in each service was to hear the stories of people who were being baptized. Altogether 39 people were baptized that day, but it took the whole service time because each story was totally different. Twenty-plus years later, I don’t remember all the stories, but I do remember thinking almost all of those who were baptized that day and every other baptismal service came to Christ outside our church services. Had we not taken the time to learn and share the story, we would never had known how God was working the other six days of the week in Puyallup. Formerly, believers at Bethany took seriously the responsibility for bringing people to Christ, but the church did not give them the opportunity to share their story nor the authority to baptize those they reached on behalf of the church. Now they were out sharing Christ in the community and had the opportunity to tell their stories to church body as well as the joy of representing the church as the baptizing agent in the church service. Those stories were better than any sermon I ever preached.

The 5-Question Strategy

For three summers while serving as pastor in in this church, I used a five-question strategy. This not only increased participation among those who had gathered each Sunday, but it also helped vacationing church members take part. Maybe the best part of the whole process was that it put everyone on an equal footing—young believers, mature believers, and not-yet-believers—as every person’s answers were valuable to the whole. I chose a Bible book and divided it into sections. Each section became my text for that week, and everyone was notified in advance of the Scripture passage to be read. To vacationers I suggested, even if you’re camping, take out this text and read it carefully. Then ask yourself the following five questions:

1. What did you like about this text?

2. What did you not like about the text?

3. What did you not understand about the text?

4. What did you learn about God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit?

5. What are you going to do now that you’ve read the text?

For the message in the Sunday meeting, I began by asking others to read the text aloud in two or three translations. After that I presented a short teaching commentary on the text then asked those present to interact, using the same five questions. Roving microphones made it possible for everyone to hear clearly. I was amazed at some of the insights. It made me realize that even with the aid of the Holy Spirit, my mind as a pastor is so finite that I don’t understand many things about the Bible that the congregation was able to bring to the table each Sunday.

When it came to questions 1 and 2, what some people liked about the text was sometimes identical with what others did not like about it, depending on their perspective and their circumstances in life. When people described what they did not understand about the text (question 3), I did not offer answers. Often, a week or two later, someone would say something like, “I remember last week when John was struggling to understand the text. Well, while reading this week’s Scripture the Lord helped me see something I think might help with that.” The hardest thing for preachers is to refrain from giving answers. We need to trust the Holy Spirit to teach believers as they work their way through to understanding.

Lowell Bakke now serves as Director of the International Theology of Work Grant Program: www.theologyofworkgrant.com

Putting Supper back into The Supper

How can a church make its Sunday meetings more participatory? I’ve been asking that question for decades. Why? Because according to the teaching I’ve received—and believe wholeheartedly—the Bible is to be our “only rule” not only for faith but also for practice. But over the years it seems the practices for Christian gatherings today have drifted far from those in the New Testament.

How far? The gap can’t be measured in miles or years. Maybe the best way to visualize it is to picture the difference between what takes place in a roomful of friends and in a theater. Or between the exchanges that take place in a family reunion versus those in a sports stadium. Positive things can and do happen in theaters and stadiums. But they are far from the same things that take place in a roomful of friends or a family reunion.

Our Church Plant

An opportunity to move a bit nearer to that family-reunion setting came several years ago when our pastor asked me to lead the team that would plant a church in the neighboring city. We met first on Easter in a hall rented just on Sundays. Right from the start, we observed Communion once a month, as many churches do. Tiny cubes of bread and micro-cups with, perhaps, a half-ounce of grape juice.

After our first communion celebration, a man I had met just a few weeks before came and fervently thanked me for providing empty cups in the serving trays. Seeing my puzzled look, he explained: “I’m an alcoholic. But I was able to participate by taking an unfilled cup.” Marveling at his openness, I clarified: “We use grape juice, not wine, in the cups. The reason for the empties is that, as a brand-new church, we have more cups than people.”

As the church grew and we occupied our own building, we filled more cups and even purchased additional trays. But the more I studied the practices of the early church, the less satisfied I became with our practice of Communion. We were, of course, observing it in the traditional way. Yes, we were remembering Christ’s death. In Paul’s classic passage on this (I Cor. 11:17-34), he calls it the Lord’s “Supper,” meaning the main meal of the day, usually in the evening. But no one would call what we were doing a “supper.” I couldn’t imagine inviting guests into our home for supper and serving them a crumb of bread and a sip of juice. As one writer put it, our traditions have taken supper out of the Supper.

Remembering Plus

Further, real meals include more than just food. They naturally stimulate discussions. But I saw that tradition had turned the Supper into a no-conversation ritual. It permitted none of the lively dialogue seen in the original Lord’s Supper, the Passover meal shared by Jesus and his disciples. For example, while visiting another church I saw such silence taken to an extreme: couples or singles soaked their break in grape juice, then headed off to stand against a wall, isolated from all others. There, they ate the moist bread in solitude—their backs to everyone else!

Why did Paul scold the Corinthians for the way they were celebrating the Lord’s Supper? Because they were flouting the Lord’s new command to love one another (Jn. 13:34-35). Each came to the meal thinking only of themselves. So Paul had to tell them to wait for “each other,” which translates the “one another” word Jesus used three times in his new command. Paul’s rebuke makes it clear that the Lord’s Supper is not only about remembering the Lord’s death until he comes. It is also about one-anothering in the here-and-now. But in our practice of Communion, that wasn’t happening.

Combining Communion and Meal

We had constructed our building with a multipurpose room as our main meeting space. So we introduced a new way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper. On the first Sunday of each month, we filled the room with rectangular folding tables. Between each string of tables and the next we placed two lines of chairs. During the first part of the meeting, which included singing and sermon, all the chairs faced forward. After that, half the chairs were spun around 180 degrees, so that people faced each other across tables during the meal (see diagram.) This made conversation both easy and natural. On each table we included a few suggested conversation-starters designed to spur mutual encouragement and spurring on.

By then the church had several cell groups, and each one took its turn at preparing the meal. We emphasized the need to keep the menu simple. Soup. Bread. Often a salad. The families making up the cell group provided the meal and did the serving. This included the children and young people—which allowed adults and youths to relate to one another across the generations.

Each month the message for Communion Sunday focused on some aspect of Jesus’s death and its significance. Then, during the meal, we paused to reflect on the meaning as we shared the bread and later the cup. By means of a brief meditation, someone qualified to do so helped us connect those symbols to the body and blood of Jesus. Conversations across the tables liberated us from any somber stiffness, yet the focus on the meaning of the bread and cup preserved the seriousness of what we were doing. We found that dining together created a sense of family and fostered one-anothering.

The Changeover

The transition included a learning curve. Since we were crossing over into what was for us uncharted territory, we had to learn from our successes and failures. Did everyone immediately buy into this non-traditional way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper? No. For example, one older couple, long-time church people, initially chose to skip those first-Sunday-of-the-month meetings. They had never experienced Communion this way before. But after a few months, hearing positive reports from others, they returned and eventually became staunch advocates of the “new” way of doing things.

Why did this couple hear positive reports? Because we had put communion and community back together. The two words, after all, share the same Latin root—which means participating in something common to all. How often have you experienced close community in a theater? Yet community happens easily across the table over food. Jesus called for one-anothering in his new command. He asked in prayer that his followers would come to complete unity.

Celebrating Communion as a real meal helped move us toward both of those outcomes.

A Church Patterned on Trinity

Several authors have urged a return to what I call “shared church.” But their books don’t appear on best-seller lists, and few Christ-followers know about them. This blog is the second on such books.

How Should “Trinity” Shape the Church?

In Trinity in Human Community, Peter R. Holmes explains how. His subtitle, Exploring Congregational Life in the Image of the Social Trinity, offers a hint. God, he says, is a social, relational Being. This truth should mold the way we meet and interact in our churches.

As those created in the likeness of this personal, communal God, we grow best as we relate to him and to others in true community. But too often church people do not experience such fellowship. Holmes notes that “Congregational meetings can look like the classroom, faith being a thing we learn to do intellectually. We often stand in rows to worship God.”

After-Effects of Augustine

Why do we find it so challenging to experience real community? Holmes traces much of the difficulty to the theology we in the Western Church got from Augustine. Most of us don’t realize how greatly the ideas of this fourth/fifth-century theologian still color the way we think. Influenced by Greek thought, Augustine emphasized the oneness of the Godhead. By contrast, the Eastern Church had stressed the personhood of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From Augustine, says Holmes, we “inherited . . . the idea of a static, transcendent Trinity.” This “makes it more difficult for us to imagine the possibility of engaging with our spirituality, and knowing an intimate relationship with God.”

The insights of Augustine, Holmes believes, need to be counterbalanced with those of his Eastern-Church contemporaries, the Cappadocian Fathers—Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil the Great. Although we should not see them through rose-colored glasses, the Cappadocians offer an understanding of God we have missed: perichoresis. This means that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always lived in intimate social relationship, mutually indwelling each other. As Jesus said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:11). In other words, God himself is, lives, and loves as a Community.

A Reluctant Church Planter

In 1998, along with four others, Holmes planted Christ Church Deal (CCD) in Deal, a coastal UK city located where the North Sea and English Channel meet. With years of experience in churches and church leadership, Holmes had a “personal problem” in making the transition to a perichoretic church. “It had never really occurred to me,” he admits, “that congregational life could or should be more than a series of regular meetings, and that ‘fellowship’ as I was regularly practicing it was actually not authentic community.”

He discovered that he had “deep personal prejudices against ideas of ‘community.’” Solid Christians didn’t need community, he thought. He’d been raised to think of himself as a strong, independent male. Who needed close relationships? He had read and heard stories of the heroes of the faith, recalling that “Most of these writings seem to focus on the journey and successes of the individual.”

Realizing what it would cost to practice perichoretic church, Holmes resisted. “I instinctively and stubbornly held on to the old ways, redoubling my efforts rather than taking the risk of changing my thinking. What I had to admit was that reproducing traditional institutional Church is always much easier for me. After all, I had had over thirty-five years of doing it this way. The task of seeking to create a new model of congregation as community was far too daunting to undertake.”

Steps Toward a Perichoretic Church

But as he began to listen to the hearts of those in the newly planted church, Holmes began to realize that what he and they needed most was a true community patterned on the social Trinity. He recalls that the people in CCD “did not want meetings, but they did want relationships.” Since then, CCD has intentionally taken steps to create an environment in which relationships in community can flourish. For example:

• “We have experimented with the idea of doing things together, seeing this as an excuse for a get-together, or for making a job a relational event.”

• “Another change in our community was when we moved the worship band to the back of the congregation, requiring each person to proactively visualize worshiping Christ in relationship rather than continue to be passively ‘led’ in worship by the singers and musicians.”

• “On the last Sunday of the month, we cancel Sunday church altogether. We do this to facilitate social relations in and outside the congregation.”

CCD has not built or bought a building. “We decided that would not put money into buildings, but into people.” So their homes serve as their primary meeting-places. As the congregation grew, they rented or leased space when they needed more room for special events.

Should We Meet to Worship, or . . . ?

For CCD, the central reason for gathering together differs from the typical understanding of why Christians gather. “A characteristic for Paul of faith community life was that people did not go to church to ‘worship.’ Rather, Paul saw one’s whole life as worship (Rom. 12:1-2). . . . Paul saw the purpose of meeting corporately as the spiritual strengthening of one another (1 Cor. 14:12, 19, 26). This was done through sharing gifts in mutual ministry or charism (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16-17).”

This one-anothering—which Jesus calls for in his New Command—has led CCD to adopt a non-hierarchical church structure. “In CCD we have sought to take up the idea of a flat organization. . . . Easy access to the leadership is important. . . . we elect most of our Leadership Team (LT) of ten men and ten women, and choose a chairperson from among this group. All are lay people and work on a voluntary basis.” CCD has adopted “arrangements [that] militate against individuals having power over others or developing a power base within the congregation.” Holmes says, “by putting people ahead of tasks, we have endeavored to mirror social Trinity.”

“What I am suggesting is that our modern practice of one priest leading a congregation is in danger of usurping what Hebrew thought and Paul are actually saying to us. It is the ‘priesthood of all believers,’ as Peter suggested (1 Pet. 2:9), that should form the foundation of local congregational life and leadership, not just one man or woman.”

Rapha: A People-Mending Community

A core teaching in the CCD community comes from God’s word to the community of Israel after their exodus from Egypt: “I am the Lord, who heals you” (Ex. 15:26). In Hebrew, that word for heals is rapha, which means “to stitch together.” God wants to stitch his people back together from being ripped apart by such things as our bent to sinning, our inability to find God, and our being held captive by external forces. So the whole body of believers, as each part does its work, becomes a therapeutic community.

Throughout the book, Holmes intersperses many quotations in which CCD people describe their experience in this perichoretic church community. Here are just three:

• “There is an accountability with each other within the community.”

• “There is a sense that the load is shared. If you have got a problem . . . you can seek someone else to help you, a community of helping.”

• “Prior to CCD I thought being a Christian was like having a label, being part of a club you attended once a week. . . . But since being at CCD, I understand that being a Christian is about how you live your life every day—it’s in you, about living in truth and loving each other, belonging.”

Holmes says, “In CCD we have now been seeking to live this journey of intentional therapeutic faith community for a number of years. . . . We have not got everything right, but we are trying.”

Finding the Church Outside the Building

Why do we need to see the Church in both its modes (see previous blog)? One major reason: if the scattered church remains out of sight, we will not recognize or serve it.

The church does not go into freeze-frame between Sundays. Instead, it simply shifts into its scattered state. The scattered church crops up just about everywhere: in homes, neighborhoods, social events, schools, and workplaces. The paths of Christians may well intersect more often in the work world than in any other arena.

A Survey of Christians in the Workplace

Henry Blackaby: Equipping the Church in the Workplace through the Local Church

I once surveyed 60 Christians from 3 different churches—urban, suburban, and rural. All lived in the northwestern corner of the State of Washington. All worked in non-church-related jobs. I asked: “How many other believers are you aware of among those you interact with at work (coworkers, clients, customers, students, etc.)?”

Only 3 knew of none. More than three-quarters (46) could identify 3 or more professing Christians in their on-the-job networks. The follow-up question asked, “If you do know of other believers where you work, do you deliberately seek for opportunities to encourage them in their faith and walk?” The responses were almost equally divided: yes (31), no (29).

The point is this: for most in the workplace, the scattered church is within easy reach. But among those I surveyed, many do not search out fellow Christians on the job for mutual strengthening. Why might this be? The New Testament repeatedly says that one of our main responsibilities is to serve other Christians in all kinds of ways.

Jesus’s New Command to love one another (Jn. 13:34-35) unleashed scores of one-another/each-other instructions. Our one-anothering is to include: serving, encouraging, spurring on, praying for, accepting, forgiving, showing hospitality, bearing burdens, not grumbling about, greeting, submitting to, and warning/counseling—to name just a dozen.

Why So Little One-Anothering at Work?

The New Testament oozes with these one-anothering instructions. Why, then, do many Christians make little effort to find and serve other believers on the job? At least four possible reasons come to mind:

1. Blind Spot. We are unaware or only dimly conscious of the scattered church. Our traditions have conditioned us to think of “church” almost exclusively in terms of buildings, church-sponsored programs, and Sunday gatherings. Yet the church spends the overwhelming bulk of its time in scattered mode.

2. Near-Sightedness. We perceive our responsibility for one-anothering in terms of the gathered church (those in our small group or the church directory). We may feel safer around such Christians, because they share our “brand” of Christianity or our positions on certain issues of faith and practice.

3. Tunnel Vision. Once outside the gathered church and in the work world, we see our ministry responsibility to be only that of evangelizing unbelievers. Countless Christians have heard rightly that that we should always be prepared to speak to “outsiders” (Col. 4:5, 6; I Pet. 3:15). The problem: for many, that is all they have heard.

4. Fear. Some might worry that finding and serving Christians among their coworkers will jeopardize their jobs. After all, our employers hired us to carry out the tasks in our job descriptions, not to act like ministers.

5. Overbusyness. We can get so wrapped up in gathered-church activities and programs that we have no time left for significant one-anothering on the job. Richard C. Halverson served as senior pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, MD, and later as Chaplain of the United States Senate. In his book, How I Changed My Thinking About the Church, he writes: “The minister finds himself preoccupied with the employment of people in church work—at times inventing tasks to keep them interested and busy.” But as Halverson came to realize, “The real work of the church is what is done between Sundays when the church is scattered . . . in homes, in schools, in offices, on construction jobs, in marketplaces.”

Becoming Scattered-Church Detectives

Knowing what prevents one-anothering among Christians on the job makes it far easier to find remedies. Simply recognizing the reality and importance of both church modes—gathered and scattered—can correct the problem of the blind spot.

The fix for near-sightedness may take a bit more effort. We will need to learn how to locate likely Christ-followers among our on-the-job networks. Years of focusing only on the gathered church can cause our believer-finding skills to atrophy. In the Sunday context, regular attendance, Bibles in hand, small-group participation, etc., often serve as our clues.

But in the world of work, we will need to look intentionally for other signs. For example, what can we learn from the vocabularies of coworkers? How do they spend their weekends? How do they treat the “nobodies” among clients, customers, patients, students, etc.? How do they use or respond to the name of Jesus? These and similar signs are only pointers—not ironclad evidence that they trust and follow the Lord. But such hints can pave the way for further discernment.  In all of this, we need to recognize that Christ-followers may gather in churches that differ sharply from our own. Some may have received little teaching, poor teaching, or downright wrong teaching. But if they are seeking to know and follow Jesus, we can come beside and help them along the way.

If the problem is tunnel vision—the idea that ministry outside the gathered church is just about evangelism—we need to find a wider-angle lens. Ministry outside the gathered church includes more than evangelism. The New Testament puts a priority on our serving “those who belong to the family of believers” (Gal. 6:10).

Fear that one-anothering among Christians might end in job loss can be overcome by recognizing that we are to serve our employers “wholeheartedly” (Eph. 6:7). We should never steal time from employers to minister to other believers. But as relationships with Christian coworkers naturally grow in the course of our work, we can arrange to use personal time—coffee breaks, lunch hours, off-hours, weekends—to serve one another.

Which brings us to the final difficulty: over-involvement in gathered-church programs. Yes, each of us should serve the gathered church in some way. But evening and weekend hours crammed full with church-related work will leave no time for hanging out with Christian coworkers who need our friendship, encouragement, prayers, or counsel. Or for letting them serve us in those ways.

Shared church must extend far beyond gathered-church mode. The work world is spiritually dark. We Christians are also the light of that world (Matt. 5:14). One-anothering among coworkers remains one of the best ways to keep our lamps there burning brightly.

Shared Church: An Assembly of Priests (Part Two)

In Part One: a key step toward helping Christians practice shared church includes teaching them to self-identify as priests. But what do priests—those not paid to serve as church officials—do? Part Two takes on this question.

Priests Live and Work in God’s Presence

This tops the to-do list of the New Testament priest. In English versions of the Old Testament, the word priest translates the Hebrew word kohen. One scholar linked kohen to an Arabic root word meaning to draw near. Moses wrote that non-priests “must not go near” the Tabernacle (Num. 18:22). Only those from the priestly tribe could approach the immediate presence of God—and even they could do so only by following a  complex set of rules.

But because Jesus died, rose, and returned to heaven, he has become our wide-open doorway to God. Jesus, our great high priest (Heb. 4:14), has drawn near to the Father. And because God has placed those who trust Christ “in him,” we too may draw near. The New Testament even urges us to do just that: “Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God” (Heb. 10:21-22). So, the first thing New Testament priests do is to live out our lives in the presence of God. We do so mostly in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our workplaces.

Priests Offer Sacrifices

Sacrifices? Aren’t they obsolete in the 21st century? Old Covenant priests served fellow Israelites by killing their animals and hoisting the carcasses onto burning altars. But what inward state did these outward actions reveal? A sacrifice meant giving up something valuable (an animal) for something considered even more valuable (being in right relationship with God). When Jesus said to his Father, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42), he was giving up his own valuable self-interest for something more valuable—the purposes of his Father. We Christian priests offer sacrifices when we say no to self-interest and take up our cross to follow and serve Jesus (Matt. 16:24).  

Offering sacrifices flows out of living and working in God’s presence. Peter puts it this way: “You . . . are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (I Pet. 2:5). What “spiritual sacrifices” can we modern priests offer? The New Testament provides some examples:

• Praise and thanks (Heb. 13:15). Sacrificing time and attention to express our love for and gratitude to God.
• Care for the needs of others (Phil. 4:18). Putting the well-being of others ahead of our own wants and wishes.
• Faith (Phil. 2:17). Trusting God’s promises rather than relying on our own plans for self-rescue.
• Physical bodies (Rom. 12:1). Using the strength and energy of our brains, limbs, and organs to carry out God’s purposes for people, animals, and plants here on earth.

Priests Pray for Others and Hear their Confessions

Our traditions can make it seem as if these roles belong only to officials in the institutional church. For example, take the ministry of confession. Limiting Christian confessions to a formal “confession box” misses the point. Or take the ministry of praying in public. In some churches, just one person—the pastor—offers all the prayers in a Sunday meeting. In The Problem of Wineskins, Howard Snyder warns, “If the pastor is a superstar, the church is an audience, not a body.” However, New Testament one-anothering includes both prayer and hearing confessions: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (Jas. 5:16).

Priests Serve Fellow Priests

The Old Testament paints a word-picture that helps us see another role of New Testament priests. The Holy Place in the Tabernacle would have been pitch-dark except for the lampstand that held seven lighted lamps. Fueled by oil, these lamps needed constant care. “Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening till morning" (Ex. 27:21). Lamp-tending priests refilled the bowls with oil. They also trimmed and replaced the wicks.

Today, we are both priests and lamps. We need to tend and to be tended. When sin entered, our world went into spiritual blackout. Jesus, who came as the Light of the World, has made us the world's illuminators. He now lives in us so that we can shine his light into this pitch-dark world (Matt. 5:14). But, like those oil lamps, each of us needs constant tending and refueling: being prayed for, encouraged, built up, strengthened, comforted, refreshed, instructed, warned, and even—occasionally—rebuked. Without mutual “priesting,” our lights can flicker out.

We carry out these priestly roles in our weekday lives—but not only then. On Sundays, in churches that adopt a shared-church meeting format, we may also serve in the ways described above. As Greg Ogden puts it in The New Reformation, “We are priests to each other.”

"When you come together, everyone . . . " (I Cor. 14:26). In other words, we gather as an assembly of priests, not as an audience of spectators who simply look on while someone else carries out our priestly roles.

A New Look at Left vs. Right

What can Christ-followers do in a culture polarized between left and right? In Los Angeles, an anti-Trump protester yelled, “We have to fight back. There will be casualties on both sides.” Sides. Division. Verbal wars. These words describe the mindset of the dog-eat-dog world. Far too many see no way of escape from it.

Those not sharing our faith increasingly see the Church—if they even think about it—as marginalized, impotent, irrelevant. Those of us in the Church, like David’s friends, may complain, “The foundations of law and order have collapsed,” and ask: “What can the righteous do?" (Ps 11:3, NLT).

What Can We Do?

There is, of course, no instant fix for crumbling foundations. The Church, however, can shine light into the darkness that surrounds those who stumble and collide in their efforts at repair. In his new command (Jn. 13:34), Jesus told us how those in the world will come to know we are, as we claim to be, his disciples: by our loving each other in the way he has loved us.

Could it be that the world sees the Church as a sidelined subculture because we have not lived out that kind of love for fellow believers? What might begin to occur if we were truly to authenticate our identity as Christ-followers in the way he instructs us? What if the world could watch as a colony of ordinary human beings live out the unity of heaven here on earth?

One of Webster’s definitions of politics is “the total complex of relations between people living in society.” For many people, relationships between left and right in that complex must always involve bruising conflict. There is, however, one society in the world in which left-right clashes are not inevitable: the Body of Christ.

Left and Right Members

To the Apostle Paul the human body, with its various members, provides a way for us to understand the Body of Christ. Any human body has both left and right members—eyes, ears, feet, hands, and so on. But in a properly functioning human body, left and right members never work at odds with each other. Instead of choosing sides, they operate side by side. They do not compete; they cooperate. Each supplies a strength and a perspective the other lacks.

In the Body of Christ, what explains the harmony between left-members and right-members? Each is directly connected with and responsive to the Head. Whenever the situation calls for action, Christ the Head has a single purpose. Members on both the left and the right work together to carry out that one aim.

We Need Practice

Shared church is all about working together. Like the world, the Body of Christ includes members with diverse viewpoints, gifts, and backgrounds. Unlike the world, all are equipped to respond to the one unifying Head. But in what setting may we practice working and speaking in agreement with one another?

Too often our traditional ways of gathering on, say, Sunday mornings rule out authentic one-anothering. We come together as audiences rather than as bodies with interacting members—passive watchers instead of active participants. Rarely, if ever, does the meeting format allow left-members and right-members the opportunity to speak and listen to each other in the way of I Cor. 14:26— “When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight” (The Message).

Jesus asked his Father to grant that we might “be brought to complete unity,” experiencing the same oneness they have enjoyed throughout eternity (Jn. 17:23). Those words, “be brought to,” suggest that arriving at this unity will not come about instantaneously. It will take practice, exercise, rehearsal. Where can we develop, and demonstrate that right-member/left-member unity if we do not do so when we come together as shared church?

Left-member/right-member unity in the Body of Christ exploded into the world in the first century. The divided world is waiting for it to happen again.