AUTHOR: Robin Dugall DATE: 10:20:00 AM ----- BODY:
"Ekklesia" is my current topic of interest for those of you joining me in the blogsphere. As I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago, early Christ-followers highjacked a word that had a specific cultural meaning and inserted it into their early community. Unfortunately, by the time the word reached the english language (in its most popular form through the KJV in 1611), the word translated "church" had a meaning steeped in institutionalism and clergy-centricity. To think "ekklesia" was NOT to think of gatherings of Christ-followers for the sake of fellowship, worship, serving one another, sharing, prayer, and expanding the impact of the Kingdom within a given sphere of relationships but to immediately come to grips with what ekklesia had become over 1700 years of history. Just a couple of days ago, I put to my upper division Romans/Galatians course at Azusa Pacific University (that's right, sunny SoCal...eat your hearts out!) through some intellectual paces by challenging them with this question, "what could ekklesia look like if all we had were the writings of the Old Testament and some stories of Jesus, challenges of Jesus and a few letters that were circulating from a guy be the name of Paul?" In other words, let's deconstruct ekklesia from its cultural and historical trappings and take a fresh look at what we can realize in our time about the intention of Jesus to build HIS body. I broke them into small groups and said, "challenge all and any of your assumptions...come up with how you and your group would build ekklesia". It was so much fun and very revealing to see what these 35 students came up with...in short, here is the commonalities of their group's reflections: Every "ekklesia" would: 1 - Have NO heirarchy - in other words, students wanted an expression of Christ-following gatherings to be experienced without the abuse of leaders who think they have it and no one else does...they wanted to see an equality of the release and use of spiritual giftedness within the ekklesia that gave every person a chance to be a significant "player" in the Kingdom 2 - Be Small - my students are fed up with large church...take this for what it is...they want community. They want it raw, intimate, accountable..they want to share meals, do life together and not get caught up in the egomania that often accompanies the size of church. NOW, for my friends who might get a bit bugged by this, remember, these are students who, in many respects, come out of large churches. They want something that they never experienced before but they are also calling the contemporary church to see that people want and are wired up for deep, spiritual community. Any church that is ignoring community for the sake of programmatic or event-centered strategies is going to miss the heart beat of an emerging generation 3 - Be creative - the students wanted gatherings filled with poetry, dance, music, visual art, movies...expressions of a diversity of giftedness within a redeemed community that would experiment with spiritual formation in the context of tasting the ever-present creativity of God 4 - Be aggressive in exploring new paradigms of living the Kingdom of God in our time. That might sound a bit lofty but the students were emphatic..they kept posing the question, "how do we live Kingdom?" "How do we live Kingdom in a suffering world?" "How do we live Kingdom in a consumeristic society?" All I know is that they are pressing for answers, realistic and relevant answers, to that question! 5 - Take advantage of God's Creation - read that again...I'm not saying exploit creation, what I am saying is that the students are more interested in gathering as Christ-followers out in the beauty of God's revelation through creation than in the buildings that the contemporary church is so interested in building. About $4 billion will be spent on American church campuses this next year...my students are longing to experience God and community in the context of the revelation of the wonder and majesty of God's nature. I have more on this topic coming in future posts...all I know is that I ended our session by challenging my students...I told them that just like parenting skills and relational habits in marriage that are passed on from one generation to the next, so will their actions regarding ekklesia...I told them that the hard drive of their hearts has been formatted with certain manners and habits of relating in marriage and raising kids, manners and habits specifically learned from their parents that they will MOST LIKELY repeat UNLESS they decide to change and decisively act on a new vision. The same will occur in their individual and corporate lives with ekklesia. Unless they act on their vision for a new ekklesia that matches their spiritual yearnings, that the heartbeat of their generation will be lost by the juggernaut of 20 centuries of habitual action and institutional reality. In other words, I challenged them to act on what they believe (provocative thought, huh?). Experience ekklesia the way that you feel God is leading you to or be damned to repeat the past out of default. You should have seen their eyes...a decisive and readily recognizable sparkle revealed the uncontrollable winds of the Spirit at work. How about you? Give some thought and prayer to ekklesia...how can you realize your dream for experiencing God-honoring community in your time? Like I said, more to come!
-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger wellis68 COMMENT-DATE:4:26 PM COMMENT-BODY:I'm really excited you've been posting on this subject, you and I have had some dialog about it and you know it's been on my heart. --------