The Church in the City by Ron Wood

Author:		Gary Goodell
Posted:		9/16/2005; 2:08:45 PM
Topic:		The Church in the City by Ron Wood
Msg #:		203 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		157/250
Reads:		3933

The early church fathers "turned the world upside down" with their witness. They did not have automobiles, telephones, the internet, or airplanes. Yet they successfully planted kingdom colonies in city after city. They had something that God was pleased to bear witness to with supernatural signs and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Since that first generation of pioneers, the world has not been the same!

You can see evidence of their effective strategy in the New Testament epistles written to the churches in the Bible. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:2 says "…to the church of God which is at Corinth…." Ephesians 1:1 reads, "…to the saints who are at Ephesus…." Phillippians 1:1 mentions "…the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi…." Col 1:2 is addressed "…to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae…" Ah, you noticed the Letter to the Galatians? Yes, it references churches- plural. But Galatia was a province, not a city!

In each city there was only one church made up of many house-churches. There was no branding or franchising. When Paul called for the elders of the church at Ephesus, they knew who they were, they knew one another, they knew who they were accountable to, and they came together as one man (Acts 20:17). They were the house-church leaders of the entire city. They were given one new mandate by their apostle (Acts 20:28).

The historic church of the first Apostolic Era had two expressions of corporate life: small groups meeting in homes and the city-wide gathering or network of all the saints. There was no hybrid church like we have today, local congregations. Facility-based congregations are like synagogues in that they have a building devoted to their meetings. Christian congregations as such have been and always will be a blessing. But they do have two major problems: 1) They are too large to meet in private homes. 2) They don't interconnect with the rest of the Body of Christ in the city.

If you add to this dilemma another reality, that modern churches were not founded on the proper foundation of apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20), you have another difficulty interjected into the challenge. Most contemporary churches are not answerable to apostles nor do they receive regular input from prophets. They are usually governed by pastors or elders or boards and these usually fight to maintain the status quo. 

These early Christian pioneers transformed a fiercely antagonistic Roman Empire that crucified thousands of them and fed hundreds of them to the lions or burned them at the stake. They endured awesome tribulation. Their brave preachers had one basic strategy. Wherever there was a Jewish synagogue that would receive them, they went there first and proclaimed the same Messiah their prophets had foretold in their sacred Scriptures. Then, expelled or persecuted, they would go from house to house among the Gentiles, meeting with groups of new believers in their homes. It was this latter strategy, seemingly accidental-- the development of small house churches throughout each city-- that was the true secret to their phenomenal success.

The only way they could do this was by turning laymen into leaders. They did this in small group settings or sometimes in rented halls. These new leaders could in turn tend to the sheep and could continue to expand the ministry of the gospel without becoming paid professionals or becoming priests in a synagogue performing sacred services for their livelihood. These leaders invaded and conquered their pagan cultures, waging spiritual war while remaining below enemy radar.

These heroes of the faith were nameless, faceless, ordinary men and women, not superstars. But they were outstanding workers. And they were all home group leaders and also members of a apostolic teams. The apostle Paul names many of them in his greetings at the end of some of his letters, folks like Phoebe, Priscilla and Aquilla, Mary, Andronicus and Junia, and others too numerous to mention. The apostolic ministry was not a one-man show but a team constantly qualifying and multiplying new workers. You may have noticed many of them were women. Others were husband and wife. By every measure of success, they succeeded.

God's Performance Evaluation for church leaders today could be, "Are you equipping the saints?" A performance evaluation precedes a promotion. Ask yourself: Are the believers sitting in our congregations discovering their purpose in life, learning the awesome power of prayer, growing in their knowledge of the Lord, and excitedly thwarting the devil's work? Or, are they frustrated, bored, and over-fed?

Admittedly, equipping believers for the work of the ministry is nearly an impossible task given our present church structures and religious expectations. Our meetings are too big, too formal, and too dependent on skilled oratory, amplified music, and polished presentations. Church has become big business. As a result, church staff is usually too busy caring for programs, budgets, and buildings to develop the ministries that God has hidden among the saints. Besides that, making the mental and theological transition from "me fulfilling my ministry" to "helping equip them to fulfill their ministry" is too big a hurdle for many contemporary church leaders to jump over.

I love pastors. But they are too few to get the job done. And often their good past prevents their better future. Most modern pastors are good preachers. They are the product of good seminaries, Bible colleges, and historic denominational church models. They may not realize the standard their Chief Shepherd uses to measure success. Christ uses Ephesians 4:11 as his baseline for evaluating performance. In this Scripture, our Risen Lord says he deliberately gave certain ministries (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers) in order to do one main thing: equip the saints.  What ever this means, equipping the saints is apparently their main job description. Note, in this Scripture, it is not to win souls, which is certainly necessary, nor is it to erect buildings, which may not be necessary at all. We know Jesus came to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) and we are ordered to participate in prayer for all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:1-8). Yet Jesus placed the emphasis on more workers (Matthew 9:37-38). With God, the harvest is never an issue.

Soul-winning would be far more effective if the sheep were the ones reproducing. That's multiplication. If the shepherd of the flock is winning all the converts, that's merely addition. Erecting more church buildings may in fact be the greatest hindrance to fulfilling the great commission. It begs for more professionals to run the business, thus leaving out the huge pool of laymen who are indeed qualified by biblical standards (Titus 1:5-9). Buildings formalize our meetings whereas the Body of Christ is a living organism, not an organization. The real church is alive and corporate, the ekklesia. In the Greek language and custom, this word meant "an assembly of called out ones." These Greek citizens, when assembled, had power to legislate local affairs. This is still true today for the saints: they have spiritual authority when coming into agreement in prayer. This also illustrates the truth that the church is not a building on the street corner but a body of people. As Derek Prince said, "There is no way to say in the New Testament Greek language, 'Let's go to church.'" Why? Because the people are the church not the meeting place.

The five ministries named in Ephesians 4:11 were meant to function even in the context of the post-Temple era, after the fall of Judaism in 70 AD. For awhile, the Church was mostly Jewish. Later, starting in Acts 10, it became mostly Gentile. Until the third century after Roman Emperor Constantine, the church was an underground movement without formal houses of worship. It was led by lay people energized by the Holy Spirit but touched at foundations and transitions by apostles and prophets. They went from city to city and from house to house ministering the Word and training more workers. They were (and are) post-resurrection gifts to the Body of Christ, not organizational titles in a religious hierarchy.

Yes, these five titles are ministry offices-- real badges of heaven's authority-- but even more than that, they are job-descriptions for workers set apart for specific missions. These Five-Fold ministry gifts (Greek, doma) are Ascension Gifts by Christ. They are unique in that the man or woman who occupies this office, the person himself, is the gift. The office gifts are distinct from the charismatic gifts (grace-lets) of the Holy Spirit (also called the pneumatikas or spiritual gifts of grace). The Five-Fold persons themselves are gifts given by the ascended Savior to the whole Body of Christ. Therefore, the office-gift is an identity, a role, and a calling based on God's choice with specific power to act received from the Head of the Church not from men. It is not a charismatic anointing that briefly rests upon someone and then quickly departs. What I mean is this: apostles are still apostles even when they are not obviously anointed. The same is true for God's prophets, and for all the Five Fold ministries.

What is the mission of the Five Fold Ministry? It certainly includes The Great Commission. (Matthew 28:18-20) This is the record of Jesus' final orders to the Church. Jesus spoke this commandment to his eleven remaining apostles. Remember, Judas had killed himself, reducing the Twelve to eleven, and Matthias wasn't yet chosen to replace Judas until days later in the upper room (Acts 1:26). Just so you know, the Bible has fourteen apostles mentioned by name before the resurrection of Jesus and fourteen more are identified by name after his resurrection and ascension. Let this startling fact sink in: The Ascended Lord Jesus is still doing what he did then-- recruiting, equipping, and sending forth apostles and prophets to the Church today!

Jesus showed us how to do it when he gathered his original twelve disciples. Yes, he preached to the mixed multitudes, but he also drew aside his devoted followers for special hands-on training. During his earthly ministry, he demonstrated the kingdom of God by driving demons out of suffering people, by healing people of sickness and disease, by raising the dead, and by preaching the good news of the gospel to the poor. He had both good words and good works. But did he stop at preaching?

No… but that's where most of us draw the line. For modern Christians, church is all about preaching and worshipping. Basically, we think good preaching is what the work of the ministry is all about. We tell the pastor, "Great sermon, Preacher!" We never think to say, "Wonderful to hear that you spent all week with those young people desiring to serve God."

Jesus did more than preach. He modeled a small mobile community of faith (at first, a deeply committed team) that displayed the values of his new kingdom. He loved and trained this small band of brothers so they could know God's will. He showed them how to pray persistently, how to stop reacting in sinful ways, and how to stop judging sinners. He forgave others freely right up to the cross. He gave generously to the poor and he gave away everything the Father had given to him. He deployed these raw recruits, these agents of the kingdom, these revolutionaries of a new age, into the same kind of preaching and healing and mentoring work that he had been doing. Then he did something truly amazing… he got out of their way so they could do it themselves in the Holy Spirit's power. 

Understanding Jesus' method helps us see the challenges we are now facing. The congregational model of contemporary Christianity brings with it an unquestioned assumption: that is, if we fill the building with hundreds of people and a few people are being saved, we must be successfully doing the work of the ministry.

For many evangelicals, the problem is that they don't know there is a problem. Our small success deceives us. The paradigm of professional clergy in front of laymen as listeners is so pervasive that we don't question it anymore. The perks of success are too powerful to ignore in our church culture so now we have new ministries springing up with a TV mentality and even small churches in poverty-stricken Third World countries that think they can't do church without a PA system. We've made the building and the size of the crowd our status symbol and the validation of our success.

However, even if successful, this paradigm has several problems associated with it. The first problem is that it is unbiblical. The second problem is that it isn't working well enough to get the job done in our lifetime. The third problem is that it robs ordinary believers of the opportunity to do the work of the ministry by keeping it in the hands of paid professionals. The fourth problem is that there aren't enough resources to build enough buildings to gather everyone inside that God wants saved… such as whole cities!

When the Lord looks down from heaven into a major metropolitan area, does he see only Baptist churches? Does he see only Spirit-filled churches? Does he see only churches inside buildings? What does he see? The answer is—he sees the whole church at once, all of it, every flavor and variety and style you can imagine. They are all his people, everyone who names the name of the Lord and has been redeemed by the blood of his Son.

If you're saved, you'd better learn to love your brothers and sisters, even those of different races or liturgies, since we'll all going to spend eternity together! And if you're following the pattern of the apostles and prophets settled in the Bible and affirmed in church history, you'd better start believing in the legitimate church as it really is: congregations plus a myriad of small house groups and the whole network of all the saints in your city.