One of the things that we looked at quite a bit in my first semester at Ridley was the worship/church service stuff. With three weekly chapel services to practice/practise in, my eyes were opened to a world of prayer books and meticulous attention to eloquent readings of scripture. My church seems much more haphazard in comparison. We’ve got a decent bunch of bible readers now, who even pre-read the passage before they drop it on the church… but we don’t use prayer books… and sometimes even the pastors say stuff, that, if you took it back to the letter of the biblical-theological law, wouldn’t actually hold water.

I was in one chapel service at college where a fellow student said, in passing, during a closing prayer, “Thanks God for showing up today”. At morning tea following, there were 5 stiff old Anglicans there to remind him that God is actually omnipresent. Now, for an ordination candidate in a theological college, that’s probably not as tactfully horrific as it would be in a church laity context. The point, however, remains… and I think this is the source of Geoff’s underlying ponderings.

Language is one of the key means through which we express and understand theological ideas. The thing about words, is that they are merely a representation of the concept that the communicator is trying to explain. The quality of that representation, is influenced not only by the lingual/literary education of the speaker… but also by the decoding processes of the listener.

So what does that mean for Geoff and the Third Day song? Well seeing as I’ve actually sung live on stage with Third Day, I’ll dig a bit deeper into the song lyrics. I agree that the phrasing of the lyrics over the music leaves the obvious misnomer surrounding what the beautiful thing is. But the words aren’t just “You are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song”… the bridge says this:

You are my strong melody
You are my dancing rhythm
You are my perfect rhyme
And I will sing of You forever

Anyone who has ever tried to write a song will tell you, from the experience that these are all components of a beautiful song. I think that’s where the words of “You Are So Good To Me” are coming from. That’s what I take away from it anyway. It’s an analogy. And it’s a largely emotional/experiential one, rather than a strongly theological one.

Now, to drive my point home, I decided to pick on one of Geoff’s favourite songs, which I actually really like as well. “How Great Thou Art”. It is a really nice song. However, I kind of struggle with it sometimes, particularly singing this verse:

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

I understand what the song is getting at here. It’s reflecting on God’s creation as a revelation of His greatness and trying to express that. It has a more staccato melody compared to a Third Day song where the chords tend to ring out and flow together. That, for me, really brings out the “ye olde english” feel to the verse as it talks about “forest glades and woods” that “I wander” through. I get what the song is saying… but I’m an Aussie. I don’t wander through forest glades. I walk. I walk through the bush.

I could start a rant about how crap I think songs are when they talk about Jesus and his “fame” just because of it’s sheer literary Hollywood-infused stupidity… yep… I just did start a rant.

Words are awkward. Theology is complicated. That’s about to become my tagline.

It all came to a fork in the road when my Dad introduced me to a Project Manager who is overseeing a construction project for the same company that Dad works for. The guy offered me a job… and an incredibly well paid job at that, doing admin in the office for the construction project. The only catch was the 10 hour work days and 7am starts. Needless to say, I liked that idea about as much as a fat kid likes exercise, although the actual work would probably have been an interesting challenge in a different industry.

Unfortunately for my Dad, who did a fair bit of nagging to try to get me to take the job, my current fantastic workplace made me what I consider to be a better offer. I’ll be winding up my role in IT there over the next few weeks, with a view to joining their audit division as a graduate, part time this year, while picking up a Graduate Certificate in Accounting to cover some of the skill gaps.

The decision wasn’t an easy one. I’d planned, with 4/8 subjects completed for my Grad Dip B&M, to finish that course full-time in second semester this year. But that wasn’t going to be an option if I took the job, so I was faced with the difficult decision of shelving those plans. I haven’t completely dismissed the theological study though. The firm is so fantastic that they’re even probably going to let me work 3 days a week, to give me time to complete another subject towards my bible college course at Ridley along with the part-time accounting study.

I’m pretty excited about it all and really looking forward to the challenges that the new role will bring.

The weekend just gone also featured a team meeting for Junior camp which I’ll be co-directing this summer.  The theme is “The Quest for Treasure Island”.  I’m really looking forward to spending some time with the kids on the camp.  They have such a fresh, unique outlook on life and I’m glad I have the opportunity to invest some time into them.

Both nights found me sitting in the loungeroom at home, becoming mildly annoyed at the thumping bass coming from what I thought was around the block somewhere.  It got to about 10.45pm and my housemate got up complaining that he couldn’t sleep, so I rang the local cop shop to ask them what the go was.  The guy I spoke to told me that the noise I was hearing was coming from the U2 concert at TelstraDome in the city.  Nathan went on Saturday night and he reckons they had the roof open.  I couldn’t believe it.  I just thought it was a bunch of people in a garage around the block.

This part of Melbourne is directly uphill from the city, so there was effectively nothing blocking the sound.  That’s still a fair distance though I reckon.  The cop I spoke to was pretty amused with my response.  I think he’d been fielding complaints all night.  He apologised for the noise.  I said there was no need for that.  What’s a guy in a suburban police station going to do about it?  I just said “Oh righto… I probably won’t buy their next CD then.”  He cracked up.  I guess he’d had a few people ranting at him about it.  So much for CoeXisT Bono.

So I figured I’d starting blogging on the subject and see where my thoughts take me.  Feel free to chuck me some comments for inspiration.  The essay topic seems to call for a pretty straight-forward approach.  Firstly, define young people in terms of their cultural setting and the needs that arise in them as a result of it.  Secondly, define the institutional church.  Somewhere in the gap between the two, you’d expect that I’d uncover the ‘attitudes’ that exist.  I think I’m going to need to touch on a number of issues to cover the topic properly.

Issue 1:  Societal Changes
There has been a shift in society and often it doesn’t seem like the church has caught up.  Maybe that’s just my attitude to the institutional church though.  The statistical studies I’ve been reading have talked a lot about the increasing number of ‘non-traditional family structures’.  More young people today than ever before live in home environments with single parents or step-parents.  So, how does that influence them?

Issue 2: Postmodernism
It’s a fancy word.  My understanding of what it means is this:
The ‘modern’ era was characterised by a collective belief in science and technology to solve all of the problems of humankind.  Something was valid if it could be explained.  Something could be accepted if there was cold, hard scientific evidence.  In amongst that, allegiance to an institution of some kind was a valued quality.  It all worked rather well for a generation of baby boomers in the suburban churches of the 1970s.

Enter the postmodern era.  These days, scientific rationalism isn’t irrelevant… but it isn’t the answer to everything either.  In the postmodern world, truth isn’t about proof.  Truth is about what works.  “Right” and “Wrong” are seen as relative labels.  Loyalty to an institution during bad times, makes you a sap who should have the backbone to improve their situation.  No one wants to listen to moral pronouncements of right and wrong from the church, from their parents, or from anywhere else.  Science doesn’t have all of the answers and spirituality is once again on the rise.  But in the postmodern era, what works for someone is ‘their truth’.  If you want to have your own religious beliefs, fine… but don’t push their moral framework on to those around you.

Issue 3: What’s the church?
The word ‘church’ has been misappropriated to so many different things, even just in the last 50 years, that its meaning within popular culture has been diluted into an array of stereotypes that range in their connotations, from confusing expressions of ancient religious liturgical practice, to a fundamentalist Christianist lobby group that attempts to influence Government policy for conservative ends.  Even within the ranks of those who regularly participate in the church, I’m not sure how many of them could tell you what it actually is.  If you asked ten different people what the church exists to do, you’d easily get answers that emphasised any number of different things:  community, evangelism, family values, charity, prayer.

Issue 4: Spirituality
Lots of people are interested in spirituality.  It’s just that not many of them want to ask the church about it because they think they already know what the church is going to say.

I’ve created this page to round off and sum up my post series on community.

The first way we tried to deal with our dishes in the bachelor pad, was with a fool-proof system, designed to take care of our every dishwashing need.  We agreed to stack the dishes on the sink as they were used.  Then, every second day, on a rostered basis, we would take turns to deal with the dishes for the entire bachelor pad community.  It worked for about a week and a half.  Eventually it degenerated into petty arguments.

Whose turn was it to do the dishes?
Who made more dishes than someone else?
Who didn’t do a good enough job last time?
Who did their dishes too late?

We each ended up pointing the finger at the others, feeling completely justified that we had contributed and frustrated at the obvious faults of the other two.  We blamed the others in our community for our dishes.  We insisted that before we contributed any further, that the other party live up to our expectations.

When I’m not feeling great about something at church.  I’m not proud to admit that I often have the same response.  I point the finger towards the community and say “It’s the church’s fault.  The church has so much wrong with it!”

Do you ever feel like that?
Have you been unhappy with a decision made by the church?
Are you still feeling a sense of loss or hurt?
Are you disappointed about something?
Do you have any regrets from the past?

The solution came in the form of a new dishes system.  A system that is yet to cause a single argument. We now have 3 separate spots for dishes in the kitchen.  And an amazing thing started to happen.  Once we were able to see which dishes belonged to us personally, we dealt with them ourselves.  We didn’t insist upon our rights or the responsibilities of others to conform to our definition of fair.  In fact, one day I was delighted to come home to find that my other housemate, Nathan, had dealt with his own dishes and then taken care of mine as well.  Community works when we give the best of ourselves to others.  I believe that this is what it means to bear one another’s burdens.  “…and in this way…”, says Galatians 6:2, “…you will fulfil the law of Christ.”

In the same way, Jesus gave up the fair and just result for himself.  Motivated by love for others, he gave his life on the cross.  His blood being shed to cover the price of our rebellion from God.  And allowing us to come back into relationship with our Creator.  Without a Christ-inspired approach to our community, we hurt ourselves and we hurt those around us.  With the love of God the Father as the source of our relationships, as the Holy Spirit unites us in love for one another, together we enter into our promised inheritance, joined as one body with our Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Philippians 2:1-11
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

From adelphoi, comes the Greek word philadelphia (no cheesy jokes please!). Philadelphia means “to love with a familial affection”. It points towards the underlying motive of some of the practical things that the New Testament asks us to do in the Christian family. Because we are a family, we are to:

• Give honour to one another (Rom. 12:10)
• Live harmoniously with one another (Rom. 12:16)
• Admonish one another (Rom. 15:14)
• Wait for each other (1 Cor. 11:33)
• Demonstrate equal care for one another (1 Cor. 12:25)
• Serve one another (Gal. 5:13)
• Bear burdens of each other (Gal. 6:2)
• Give comfort to one another (1 Thes. 5:11)
• Build up each other (1 Thes. 5:11)
• Maintain peace with each other (1 Thes. 5:13)
• Do good to one another (1 Thes. 5:15)
• Lovingly bear with each other (Eph. 4:2)
• Be subject to each other (Eph. 5:21)
• Forgive one another (Col. 3:13)
• Confess to and pray for each other (James 5:16)
• Exhibit hospitality to each other (1 Peter 4:9)

This stuff isn’t easy to live out because it comes at a personal cost.

1 Corinthians 12:14-20 (NIV)Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

This reminds us of the interdependent connectedness that is necessary for real Christian community. Everyone has a place here as part of it. You have a God-given role to play in the community, if you choose it. But why? What has God got in mind for us as we’re thrown together into this mix? What have we been placed into communities to do? Ephesians 4, has our answer. We are called to be part of a body where Christ is the head - a body that is growing into maturity.

Ephesians 4:11-16 (NRSV)
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

To experience true Christian community, we must first know Christ and then grow in that knowledge. What happens if we don’t grow in our knowledge of Christ? As richly as Paul’s “body” metaphor tells of our interconnectedness when the parts of the body are not working together
it also exposes our vulnerability.

When I was in high school I had this problem with my knees called Osgood-Schlatters disease. Have a look at the site. Basically, due to different muscles, tendons and bones growing at different rates, there’s a tendon that can start to pull away from the bone below the knee. It absolutely kills. You can’t run because the impact just sends pain shooting up your leg. If you do try to run, it starts hurting when you walk. Because parts of my body weren’t working together properly, my whole body was in a lot of pain. In 1 Corinthians, Paul explains that:

1 Corinthians 12:25-26
there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

But the metaphor for the church as a “building” in the New Testament, isn’t talking about the products of the construction industry. This is something that we often forget simply because of the way we use the word “church” in modern English.

“I’m going down to the church on Saturday to help with the working bee.”
“Which church is the wedding being held in?”
“That church over there looks very nice.”

The “building” described in the NT is not a physical one. When Paul (not me, the apostle) talks about the “church” he uses the Greek word ekklesia.
According to the commentary I looked at (see my Community Resources page) ekklesia refers to “an actual gathering of people” or “the group gathering for a regularly assembled meeting”.

Biblical commentators qualify the idea of ekklesia, proposing that Paul wasn’t referring to the church in an institutional sense either. The early church was most certainly linked in organic ways between the different gatherings. But here, Paul’s use of the word didn’t intend to carry an undertone of an earth-bound, organisational sense of federation, beyond their shared faith in Christ. When Paul wrote to the ekklesia in Corinth, or the ekklesia in Colossae, I don’t think he had the different gatherings listed on a database as member churches of the BURE (the Baptist Union of the Roman Empire). So, in my context at Essendon, I tried to imagine what it would be like, if we didn’t have our physical building.

I imagined what church would be like, if, at 5am every Sunday morning, Heath and Simon, our music guys, got up and put up a marquee made from about 80 sheets of blue tarp in Lincoln Park, just in case it rained… and we had church there every Sunday with musical instruments that don’t need electricity… Doug, who’s been worship leading for decades, whips out an old broom handle with bottle caps nailed on to it… the drum kit got stolen last week because someone forgot to pack it up… so Gary, my favourite drummer, is unloading a couple of upturned rubbish bins from the back of his car like that guy who busks in the city. Joan, everyone’s favourite little old lady, is getting into it with the tambourine. There’s no overhead projector. Just one of the tallest guys at church, Bruce, with a big whiteboard and a step ladder. When I picture that, the only things that are strikingly similar to the regular gathering I call church, are the smiling familiar faces.

Paul wasn’t writing to buildings, nor to organisations. He was writing to Christians who met together, living out real faith in a community. The community gathering is the building that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 2, as he writes to Gentile believers, extending to them the invitation for all believers, to enter into the church community.

Ephesians 2:19-22 (NRSV)
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Those are the lyrics to a song by a band called Casting Crowns and for me they present a challenge. The song vividly depicts for us the false experience of community that many of us will experience at one time or another.

For me, the words remind me of my brokenness and my aloneness when I put up walls of self-protection that stop me from being real with other people. They bring to life for me the shallow, fake, empty reality that can exist for us in our approach to participating in the church community.

According to Wikipedia:

The word community comes from the Latin communis, meaning “common, public, shared by all or many.”^[1] The Latin term “communitatus” from which the English word “community” comes, is comprised of three elements, “Com-” - a Latin prefix meaning with or togther, “-Munis-” - ultimately Proto-Indo-European in origin, it has been suggested that it means “the changes or exchanges that link” (Both municipal and monetary take their meaning here), and “-tatus” a Latin suffix suggesting diminutive, small, intimate or local.

So, you could probably describe community as “Localised, intimate exchanges that link together”.

The community at my church is something that’s extremely important to me. My strongest memories of being a part of a real community, being cared about, being accepted, and being loved, are all intrinsically connected to Essendon Baptist Community Church. So I guess that makes me living proof that true Christian community can happen in amongst us those of us who chose to gather together on Sunday mornings.

My purpose in writing the upcoming content on this blog, is to examine some of what the bible has to say about the way Christians are to live in community with each other. On its own merits, our community at Essendon Bapts certainly isn’t perfect… but even just in our youth ministry, there are some great things going on. People are investing in each other in some really encouraging ways. We really do have something special. Hopefully, I’ve got a few ideas here that apply universally… things that we can all take onboard as we interact with others in our communities.