Trading Interfaces

Aug 9th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

A Focus on the Damage of Secondary Interfaces in the People of God

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

To help us illustrate what Paul has been teaching the Corinthians let us look at what exclusive human power and secondary power structures do to people.

In the time of the Judges in the Old Testament, Samuel was the last ruling prophet and judge. He had eight sons in his old age and he made them judges over Israel but they were wicked and corrupted justice for bribes. So the people protested to Samuel to anoint a king over them; an exclusive ruler to legitimize them among the nations, to keep them safe and to ensure provision for the future. God tells Samuel to capitulate to their demand for a king and , curiously, tells him not to get too emotionally involved or to think that they are rejecting him personally, but that the people were rejecting God and His legitimacy, security and provision for a face they could look on and appeal to directly, a sentiment that Jesus later echoes to His disciples. This is the warning God and Samuel gave to the people before asking if this is what they wanted:

¹⁰So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. ¹¹He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. ¹²And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. ¹³He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. ¹⁵He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. ¹⁶He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men^[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. ¹⁷He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. ¹⁸And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
1 Samuel 8:10-18 English Standard Version

“Hold on,” I hear you say. “A governmental change has nothing to do with how the people of God organise themselves. It’s completely different,” and to that I say, “That’s not how God saw it.” Keep in mind that these are the people of God who have received mercy at the time; the nation of priests to declare God’s glory to the nations. God saw the people’s call for a king as a personal affront to Himself and so gives the above warning about placing an intentional secondary interface between God and humanity. He says that the king will eventually be an unfaithful steward of God’s people and tax them, extort them, pull them into wars that are not their own and make space for the world in God’s Kingdom ultimately thinking that it is their kingdom and in that day they would cry out to God whom they have rejected as their king but He will not answer them.

This event is juxtaposed to when God was going to give Moses and the people into the land of Canaan but leave them there. Moses responded that if God was not going to go with them then they would not go either–only at this time the people cried out louder that they should have a king.

Today we no longer ask God for a king, instead, we ask God for a Chief Executive Officer but the warning stands.

Faithful | Corinth

Aug 4th, 2022

Servant & Steward of the Mysteries of God at Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

4 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. ²Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. ³But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. ⁴For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. ⁵Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
1 Corinthians 4:1-5 English Standard Version

A Steward Must be Found Faithful

A Steward is a manager put in place to take care of another’s property. Paul refers to himself, Peter, Apollos and any other mature believers as servants who have been given the responsibility of dispensing God’s mysteries to the people of God. The requirement that the one who stewards God’s mysteries should be faithful has often been taken to mean that they must hold to approved doctrine and theology. This preaches, but it’s not consistent with Paul’s message to the Corinthians. Leading up to his point, we have been reading from Paul about the indistinguishability of the people of God from one another and how they have all been toiling on God’s farm, sowing His seeds, building His house and so the faithful Steward of God’s mysteries is the one who is faithful to their master and acknowledges in word and deed that the mysteries do not originate in them, but that they have a given insight into God’s mysteries which include instructions for how His table and house are to be run. The faithful manager obeys their master when He tells them to go out and invite all of His friends to dine with him, and when his so-called friends give their excuses, they do not stop obeying when He tells them to go into the highways and byways to invite the stranger to dine with Him. It is a command from God whose mysteries have been entrusted to them and so it is nothing for them to invite people they don’t normally mix with into their master’s house to dine with Him.

Without Judgement

Paul’s point at the start of chapter four is that since God is their master and each one of them has been given an assignment and that one of those assignments is to be a steward of the mysteries of God and to communicate them to the people of God, that it would best for the children and other servants of the household to not pronounce judgement over God’s chosen stewards and to wait for God to judge how faithful the Steward was in their life. For a modern audience, this sounds like a command to not speak truth to power, and a recipe for disaster. But keep in mind that the Steward is the keeper of the mysteries of God. They have been given insight into the mind of God through the Spirit. It is not their job to organise the people of God in the way that seems best, or most effective to them: it is their job to communicate from God what the people of God ought to look like! And so, the people that Paul has put into place are those same people who have demonstrated that the Spirit of God is in them and actively interpreting the mysteries of God to them. They are the ones who are faithful and not confused about whose house or table they are inviting guests to and so they are the people least likely to abuse the rights of the people of God who have received mercy. Chloe, the steward of God’s mysteries in Corinth, did the right thing when she saw division based on the singling out of one steward over another to claim as the, ‘right,’ one. Paul says that a good steward is a faithful steward who does not claim any mystery as originating with them, but that they are servants along with their brothers and sisters who have also been entrusted with the mysteries of God.

Assignment | Corinth

Jul 31st, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

But I, brothers,^[a] could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? ⁴For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. ⁹For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 English Standard Version

The Through Thread

Paul asserts, if there was any question about where the Corinthians were on the spectrum of being naturally or spiritually minded, that they are in fact quite naturally minded; unobservant of spiritual things and, as a result, full of jealousy and strife, pitting Peter, Apollos and Paul against one another by claiming to hold exclusively to any one of their teachings as being distinct from another. Today we might say that they believed that they had distinct truth claims on the gospel of Christ. Paul’s point here is that they only saw their respective words, analogies and arguments for the gospel and not the through-thread of the Spirit of God which joins them all together. He uses the example of being a labourer in God’s field or a builder of God’s building.

From Simple Seeds and Stones

Paul relates his work in the gospel to sowing seeds or laying a foundation. Seeds were sown by broadcasting them which is literally walking for absolute miles back and forth casting the same seeds over a large area. Foundations were laid by digging a hole and dropping massive stones into the hole and surrounding them with smaller stones to fall between them to give a solid base to build on later. Both of these are rather boring, laborious jobs that rely on seeing the bigger picture to see the significance of what would otherwise seem to be busy work. Paul says that while putting seeds or stones in the ground might seem like simple work, it is this work that allows for others to come along and add water that activates the seed when the sun hits the soil around it allowing it to become a more complex fruit bearing plant. In the same way putting stones in the ground prepares the way for the more complicated work of building the walls, hanging doors or setting a roof on top. They are all the same work, for the same person and so are all connected. The point is that from the simple seed of the gospel comes the fruit of the life of one controlled by the Spirit, and from the foundation that is Christ comes a building made of precious stones–both themes Paul will return to later in the letter.

Fulfilling the Assignment

Paul’s use of, ‘assignment,’ is not as permanent as it might sound. In the same way that his later use of, ‘gift,’ of the Spirit is not a once for all time gifting but rather a living manifestation of the Spirit of God. In the same way, our, ‘assignments,’ (some call them vocations) from God are less like homework or employment and more like listening to and obeying the voice of His Spirit. Too often we think of a “call into ministry,” as being a lifelong commitment to one job within the body in the same way that we think that, having once manifested the gift of administration, the Spirit won’t manifest Himself in us in other capacity and that, that’s our life’s purpose. What happens is that God uses us in some way, either to speak or to teach or to call people to Himself and it feels so good to be used by Spirit of God in any capacity that we attempt to reproduce the environment in which it happened. I felt this same pull after inviting a homeless man into my garden to live for a week. We walked very closely together for that week as we discussed spiritual things and worked on procuring more stable living conditions for him. I felt afterwards that God must want me to start a homeless ministry, but when I prayed and searched the scriptures for confirmation God asked me to let my experience of being used by the Spirit be what it was and to let it go and to continue to listen to His voice instead. He told me that if I went forward with starting a homeless ministry that it would be a hinderance to other’s responsibility to invite the homeless into their homes and feed them their food and walk with them for the week that He calls them to do that. My assignment had been completed; I listened and obeyed and was shown the state of the body of Christ as a result.

Paul had been assigned to sow seeds in Corinth. He did a bit of watering and harvesting while he was there as well as he attests, but his main assignment was to plant the pure seed of the gospel in their hearts and then leave it to the work of another whose assignment had been to water the seeds of the gospel. Paul generally allowed others to water and harvest, he took special interest in a few who he personally raised to full reproducing maturity in Christ but allowed the rest of the body to raise one another up to full reproducing maturity. He did not allow himself to be side tracked with the task of being the one to whom everyone outsourced their assignments–and neither should we. We all have our own listening and obeying to be getting on with, and only the Spirit knows our next respective assignments.

The God Police

Jul 25th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

A Focus on Permission Structures

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those already acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community

When people are exclusive by nature and surrounded by symbiotic organisations and secondary interfaces we seek out permission structures. We already naturally act in a way that seems right to us but as a type of social insurance we seek permission to be and to act the way that we do. We justify our choice lifestyle by even more choice sources. We end up attributing to God the things we love the most about ourselves. When this remaking of God in our own image is paired with adversarial unity we begin to believe that if God is like us then He is not like them. After all, He cannot be both us and them at the same time and in the same way and so our lifestyle becomes characteristic of the way we believe God expresses Himself. By claiming to be the people of God without having to receive mercy for the way we are, we attribute to God everything we love about ourselves. A permission structure gives us the illusion of objective consent from God.

If we want act whatever way we want to act, the seemingly logical thing to do would be to renounce our faith in God and go about living how we want to live. However, the draw of objective consent is too strong to deny. It is why we desire increasingly diverse representation so strongly; we want permission from the perceived authority to live the way we want to live. Let me be clear, it is right that we should seek permission from God and act accordingly, but an exclusive people will act as the gate keepers to the judgements of God. The best we can do is offer public advice about who God is and what He has done, who we are and how we should live accordingly, but spiritual noncompliance is not enforceable by the people of God. We are not the God police.

Lest we think that building permission structures is all about getting what we want, it is also about trying to explain what we experience. It is seeking permission to be upset, to be angry–to kill, to mourn, to experience suffering and pain–to die. It is seeking permission to live the way that we perceive that we were born when it is not socially or religiously permissible in our circles and in the circles of those we love. It is permission to marry and permission to divorce. This is largely because our centre of control is not naturally in our own selves. We act with the crowd and very rarely will someone be overtly individual without the consent of their piers, and even then it is a shaky permission until enough people agree. We talk in our culture about empowerment; giving permission for people to exercise their own agency, autonomy and purpose. Permission structures can be as light and airy as a family or as dense and heavy as a supreme court ruling. How do we break the cycle? Who can give permission to not ask for permission anymore? This is why people cast fews, read tarot and angel cards, roll dice, throw bones and everything else that we use to gain that sense of objective consent from God or the universe. We want to know that what we are doing, saying, believing and experiencing are the right things to do, say, believe and experience. We don’t just use these alternative measures, we also use rationalism and logic as our permission structures as well. If something, ‘make’s sense to me,” why not do it, right? If an outcome is natural then it’s just cause and effect, right? ‘Nothing we can do about it’. We even cite our genetics to show that we have no say, or responsibility in how we live, and indeed that it would be immoral to go against all that has been preordained by the objective consenting permission structures that are our natural born bodies.

Needless to say, but we can see why many people religiously stay within the confines of their born permission structures, be they Hindu, or Christian or Muslim, or Judaism or whatever they be. I say, let God be God and people be people. Let God give permission and let us be inclusive and act accordingly.

Unity in Love

Jul 13th, 2022

Editor

Daniel L. Bacon

Unity in the Body of Christ as Innate Sameness, Wholeness & Purity

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3
Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

Let’s revisit unity in the body of Christ. Unity is often presented in conversation as ‘sameness,’ within the body of Christ, and as a result we ask the questions like, “What are we supposed to be the same in”. This is not an overly terrible question, but it isn’t terribly helpful either as, when we answer with anything other than love, we get some pretty awful permutations of the body saying that we all have to believe one doctrine over another or have this hope over that one. So let’s leave the sameness track of the conversation of unity for a moment and examine the more wholistic concept of unity as wholeness, purity and innate sameness.

The Entirety of Wholeness

Let us assume that we have an apple. There are several questions we can ask about the apple. Is it a whole apple, is it purely apple and is it the same apple? When considering unity we usually only ask one of these questions, but all three of them and probably more are relevant in answering the question of the apple’s oneness.

The Whole Apple

Asking the first question, “is the apple whole,” is a very restrictive question. This may seem obvious but if parts of the apple are divided, missing or intentionally excluded then we do not have one whole apple. The apple is not one with itself.

The Same Apple

Asking if something is the same, is not like asking if it is whole. Let’s assume we have two halves of an apple, they are each one half of an apple and are therefore the same having the similar characteristics but neither are one whole apple. Also we could not say of a whole apple that it is entirely the same as anything other than itself. Even another whole apple would mean that we have two whole yet distinct apples; they are not one with one another.

The Pure Apple

This is again, not the same as asking if it is purely apple as in the event that a chunk is missing and has been replaced with some other piece of of fruit that has been cut to fit the space. The apple’s purity is intrinsically tied to its wholeness

The Whole, Same, Pure Body of Christ

If all of this holds true then the Word ought to support such a definition of unity in the body of Christ; and in fact, it does.

The Whole Body

²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²²On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, ²⁴which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, ²⁵that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
1 Corinthians 12:21-26 English Standard Version

The body then is not one unless all of the parts are present and, in Paul’s estimation, equally valued.

The Pure Body

1See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears^a we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
1 John 3:1-3 English Standard Version

The impure body is not a unified body. If the world had never seen an apple then they wouldn’t recognise nor probably taste another example of an apple if it was presented to them to eat. Our unity then is secondarily in hope in that we ensure that we are individually and collectively pure children of God with not a hint of the world in us as we look forward to the most pure one’s coming.

The Same Body

⁴Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11 English Standard Version

As we can see from our example and Paul’s, we do not have a “similar,” spirit but the very same Holy Spirit of God who lives in us, among a list of other same things and we are therefore not a grouping of similar bodies but a singular body with the same elements. We are the very same people of God who have received mercy.

Further Study Needed

More study is needed to present this concept of unity to you. 1 Corinthians continues to be a loudhailer of unity in the body of Christ that I should be surprised more haven’t picked up on, except that we have poisoned its message with other concepts of ‘acceptable,’ divisions. More will follow accordingly.

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A Life of Love

Jul 12th, 2022

Encouragement towards the Reorientation of Daily Life towards Personal Obedience to the Spirit of God

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3
Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

Typically, this kind of article is the one the reader clicks on to read what the author thinks are the definitive Christian disciplines that will establish the believer’s heart in the Word and build an impenetrable fortress of faith in the heart and life of the individual. But, if you read Reoriented in Love (insert link) then you know that it is my intention to place that particular burden squarely on the shoulders of the mature believers among the people of God who have received mercy. So let’s get started.

The Icebreaker

Those who have heard my testimony know that my heart and passion for discipleship have lead me to do some rather interesting things. Chief among those actions was to invite a homeless man I had known for only a month to camp out in my garden for a week while we helped him find accommodation. That act in and of itself may sound like an exotic occurrence that would only happen on the bleeding edge of the mission field, a boasting in my own virtues if you will. But, let me assure you that it started out as a simple act of obedience to make disciples of Jesus. “Have you received the Spirit of God?”, “Has anyone ever showed you in the Word how to truly live?”, “If you would like, I would love to do that for you.” These are the two questions and the offer I gave to a certain man when I met him in a church service in Armagh that led to him camping in my garden a month later. He had received Christ as his Saviour and therefore the Spirit of God, and no, no one had taken him through the Word to show him how to live, and yes, he would be delighted if I would do that for him! We met in my home several times a week for the next month where we started out by exchanging testimonies and then by going through the Word rather immethodically and letting it spark conversation after conversation that enabled me to get to know him better and for him to continually surrender his past and present life to the Spirit of God. It came about that because he had not registered as homeless in our city that he was being kicked out of the homeless shelter and had nowhere to go. We both immediately got to work looking for a short term place for him to stay and when it became apparent that no one else was going to take him in, my wife suggested that he pitch a tent in our garden. So, he spent the last of his money on a tent and supplies and he pitched his tent at the end of our garden. When he was in the garden he sent emails to the leaders of the churches he had been visiting for the past year, I sent emails to the leaders I knew and made phone call after phone call but no one would take him in on a longer term basis. It was a time of immense shock for me to see the body fail so spectacularly at loving this man. Our discipleship relationship has since looked like a lot of things over the years, sometimes meeting every day like in the week that he spent with us, and sometimes being absent for three or more months at a time while the Spirit worked on the both of us. But inevitably the Spirit would put him on my heart or me on his to send a WhatsApp and he and I will catch up and bless one another with what God has been doing in each of our lives. We are also at the point where we can both share our frustrations with the state of the body of Christ and how we could possibly help change what we experience on a daily basis. From the moment I met him, he has been a helpful indicator of the health of the body as he tells me how people have and are currently treating him in each of the bodies he visits on a regular basis. It implanted in me a desire to see a stark change come to the body of Christ. It started to peel back the veil on the Symbiotic Organisations who called themselves churches but were not acting like the people of God who have received mercy.

I tell you this story, because it is at the root of why ARC exists today. I listened for the Spirit of God and did what I thought were small acts of obedience to His voice, but were still too big for most to join in. There was one organisation who ended up taking him in but even then it wasn’t six months until he was back in the homeless shelter; spiritually stronger for our continued discipleship but on the backswing economically. Praise be to God who provided a private place for him to move, a job in Belfast and eventually his own private rental home. What part I and my wife played was a part of following step by step instructions and all glory is to God who made straight his paths. This is all we can expect of ourselves and those we would see raised up to full reproducing maturity in Christ. That we would be able to take those that the world has rejected and raise them up to Christ.

After all of this, I thought that I had to reproduce the circumstances surrounding my friend’s rise out of homelessness. I thought maybe a homeless ministry would be what God would want us to start, but God impressed on my heart that if we start a homeless ministry then it will be one more ministry that believers can outsource their obedience to and not take in the next homeless person He asks them to take in. He then opened my eyes to all of the other ways we make it so that the everyday believer thinks that they do not have to be personally obedient to the Spirit of God. Personal gospel fluency, personally giving to the poor and needy, personally providing a place to stay to those in need, personally loving one another, personally taking care of orphans and widows, personally obeying God in all of life. These are the kinds of things that the body needs to be trained to do and which we must stop doing for them. We do not need another creation seminar or another right to life rally, or another pep talk about purity until we have made significant progress in equipping, edifying, encouraging and reorienting the body towards personal obedience to the Holy Spirit of God in all of life.

Reoriented for Love

Jul 11th, 2022

Practical Suggestions for the Reorientation of the Sunday Service

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3
Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

We touched briefly on the topic of what we are supposed to be doing as the body of Christ in Acts of Love, where we concluded that of all of the good things the people of God have done in the past and could do for Christ in the present, it’s probably best to start with the things that He has asked us to do in the first place before we go about suggesting extra-biblical things to be done. So, at the end of the day, how do we plan our gathering time to edify and encourage one another for the work of the ministry of reconciliation while we outdo one another in honour and love?

“Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”
Romans 12:10 English Standard Version

It should be said that, at present, we’re far more interested in edifying and encouraging one another to read the Bible and pray–both brilliant pursuits, but not ends in and of themselves. James 1 says that if we study the Bible with good intentions but then go away and forget what we looked like and make no change then we deceive ourselves into thinking we have good religion. At ARC we call this the ‘James 1 Lit Test’ and try to include action steps at the end of most of our teaching entitled as such. By all means, we should be teaching one another how to read the word. Traditionally this has been done by one professional standing up on Sunday morning to give a performative speech about the contents of the Word and their application, but this could just as easily be done via a designated App such as the one recently published by The Bible Project. This may be hard to read, but most preachers are not very adept at presenting the Word in a professional way anyway–a cursory search on YouTube indicates that the quality of the ‘content,’ being produced by most churches is seriously lacking. It should be noted, however, that teaching is a manifestation of the Spirit, meaning that it could be given to any member of the body of Christ, and if that member is not a part of the designated leadership team, we will not experience that gifting in any real way because of our chosen polity. If we are Christ Centred in our polity and confess that the last shall be first and the first shall be last then the recognition of that gifting will have taken place already and we will likely have recognised several men and women in the body who the Spirit regularly teaches through. So, already, we may be talking about decentralising key programmatic elements of the ‘worship service,’ in an effect to re-organise around the manifestations of the Spirit we have in the body. This does not mean, however, as I heard it said this week, that being unprepared is somehow a purer manifestation of the Spirit of God and that one can be overprepared in a way that means that our offering is inauthentic. If we are practiced in hearing from the Spirit of God on a daily basis then we need not fear the accusation of inauthenticity. There should, perhaps, be an element in our offering of extemporaneity; speaking/singing etc… out of the moment. An indication that what we offer on a Sunday morning is an outpouring of what has been in our hearts all week and so is no surprise to us or to God that it pours out of our hearts in community.

Time & Place

As we can imagine, depending on the number of the people of God, service may carry on for some time as the Spirit is given leigh way to speak through whom He will speak. It may be then that smaller groups of 15-30 people will have to be held to ensure that the Spirit is able to freely move through each one and speak in as timely a fashion as possible. This limits the availability of one person to speak to too many at one time and therefore to become an unintentionally idolatrous focal point. It may also benefit the body to continually rotate the people of God such that every week they are being introduced to new faces and manifestations of the Spirit. This should, of course, be done in as voluntary a fashion as possible; as the point is to instil in the body the ability to walk into any fellowship and feel the presence of the Spirit and know that if they speak from Him, the Spirit will be heard. Much the same could be done of the singing of hymns and songs and spiritual songs, communion, and giving to one another out of love and service.

The Role of the Mature

The spiritually mature would hover about these groups and offer wisdom when it is needed and direction for a particular passage being discussed. There is no need to have a “guide passage,” as the Spirit will likely bring out a passage out of the hearts of one of the people. Again, the aim is for the Spirit to have been speaking all week to each one and so these groups should develop a generally quick pace of sharing what the Spirit has been teaching them and the passages related to that lesson. Not everyone will have something to share and so 5-10 minutes per person should be enough, but allow time for the Spirit to speak when it is apparent He is speaking.

These are mere pontifications and suggestions for the reorientation of one part of the service. It is my hope that each fellowship will consider the nature and rights of the people of God and design a service that better treats one another with the love, honour and respect that the people of God have been born into in all areas of our communal worship. It should also be understood that this model will only work if we edify and equip the body for living their life according to the Spirit of God during the week. Perhaps we will deal with that tomorrow.

Light as Love |Practical Polity

Jul 4th, 2022

Responding to Sin in a Christ Centred Polity

Let’s be honest, this is all anyone thinks about when considering church polity–who gets to be the righteous-right-hook of God hurling the unbeliever from our midst!?I am being facetious, but the truth of the matter is that the number one question I get asked when discussing the decentralisation of power in the body of Christ is, “O—-kay. So, after we have adopted this ‘we’re all in this together, everyone pitches in,’ kind of polity–who actually has the power to defend the body against heresy?” Who gets to be Moses drawing a line in the sand, asking, “who is on the Lord’s side,”? The organisational structure we have adopted gives us the church culture we have today. The issue of defence of the faith is rooted in our deep belief in adversarial unity; the belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend or that our unity is equal parts based in faith and the real and present danger of sin and darkness and so what we need is a strong leader to stand at the door of the church and pass judgement.

Historically we have come to two main positions about the defence of the faith–neither of which conform to the whole of the council of God. The first is, of course, the Elders. The result is that however heavily we impress that all stand equal at the foot of the cross, the Elders are more equal and therefore able to create extra-biblical theological treatises and pronounce judgement when they are not heeded in a type of animal farm scenario. The second position is, “no one has to defend a lion! You need only release it!” Harrowing, but also faulty. The word addresses the defence of the body and, at times, seemingly leans further towards one or the other response. But, try as we might, organisation cannot be extracted from unity. Each of these answers betrays our belief that unity is based either primarily in faith, hope or love. The Bible overwhelmingly says that our unity is primarily in love (1 Cor 13). Faith and love, draw us together, hope and love keeps us together, but love itself is the binding agent. Going forward with the belief that our unity is primarily in love and then in faith and hope we can take an honest look at what is supposed to happen when sin enters the body.

It’s Not Supposed to Be Like This

Our various current organisations facilitate the sad reality that we currently live in where sin is allowed to set in and fester in the body of Christ. This sin eventually triggers organisational breakdown, mass deconstruction and a falling away from the faith when the sin committed within the body is equated with the normal functioning of the body of Christ. You can read more about this is our analysis of abuse in the body of Christ and our analysis of deconstruction.

The 2 Step

In Wisdom in Love we briefly discussed the sin that basing our unity in faith or hope first causes within the body by causing the believer to create hidden theologies and lifestyles all the while confessing and professing a lie to maintain spiritual status among the body of Christ. These hidden theologies and lifestyles often manifest in future sin, not only in the leadership but also in the body. So the first step to dealing with sin in the body is a relatively simple one, unite around love first and let go the burden of pretence which we have laid on the body of Christ.

Lest the reader think, “Here he goes! No respect for the Word of God! Of course sin will disappear when you stop calling sin, sin! Unity at the cost of orthodoxy is heresy! Burn the witch!” The second step to dealing with sin in the body of Christ is to acknowledge that, given the right conditions, sin cannot exist in the body of Christ. This refrain goes throughout the old and new testament.

“Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;”
Psalm 1:5 English Standard Version

Lastly, God’s anointing protects us from being led astray

²⁶I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. ²⁷As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
1 John 2:26-27 New International Version

1 John has so much more to say about recognising true righteousness and living as the people of God that I could literally republish the letter here, so I highly encourage you to revisit John’s first epistle with fresh eyes, and open heart and the mind of Christ.

James 1 Lit Test

If I could give two practical words of advice for current church leaders in dealing with sin among the body, the first is this: declare a year of Jubilee and do away with your oaths, creeds, theological documents, standards of conduct and any other human documents and watch the wolves emerge among your sheep. Just having these documents gives them the wool and talking points they need to pretend and without them in the pure light of the gospel they will not be able to stand in the presence of the righteous. Be prepared to see people you think are mature in Christ show themselves to be babies as they will have copy and pasted these documents as their own faith and will not be able to stand. They will not have heard from the Spirit of God, if not ever, then in a very long time. They will not be fluent in the gospel; being able to apply it to every day life. They will have built for themselves secret theologies and secret lives as will all of the people of God who are under such documents. Rid yourselves of them, and see what sifting of the sheep and goats happens without any type of over lording behaviour from you.

The second piece of advice is, after you have declared a year of Jubilee, edify and encourage the believers in your care of their spiritual rights in Christ. I encourage you to seek them out yourself and use the list we have compiled as a start. When you have removed the stop blocks from them that enslave the people of God to the things of this world, you will be releasing them to be who God has made them to be, and freed them from sin to be.

Turn on the light of love in your hearts and watch the darkness disappear from within and among you, and when you have done this, you will be able to return to Jesus’ treatment of church discipline with hearts full of love and mercy and forgiveness.

Lessons in Love |Practical Polity

Jul 3rd, 2022

A Brief Example of the Learning Experience in a Community of Love

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 2
Ideal for those already acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community

A community of love reframes falling down as a joyful, expected part of the process of growth. An infant who is learning to walk isn’t actively trying to “learn to walk,” they have no such concept of abstract focused learning. They are, however, trying to move towards what they want faster even if it is just the happy, smiling and affirming voices of the ones who keep lifting them up to feel this unstable, slightly dizzying feeling of walking on two legs instead of having four solid points of contact with the floor.

For the child, falling is not failure because they fell towards their objective–even in their falling they made forward motion. No one came up to them and derided their gate or method of putting one foot in front of the other or said, “What the actual (insert choice explicative) are you doing it that way for? Who told you to do it like that? Do it like this!” No one even thinks about approaching an infant with a well reasoned argument for why they need to move their legs closer together, straighten their back and lift their head and square back their shoulders for the optimum, authoritative gate. Instead they marvel at their progress and make comments, like, “I remember that, that’s how my Jimmy learned to walk,” and, “She’s doing so well! I remember our Connie army crawled until she was 3!”

This is what a community of love looks like. They suspend as many assumptions as possible, limit their language, discount notions of perceived ability, simplify their reasoning down to the level of an infant and raise them up to full reproducing maturity. Is there more to develop after the initial experience of taking our first steps? Yes, but the only reason we develop the muscles to run is to keep up with those happy smiling faces as they call us on to the next great adventure.

It’s Mutual |Practical Polity

Jul 2nd, 2022

Further Exploration into Christ Centred Polity via Maturity Metrics

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 4
Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community and with other Christian Communities.

Introductory Notes

In my last analysis and proposition, I posited that what we need is a Christ Centred Polity which works from the ‘least of these,’ to the greatest. In this series I would like to take it a step further and explore what the scriptures say about the body of Christ that would lead us to make the appropriate changes. I will address the power dynamics between the clergy and the laity and whether or not that is an accurate dichotomy or if that is an extra-biblical designation and many other practical applications of Christ Centred Polity.

Maturity Metrics

If one searches ‘leadership,’ in any Christian forum what we get is a lot of classic Bible passages relating to the qualifications of elders and deacons. We might get a nod towards living an ascetic moral life, and doing our gosh darn best to give more than we take. What we don’t get, however, either by pure neglect, ignorant oversight or an omitting, “I thought it was obvious so I didn’t write about it” excuse, is the call and expectation for leaders to exemplify every passage that tells us how to organise as the body in love, faith and hope. By omitting this crucial step we create a world of problems for ourselves–some of which are detailed in the last two articles. The truth is that there is no such thing as a ‘leadership,’ verse. The whole Bible is a leadership text. The way we know that it has not been treated as such is that we all just read that last sentence and thought, “well…what about everybody else”. This is an appropriate response because of our worldly ideas about leadership. You have heard it said that leadership is exclusive; a title and position enshrined in organisational structures, rules, laws, agreements, paycheques and follower counts. But I tell you that the whole Bible is a leadership text meant to raise up the reader to the full knowledge of God and, as a result, to full reproducing maturity in Christ. In this way, leadership is defined as those who seem influential due to their maturity in the ways of Christ. Therefore, the degree that we allow the Holy Spirit of God to form us through the scriptures is the measure of how truly influential we are for God’s Kingdom and not our own. The maturity metric must be the one and only metric we hold for recognising leaders. Since it is a scale, there can be any amount of influential people in the fellowship building God’s Kingdom without there being too many proverbial chef’s in the kitchen. The truth is that there are never too many chefs in the kitchen only too many who believe themselves to be the only chef.

The breakdown in communication about leadership, as I have said, happens when we consider what the world believes about what it means to be a leader; namely to influence people to do what I want them to do. If this is our operational definition of leadership then the Bible is certainly not that kind of leadership text. However, if we adopt Jesus’ definition of leadership, namely that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, then literally anyone can be a leader in the body of Christ. Our metrics need only change.

Christ Centred Polity places the most mature in Christ in the place of highest influence for the Kingdom. This may or may not be the one with the highest educational degree, financial sense, innate leadership ability, life experience, dashing smile, manly/womanly form, highest follower count or any other superfluous metric. What counts is what is in their heart and life.

⁷But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 English Standard Version

In the maturity metric, verses like the one above cease to be about ‘leadership,’ and begin to ring true for every single believer. For many, especially in the leadership world, this verse and verses like it have come to mean, “God sees if you will be a good leader or not,” but if that is the case and maturity is our metric for leadership then there are Christians today who will never reach their full potential in Christ because we would never consider them to be leaders in the conventional sense.

When Samuel was about to pick literally anyone but David, God intervened to remind him--your thoughts are not my thoughts nor are your ways my ways. I see the heart of each of these men and they are full of wickedness, so I have rejected them. For my part, I have selected a man after my own heart. Yes, Samuel was looking for the next King of Israel, but he was also looking for God’s pick. God’s pick was a humble shepherd who was likely the illegitimate child of Jesse kept out of sight of the holy man of God while a legitimate son of Jesse was chosen for the honourable role of King of the People of God.

All of the things that Jesse thought disqualified David from being a man of influence became all of the reasons he was such a beloved King by God and his people. He was personable, humble, without pride to dance before God–to show that he was just a man; equal to every other person among the people of God who have received mercy.

Essence, Station, Opportunity and Kingdom Influence

Equality in essence, station and opportunity are essential to the Christ Centred Polity. In essence, no one is more valuable than another, in station we all hold the office of priest/ess with Christ as our High Priest, in opportunity all have a right to manifest the Spirit of God in life and before the fellowship according to how He shows up in our lives. Where we vary is in ‘Kingdom,’ influence. Keeping in mind a wholistic view of Church polity; that it is far more than answering the question of who holds the reins, but a question of church structure and culture, we can examine the functioning body of Christ in the word.

Category: Church Polity

A Focus on the Damage of Secondary Interfaces in the People of God

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

A Steward Must be Found Faithful

Without Judgement

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

The Through Thread

From Simple Seeds and Stones

Fulfilling the Assignment

A Focus on Permission Structures

Unity in the Body of Christ as Innate Sameness, Wholeness & Purity

The Entirety of Wholeness

The Whole Apple

The Same Apple

The Pure Apple

The Whole, Same, Pure Body of Christ

The Whole Body

The Pure Body

The Same Body

Further Study Needed

Search by Category

Related Posts

Encouragement towards the Reorientation of Daily Life towards Personal Obedience to the Spirit of God

The Icebreaker

Practical Suggestions for the Reorientation of the Sunday Service

Time & Place

The Role of the Mature

Responding to Sin in a Christ Centred Polity

It’s Not Supposed to Be Like This

The 2 Step

James 1 Lit Test

A Brief Example of the Learning Experience in a Community of Love

Further Exploration into Christ Centred Polity via Maturity Metrics

Introductory Notes

Maturity Metrics

Essence, Station, Opportunity and Kingdom Influence