Who I Am. Ten Questions.
1. Do I have a role to play in the church (the believers collective)?
2. If I do, how do I know what it is?
3. Does it need to be defined? Or recognised? Or authorised?
4. Does it change depending on where I am or whom I am with?
5. Is it most like a family role, a bodily function, or a job position?
6. How does it relate to my role in the marketplace?
7. Does it have anything to do with my character?
8. Can my character be changed or only my behaviour?
9. Does it have anything to do with my abilities or skills?
10. Is it dependent on, or independent of, the role of any other believer?
7 comments:
what has happened to apoc29 and don'tquoteme?
i dont know. maybe they lost interest or are too busy (tho we all make time for things that are important to us).
people are still reading the blog but there are few comments. why is that?
do you have any contributions for new posts? (i have a few stewing)
Great questions!
Some of my thoughts:
1. Yes, I think you (and I) do. Ephesians 4 talks about the church being like a body, where each member's actions affect the other members. Refusing to play a role is a form of negative action. Verse 12 - all God's people are supposed to be prepared for works of service in order to build up the body of Christ.
Another thing that comes to mind is that the Christian life is not meant to be lived in isolation.
2. Yeah, that's a hard question sometimes. I think that a humble willingness to serve somehow within my church community is one of the first steps. Another first step is being willing to share my faith with others. Once these two commitments are in place, maybe it's easier to sort through the roles I can best play (given my interests and giftings).
3. I think part of the answer to this is a question of organization. Some churches organize things pretty specifically, while others don't. Depending on the context, trying to play a role that's not defined or recognized could be terribly frustrating, both for me and for my church. I could end up feeling used or burnt out, or my church could feel like I'm grasping at authority or privilege that isn't mine to take.
As far as authorization goes, I think that the true authority over what we do needs to be the Bible. A lot of my role in the church, I think, should be sharing my faith with the people around me, and this seems like something I would almost never need the local church's permission to do. At the same time, the Bible speaks clearly about following the leadership that God has established.
4. I think it only really changes in the sense that we play a variety of roles and therefore blend them and shift between them.
5. I think that really depends on the context, as well as on the way we define family and body and job.
6. I think two major ways that it relates to our working lives is that:
1) The way we as Christians work and conduct business reflects on Jesus, and we're called to work as if he was our boss.
2) The workplace is one of the best places for most of us to meet new people and start to develop relationships with them.
7. Absolutely. We won't be trusted with big things until we have proven faithful with little things. Also, if we don't approach our roles with integrity, we could cause a lot of damage to people's perceptions of our faith.
8. These are all such good questions! I think that our characters can be changed, over time, but only through God's grace and power. That's what it means to become more like Jesus. If I focus only on outward behavior, either with myself or with someone I'm trying to influence, character may not be changed at all. But that doesn't mean that it can't be. In my own life, and in the lives of others, I've seen real change.
9. Yes, but those aren't the most important considerations. See answer #2.
10. I think in some contexts it definitely is, while in other contexts it isn't quite as much. See answer #3.
Hey - thanks for the chance to think these things through a bit!
thanks for your thoughts, stt, and for including a bible reference in your comment. it provides us with some Christ-centred common ground.
i agree in part and disagree in part.
im uncertain of the use of pauls letter to ephesus [bible:niv:nt:eph] as a pattern for the role of believers in the church, for four reasons.
firstly, one main thread of the letter is that Christ is the head of the church. not the pope, not the queen, not the archbishop, the deacon, the elder, the architect or the 'independent' evangelical leader, but Christ.
to me, Christ's headship means that *all* believers have a role. a role that is instantly recognised by the body because when that person is functioning in their role, the Holy Spirit acknowledges it in the spirit of other believers. they just 'know' it because they are edified. it doesnt need any further definition or recognition. i dont see how leaders of 'organised church groups' hold authority over that role. what 'authority or privelege' exists amongst the humble church except that we are all saved by the grace of God? did not wycliff, martin luther and tyndale bring us out of that wrongthinking? or did they die for nothing? have we replaced the roman catholic pope with lots of evangelical mini-popes?!
secondly, in eph4:8 paul says that God 'gave gifts to men', but what david actually wrote was that God 'received gifts from men'. surely it is not about 'what God can give to us', but how we can adorn the dwelling place of God (his people) with gifts. i dont know which is erroneous; the niv, paul, or how we interpret it with our consumeristic minds.
thirdly, is paul's list of functions (apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers) exhaustive? are there more? what about the roles he mentions in his other letters? what happens if i believe my role in 'the church' has little to do with what happens in 'the meeting tent'? what if my role is to challenge organised religion - which religious organisation will embrace that?!
fourthly, in body, virtually everything Jesus said and did was an offense to the doorkeepers of organised religion. did Jesus not say to follow Him? if we are to look for an identity in the church, rather than just an identity in Him, would he not have said so?
i'll write more later...
p.s. what kind of stories are you training to tell stt? :)
I have a script about some people who are desperate for forgiveness, as well as some other ideas. But right now I'm kind of into kung fu...
More later!
I still read ifool, but have become a bit addicted to facebook, lost interest in blogs a bit.
Hey Sputnik,
I have some more thoughts on this but just haven't made time to reply. Sorry... And I'll be back soon.
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