Note: This is adapted from a paper written as part of my studies at the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed an advanced biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church and the instructions (i.e. “house order”) by which each local church is to abide."

In my last post, I argued that submission to roles within the body, and allowing those roles to be defined by Christ rather than purely pragmatic or social demands, was a crucial element of aligning our churches with the design found in scripture. That our practices needed to be primarily defined in light of the community of faith Christ is building rather than personal interests or cultural norms. Here, we turn our attention to what that looks like in practice. This primarily arises in two categories; first, the specified roles that exist within the church, and second, how those roles interact in key circumstances as part of the life of the church.

The actual roles within the house order in scripture fall into a series of nested dualities that ultimately reflect the relationship between God the Father and God the Son to varying degrees. The Father is the supreme and perfect authority; all things are in subjection to Him, and He carries out His authority in pure love. The Son is the perfect agent of the Father’s will, doing all He does in submission to the Father and joyfully glorifying the Father through His every word and deed. In all of this, the Holy Spirit unites and glorifies, participating in and highlighting the love that exists within the Trinity and pointing to both the Father and the Son in all things.

The relationship that exists within the Trinity is fundamentally one of love, in which the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and there is no partiality or brokenness in these loving bonds. The three are one, truly one, such that we worship but one God in three persons. No person of the Trinity is lacking in anything, not even honor or power. The Father is not more God than the Spirit or the Son; every person of the Trinity is fully God and, therefore, fully empowered and worthy of all praise. The roles within the Trinity define the interpersonal relationships within divinity, but do not elevate or denigrate any person to any position other than True God.

This is the defining nature of the roles of the church. Every role within the church is engaged in presenting an image of this Trinity relationship, and every interaction among the body of the church is to display the pure love and true bond found among the persons of the Trinity. We must have this understanding in place if we are to carry out these roles correctly; we cannot emulate that which we do not know. We must also recognize the limits of our understanding and of our roles. We cannot perfectly understand God, or at least, if we shall ever perfectly understand Him it will not be on this side of eternity. We cannot perfectly practice the love of the Trinity within our own bodies, as we are not perfect agents of love while yet in these bodies. No roles within the church are perfect images of the divine nature, for a multitude of reasons, but a key one that warrants mention before we continue is that there is no role in the church that has absolute authority the way the Father does. Every leader in the church is also a servant, as Christ noted when He said,

Yet, we are to strive to have our image of the Father and the Son, empowered by the Spirit, grow ever more perfect. The way we live out our roles should be growing in a manner that always looks a little more like the Divine Household than it did before, always makes the love of the Trinity more clear to each other and the watching world. So let us bear this perfect love that we strive to emulate in mind as we consider the images we have been given.

I mentioned that this will be a study of nested dualities, so allow me to explain that before we examine the content of those dualities. First, note that our images are not trinities; there is no agent in our study here that emulates the Holy Spirit, but rather, the dualities discussed are empowered by that same Holy Spirit Himself. He is in all and through all that we do as believers in Christ, He is the One that binds us to Christ and each other, and He is the one who ultimately takes our dualities and uses them to point higher to the Father and the Son. As such, He will not be directly discussed through much of this article, as the rest of it will focus on the roles themselves, but it is vital to understand that nothing that follows this paragraph can exist in any true, holy, and workable form without His hand upon it. He is the vital role that makes all other roles exist, and it is His pleasure to avoid direct praise in favor of pointing beyond Himself to the Father and the Son in all things; so shall it be in this article.

Second, a note about terminology. I do not mean to describe a duality as a pagan may use the term; these are not sets of equal but opposite forces that find their purest expression in appropriate balance. Rather, they are two pictures that, taken together, present a larger picture. There are ways they are equal and ways they are not, but in a healthy church environment, they are never at odds. Fulfilling our roles well means that we are separate only so that we can be seen as united. A unity without parts is not a unity at all, but a single thing; for our images to work in a way that displays unity, then, there must be parts1. In God’s design, these parts are arranged in pairs that nest within and relate to one another.

While not every duality here will get equal weight of discussion in this paper, these are the essential ones for consideration as we move forward. The relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the template, and each will be listed in that order (that is, the member imaging the Father will be listed before the member imaging the Son). The primary dualities are the Son and the Church, the Church and the Home, and the Church and the World. Within the church is the duality of Leaders and Congregation, and within the leadership are the Elders and the Deacons. Within the home are the Family and the Servants, within the family are the Parents and the Children, and within the parents are the Husband and the Wife. Lacking some element here is not utterly devastating; a household without servants, for instance (which is most of them now), simply lacks that role. We are concerned here with how those roles work together to image God, not any debate about whether or not every role needs to exist in every place where it can exist2.

Christ is the head of the church, as the Father is the head of the Trinity. Christ’s relationship to the church images the Father’s relationship to the Son, in that Christ has supreme authority over the church, and carries out this authority in loving relationship. As the Trinity never operates in a manner in which the Father is not in authority, so the church is not designed to ever operate outside of the authority of Christ.

Likewise, the church is designed to operate with leadership in place that has the power to direct its operations and carry out church discipline. This leadership does not have ultimate authority; leaders of the church submit to Christ as Christ submits to the Father, and serves the body as Christ has served the church in His laying down His life for it. This was discussed in more detail elsewhere, but essentially, a church cannot be a church until it has leadership, specifically because it cannot perform its essential duties or maintain its adherence to Christ without trained leaders who point to Christ in their own deeds and in the relationship they have to the rest of the church body. Similarly, the church cannot be a church without a body that submits to the authority of the leadership as the church submits to Christ, since it is the body that carries out the work of the church in the world as the church carries out the work of Christ in the world and Christ carries out the work of the Father in the world.

Within the leadership are elders and deacons, the two offices defined in scripture for the governance of the church. Together, they are the leadership addressed in the paragraph above. But they have distinction between themselves, and within that distinction, the elders set direction as the Father sets direction for the Son (and as the Son sets direction for the church), and the deacons carry out the will of church leadership through service to the body as Christ carries out the will of the Father through His service rendered to the church (and as the church carries out the will of Christ).

Part of the work of church leaders is to direct the regular life of the church. This means that it is church leadership that ultimately calls and leads meetings of the assembled church body. The leadership keeps order at the assembled meetings, points all that happens to Christ, and carries out the essential functions of equipping and establishing the body. The congregation, then, follows the order as established by the leaders and submits to biblical teaching and direction as it is delivered during their times of assembly. Elders are described by Paul as having an ability to teach, because it is part of the fundamental nature of church leadership to pass on the knowledge and will of Christ to the body.

Relationships within the body are intended to showcase the patient love of Christ, as well as the importance of the church’s mission, at all times. As such, Christ gives us direction in Matthew to approach one another about sin and disputes in a manner that gives the offender multiple opportunities to repent and make things right, with increasing support from the church. When this process is not fruitful, however, Paul operates on the understanding that it is the leadership of the church that holds the authority to discipline the wayward member. Gilliland argues that this responsibility is a natural expression of the patient love expressed in the Matthew process when he says, “The Christian who lapses into unchristian behavior requires patience, much teaching, and genuine caring and love. The discipline of the Christian church must be the work of those who have a truly pastoral heart.”3 That is, the heart that qualifies one for church leadership is the same heart needed to practice discipline within the church in a manner that respects the offender and emphasizes the proper mindset of the church toward the offense.

Disruption of these relationships, then, not only alters the practices of the church, but corrupts the image the church is meant to be displaying. If the deacons operate as elders, or the body operates without leadership, or the elders fail to submit to Christ or serve the body, then the essential function of the church—as the manifested glory of God in the world tasked with carrying out the redemptive mission of Christ—falls apart.

The affairs of the Christian home are subject to the affairs of the Christian church. As God the Father sets the course of divine work and God the Son carries that work out in the world, so the church delivers its mission to the home, which then carries out that work. The home displays the same relationship within its neighborhood and direct connections that the church displays within its community. Thus, the structure of one informs the other; as Banks notes that “those who belong to [local church communities] should see one another primarily as members of a common family,” highlighting that the church operates in the same manner as a home, and the home operates in the same manner as the church.4

The home, similarly, has offices, and there are specific elements of church life that happen within the home. The finances of the church, for instance, come from the finances donated through the homes; if the homes within the church do not understand their responsibility to support the work of the church with their resources, and do not graciously and joyfully give of their resources to the God who provides for them, the church will find itself lacking and struggling to afford its basic tasks. This then cycles back into the homes, as the church is called to provide for any among them who are lacking. This is seen in the creation of the office of Deacons, whose first task was to oversee the support of widows, and James 1:27 reminds readers that concern for widows and orphans is a crucial element in the life of the church and the believer. As those homes with resources give those resources to the church, the church has the means to provide those resources to the homes that lack. In this way, the relationship between the church and the home is not only reflective of each other, but cyclical in practice, much like the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son.

In Ephesians 6, Paul describes various relationships within the home and shows the image of the Father/Son relationship in them. Servants (or slaves in some renderings) submit to the authority of their masters as Christ submits to the Father, not merely in grudging action but in sincerity, while the masters are commanded to treat their servants with a sincere and respectful heart that mirrors the way the Father directs the Son. Children are called to honor their parents, while the parents (namely the fathers) are called to a mindfulness in how they raise up their children without unnecessary provocation.

But these are presented in light of the longer text (Ephesians 5:22-33) before it, which details the relationship of the husband to the wife. Paul explicitly states the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship repeatedly throughout this section, pointing husbands to the part of Christ and wives to the role of the church. He points to the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church as a normative expectation for the love of a husband for his wife, framing the submission of the wife as a healthy response of a woman enjoying the grace and support her husband shows her rather than the fearful response of a woman under the command of an abusive or demanding husband. In this way, also, the marriage images the church, where the husband encourages the growth of the wife toward her full potential in faith in the same manner as Christ builds up the church and calls it to growth toward its full potential in faith.

Incidentally, it is the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship that sorts out a number of questions the church receives about other gender-related issues. By lacking the interplay between a man and a woman, a same-sex marriage is incapable of displaying the same image as a man married to a woman, and therefore the marriage displays a false (or at least incomplete) picture of the relationships it is meant to display. The role of elders within the church in their relationship to deacons, serving the same functional role in its image duality as husbands to wives, is sensibly limited to men, while the role of deacons is not.

Note, however, that this overall structure does dictate when and where the church has authority in the home. The relationship of the church and home is essentially big-picture; the church gives direction to the home, but the relationships within the home dictate how that direction is actually carried out. The elders do not have authority to replace the role of parents in the lives of children, but do have a requirement to hold the parents accountable to whether or not their parenting actually serves the greater mission of the church. The church cannot tell the wife whether or not she’s allowed to work out of the home, as this is a matter that falls within the means of the home governing itself; but must ask stern questions of the husband if the wife isn’t growing in her walk with Christ, as this would suggest a breakdown in his role to support her growth as Christ supports the growth of the church. Ultimately, each relationship being described falls under the broad direction of the relationship in which it is nested, but retains some autonomy in its actual practice. Which sets us up to discuss the final category of relationship relevant to our topic.

If Christ has conquered the forces of this world and begun to establish His rule, and the church is His agent in the world the way Christ is the Father’s agent, then that implies a relationship between the church and the world that grants the church a certain amount of authority. However, since the world is not yet fully under the rule of Christ, it cannot be expected to operate as though it is. Note that the world does not have instructions in scripture regarding the church that mirror the instructions wives have regarding husbands or that the church body has regarding its leadership. This is at least a little bit practical; a world in rebellion against God is not going to submit to the commands of scripture simply because those commands come from God. So what does that mean for how we approach the relationship between the church and the world?

First, note that the church is called to be above reproach from the world; 1 Peter 3 and Romans 13, for instance, urge that the behavior of the church toward the world be pure and unblemished by evil, with the intention that the world sees the goodness of God and responds in faith. Compare this with the call of elders to be above reproach in 1 Timothy and the role of husbands as faithfully and lovingly guiding their wives to greater knowledge of and faith in Christ. In this way, the church leads the world toward God, even if only by example.

Second, our showing loving guidance toward the world is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is. We are called repeatedly to lay down our rights or lives, if needed, in service to pointing the world around us to Christ. We are to rejoice in trials, accept any trouble brought to us for doing good (while striving to have no trouble brought to us for doing evil, that is, avoiding such trouble by avoiding doing evil), and recognize the authority of the world so far as it exists.

This last part is essential; there are areas where earthly authorities really do have authority, and we as the church show our submission to God through our submission in these areas. Where the laws of man call for taxes, or honor, or participation in civil engagement, to the degree that those things do not compromise the mission of the church, we are to render what is being demanded. Homes, essentially, have dual citizenship. They are subject to the church, and they are subject to earthly authority. Where these things clash, a Christian home must submit primarily to the church; where they do not, a Christian home must be faithful to both.

Every relationship within the church, then, is always engaging with the world. And in its engagements with the world, each must seek to point to Christ in all things, to glorify Him in their dealings with each other and the world, and to practice their relationships as images of the patient love that exists between the Father and the Son. By recognizing how each relationship in the life of a Christian reflects the other relationships, and looking at each as images of the divine love within the Trinity, we can more readily understand the nature of our roles and how to faithfully live them out.

1 Not that God has parts, but He does have persons. These are not separate in the way that we as individuals are separate, but they are distinct in a way that allows them to have unity in relationship. We are, in all respects, imperfect images; this is merely one way in which our lacking points to His fullness.

2 Some roles are more necessary than others, but this is not a matter for this paper.

3 Gilliland, Dean S. “Growth & Care of the Community: Discipline and Finance.” From Pauline Theology & Mission Practice, 237–246. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. 243.

4 Banks, Robert. “The Community as a Family.” From Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting, 52–61. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. 54.

I don't remember what my experience of Pentecost is for most years. Between church planting activities and moving fairly often for my entire adult life, sometimes I'm in a church that acknowledges it and sometimes I'm not. But Pentecost 2015 stands out in my memory, because I distinctly remember it being the same weekend as Memorial Day. I had, at that point, only really considered myself to hold a view called Christian Nonviolence for a matter of months, so it was still a fairly raw concept in my head. The process had been going on for some time; I grew up in an environment steeped in Just War Theory, and had taken to heart that a just government could take lives if they did so in a just manner and for a just cause. But as I grew older and examined the question more carefully, I found myself in a sort of limbo space, in which I believed that the claims of Just War Theory were correct (that is, a just government could indeed kill people in a just manner for a just cause), but I also believed it was a practical impossibility as there were no truly just governments. This put me in a position where I conceptually believed in justified killing, but had to oppose it in every practical application. Really, by the time I read a case for Christian Nonviolence, I was primed to receive that case, if only to ease this tension. I found, however, that it did much more good for me than that.

And as I was considering what this view was all about and how it applied to the world today, I found myself sitting in a church service where we were splitting time between honoring the work of God in sending His people to reconcile His enemies to Himself, and honoring those Americans we send to kill the enemies of our nation. It seemed to me that we couldn't view both as equally valid pursuits. If we truly believe we are in the business of calling the enemies of God to restoration, how can we believe it a suitable exercise to also celebrate robbing people of their chance at restoration for something so minor as opposing a mortal nation? The problem in trying to frame this question, I've since found, is that there's a lack of understanding for what Christian Nonviolence actually is and how these things relate to one another.

I was sitting in my brother's office while he finished writing that week's sermon when he asked me to explain this nonviolence thing I was on about. He wanted to know how I could justify pacifism when the Bible clearly includes God carrying out violence and calling His people to do the same. It can't possibly be a sin if God does it, right? And if I'm saying it's wrong, it must be a sin?

"I'm not a pacifist," I said, for the first time. It has since become something of a refrain in my life, as I mostly circulate in spaces where I find myself needing to explain the concept fairly often. I told him that I don't believe killing is a sin, necessarily, just that we aren't allowed to do it. I define the difference as this:

Pacifism is the belief that violence, or at least violence against people, is inherently evil. The reasoning may vary on this. Perhaps it comes from a belief that all life is sacred, or the belief that humans are the highest known moral beings and therefore acts against us are naturally evil, or the inalienable right to life. Maybe it stems from an idea that violence against an image-bearer of God is in some way violence against God. Whatever the reasoning, the basic idea is that violence is evil simply because it is violent. That there is no acceptable or redeemable use for violence.

Christian Nonviolence is the belief that Christians, specifically, are not given license to endorse or participate in the taking of human lives for any reason. That is, it isn't a question of sin, but a question of mission. As Christians, we are tasked with serving in the mission of reconciliation, and we know that no one gets a chance at reconciliation after death. To look at someone you know or suspect is going to Hell, and then send them to the final judgement or encourage someone else to do so, is fundamentally opposed to the mission of offering salvation to them.

​As my brother showed, raising a Biblical argument against pacifism is relatively easy. Results may vary, but you don't have to read far into the Bible to find something that seems to contradict it. I submit that Christian Nonviolence is not so easily dismissed; but I must admit there are some basic ideas that need to be understood to see why.

1. Christians have no rights
​​Let's get this one out of the way first: when you submit to Christ, you give Him everything. Christ will not have half measures. It is one thing to recognize that we lay down our lives, our careers, our loved ones, our idols, and all kinds of other things at the foot of the cross; it is quite another to accept that we may not get some of them back. Christ is under no obligation to give us any of the rights our government promises. He is going to put us on the mission He has for us, and will give us everything we need to accomplish it. We can expect no less than that; but we can also ask no more than that.

Jesus calls us to extraordinary humility. It is not enough to give over what is demanded of us, but we must give over even that which no one has any right to take. Our rights to strike back, to build our identity on things like ethnicity or sexuality, to keep some minimum of worldly possessions, or to give only that labor which is required of us are all thrown out the window. We lay all that we are and all that we have at the feet of Jesus, and that includes any notions about who we ought to be and what we ought to have.

The fact is, Jefferson was wrong to claim that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God-given rights. It is, of course, good for a government to behave on the understanding that they cannot strip these things from any person or meaningfully hinder them (though few, if any, actually do operate in that way; the United States certainly doesn't), and our call to defend the widow and the orphan (that is, the defenseless, which includes sets of people now that it may not have included at the time) certainly means that we demand a high standard of treatment on their behalf, but from a theological standpoint the claim for ourselves is nonsense. There are only two rights for humans spelled out in scripture as coming by the declaration of God. First, all mankind is born into sin and has only the right to die under the weight of that sin. Second, that "as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13, NASB), and this latter right supersedes the former. If we understand that everything else, including our earthly lives, is a gift rather than an entitlement, we would be far more prepared to experience joy in our trials and sacrifices than we now are.

2. Christians have a Kingdom mindset
Now, there is some dispute about the nature of the Kingdom of God and whether or not it is present on the Earth today. I have a post in the drafts that argues that it is initiated on the Earth and that Christians are already part of it, and I will not attempt to fully recreate that argument here. The shortest possible way to make that argument is that, as baptism and communion and marriage are material images meant to showcase a deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality, so the church is a material image meant to showcase the deeper and current but not-yet-complete reality of the Kingdom. Just as those other images point to something that is already in place and will be fully realized later, the Kingdom is already in place and will be fully realized later. As we enjoy and live out the truth of salvation now while recognizing that the full benefits of salvation are pending, so we enjoy and live out the truth of the Kingdom now while recognizing that the full benefits of the Kingdom are pending. It is necessary to our present topic, however, to say something of what it means to claim that we are already citizens of that Kingdom.

The belief that we are already citizens of the Kingdom in some way requires the belief that we are to act like citizens of the Kingdom. We are beholden to the dictates of that realm first; no offense against any other body demands more of our wrath than an offense against the Kingdom, and no ideology of this Earth can be elevated over the ideology of the Kingdom. As described by Christ, the Kingdom's issues are not fundamentally resolved through Earthly combat, but through the redemptive work of Christ, who submitted Himself even to death on a cross. This is reflected in the Southern Baptist Convention's doctrinal statement, which includes:

Note that the idea that the true solution to war is the conversion of all men to the way of Christ, and praying for that result, comes after the statement of taking action. Those who seek to follow the teachings and example of Christ, and desire to see the world do the same, are here recognized as not having the freedom to sit back and say "well, this won't end until hearts are saved," nor are we described as having the freedom to toss up some prayers for a better future and then go about our day.

We must have a practical involvement in the establishing of peace, and we cannot do that while endorsing or engaging in violence against our fellow man. We cannot live out the life of the Kingdom, whether you believe it already exists or not, without working to make that life a reality, and we absolutely cannot live out the life of the Kingdom while celebrating its exact opposite. The life we now live, in light of our new citizenship in Christ, requires laying down our weapons and being more willing to die than to kill.

3. Christians have a mission focus
I mentioned above that this is a mission issue, and that is really the core of the whole thing. The fact is, we as Christians are called to put the mission of Christ above all other pursuits, even at the cost of our lives. Nothing, no practical consideration, no rights, no threat, no ideal, nothing holds higher sway over our decisions than the mission to which we have been called. This mission is to live out the way of Christ in such a way that we invite others into a saving knowledge of and relationship with Him and together grow ever more as His disciples. As bearers of this mission, we cannot kill any human; we cannot kill those apart from Christ because doing so actively prevents us from calling them to Christ, and we cannot kill those in Christ out of love for His body. No one on this Earth falls beyond these two camps, and both can, in the name of our mission, expect to be safe from the grave in our dealings with them, even when they mean us, or our loved ones, or our nations, harm.

A few objections tend to arise at this point that warrant consideration.

1. Do you honestly believe Christians cannot defend ourselves?
Christian, your life is forfeit. Even so, there are ways to defend yourself that do not involve taking the life of another. If, however, such options fail, then no. If we absolutely must choose whether we die or we kill, then in the name of Christ, we die.

2. Do you honestly believe Christians should not defend others?
I believe Christians should do everything in their power to remove others from danger, provided they do not take any lives in the process.

3. Didn't Christ tell His disciples to take up swords?
No. Luke 22:36 reads in the NASB, "And He said to them, 'But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one," and this is sometimes used as justification for Christians to arm ourselves. After all, Christ literally did say to sell your coat to buy a sword, didn't He? Well, no. Not to the disciples, anyway. Look more carefully at that first part of the verse. "But now, whoever has a money belt...likewise a bag" is a very strange statement here when divorced from the verse before it. What does Luke 22:35 say? "And He said to them, 'When I sent you out without money belt and bag and sandals, you did not lack anything, did you?' They said, 'No, nothing" (NASB, first emphasis mine, second emphasis is a translation artifact). That is, Christ recalls to their memory that they, in actively serving Him on mission, were sent out without money belt and bag, trusting in His provision, and then He directly contrasts that with those who do have a money belt and bag. In essence, Christ tells them, "let those who do not trust in my provision arm themselves." But that description should never be accurate of Christians. Christ is not telling the disciples to take up swords, He is contrasting them with those who have no hope but a sword.

4. But John the Baptist didn't tell soldiers to give up being soldiers!
John the Baptist is an Old Testament prophet, that is, he operated outside and before the establishment of the church. He also didn't tell people about the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 19. The fact is, John the Baptist was not laying down the expectations of the church, he was preparing people to receive Christ. The work of living in Christ is defined by Christ and the New Testament authors, and not one of them ever advocates for Christians to engage in or endorse the use of lethal violence; instead, they repeatedly call for us to be people of peace.

5. Doesn't Romans 13 give the government the option to use lethal force?
You are not the government.

5a. But what if I am?
Your call as a Christian is more important than your rights as a member of government.

What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "designed a set of guidelines that could be used for a mission program anywhere that is aligned with an advanced understanding of biblical keys, including the role of local churches networking with other churches and mission agencies/apostolic teams as taught in Acts."

Formatting note: As last week, I have chosen to leave this in bullet format partly because it seems to work for the objective and partly because I am currently plagued by the same recurring headaches that made me write it as bullet points in the first place.

What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "designed a model to use as a guide in planting and establishing churches today from the core elements of Paul's strategy used on his missionary journeys, including local churches and mission agencies/apostolic teams."

Formatting Note: Due to headaches, I was not able to convert my thoughts into an article or paper format, and instead turned in a bullet list of major points I felt such a paper would need to cover. I have elected to leave it in this form when posting it here because I kind of like how it works.

All scripture passages are NASB unless otherwise noted.

What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a biblical definition for missionary and missionary work as taught in Acts."

What follows is adapted from an assignment I completed as part of my study of Acts for the Antioch School. This assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed convictions on the role of the local church in missions today."

What follows is adapted from an assignment I completed as part of my education through the Antioch School. It has been altered from its original form mostly in ways that make it more suited to a blog post than an essay. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a basic understanding of biblical keys to the establishment and expansion of the first-century Church as taught in Acts."

Our church is going through this lesson series, and we're currently in a section where we're talking about the church and the function of the church and how members should relate to the church. It's pretty good stuff, and has been very helpful for us in refocusing our priorities and determining what's next for us. The passage above was the heart of last night's lesson, and we spent a good while talking about it and exploring what it means and how it relates to the lesson series at large and how its context informs that understanding, and something specific really popped out to me in the midst of that conversation and reading. It's about where we center our priorities and sense of purpose.

Note the passage that opened this article. It's part of a larger discussion on living lives that honor God, but note the communal nature of it. Throughout Ephesians chapters 4 & 5, Paul constantly ties the things he's saying to a group context. He talks about "bearing one another in love" (4:2), "equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ" (4:12); tells us to "SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE OF YOU WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, because we are parts of one another" (4:25), "be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you" (4:32), "walk in love" (5:2). Why? So that we, "being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love" (4:16).

See, the thing is, it's easy for us to think about our involvement in the body in terms that focus on us as individuals. We so often talk about the Christian life as though we are solitary cups that need to sit alone to be refilled, and then we can bless others with the excess that pours out of us. Or as batteries, that get plugged into the body to give it what energy we have, but then have to be unplugged and sent to recharge so we have something to bring when we return. And there is a certain sense in which this is true; we all have our own lives and we bring to the body that which is unique about us. We do not, however, primarily grow in isolation. When the New Testament addresses the Christian life, it addresses bodies of believers. It addresses churches, and expects them not only to grow together, but to grow because they are together. We do not grow in isolation any more than a finger can grow when separated from the body. Our priority, if we are to be the body we have been called to be, must be other-focused.

Allow me to paint a different picture.

The study we're doing has a section where it cites various scholars talking about the passage at hand. One of those scholars was Howard Snyder, and in the midst of his statement from The Community of the King he quotes Karl Barth (from Bromiley's translation of Church Dogmatics) as saying, "I can edify myself only as I edify the community." This stood out to me as distinct from the way I've been taught to think of edification, but aligned well with how scripture treats the subject. But what does it mean to be edified only as we edify the community? What does it mean to grow only as we grow together?

The image that came to my mind as we discussed it last night was one of a circuit board. See, the parts of the circuit work specifically because they're connected. They all do different things and they serve the whole in different ways and maybe even at different times, but they are all part of the same circuit. And being part of the same circuit is not only preferred, it is required. The thing about body analogies (which, admittedly, was probably the best image available to Paul at the time) is that it's easy to note that the eye can continue to work as designed even if the hand has been cut off; but this isn't true of the church, and it isn't true of a circuit. In the case of the hand, the hand suffers complete loss by being separated from the body, and the body suffers the loss of a single function but continues on working in general. In the case of a circuit, breaking the circuit at any point shuts the whole operation down. The pieces are interdependent. It doesn't matter how close an LED is to the power source, if the circuit is broken at a missing transistor twenty connections away, the circuit is broken, and the light will not shine.

The church is not a collection of individuals, each empowered by the Holy Spirit and thus made greater than the sum of its parts when brought together. The church is a circuit, with each part energized by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is energizing the whole. He does live in us individually, and unlike a circuit component we can learn some in private reading and prayer, but the design for us as Christians and the way we are expected to function is as a community, working together and supporting one another in all that we do. We must prioritize the ways we connect and help keep the circuit working over our private edification if we're ever going to be effective at the mission. My phone will not work properly, will not have any ability to serve its purpose well, if I started taking pieces out of the motherboard. If I expected the components to do their work apart from the whole.

In what ways are we prioritizing ourselves over our communities? In what way can we put the health and mission of the church as higher than our own personal calling, and align our lives to serve in the way we're designed? Are we taking seriously that we are a part of a whole, and have we considered what that means for the way we spend our time, the way we exercise our gifts, the way we relate to one another?