Church Polity – Ammi Ruhama Community

Agility

Aug 11th, 2022

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

Daniel L. Bacon

A Suggestion Towards the End of Pejoratives

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Materialism is the butt of every Dad joke. A child comes to the father of their youth, and say, “Dad, I’m hungry,” to which the beloved father figure replies, “Hello Hungry, I’m Dad!” It pokes fun at the idea that our whole identity could be the sum total of our physical markers, desires and chemical reactions. This would be akin to someone ‘coming out,’ to us and us responding, “Hello Gay! I’m Cis!” It’s ludicrous! But, our culture still does it–quite a bit, actually. We define ourselves and others concretely based on what we can see rather than on what we cannot see; our souls. This results in massive division, as what we can see is rather diverse and our mindsets cannot cope with how to categorise such diversity into unity. We cry out in our materialism with Shylock,

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare appeals to the materialist mindset of his day in finding commonalities in our material experience to appeal for our common humanity with one another. But, no matter how many correlations we amass to signify our common humanity, a simple diversion like an accent or the colour of someone’s skin can still elicit the strongest of discriminatory behaviour. This suggests that materialist reasoning fails to cut to the heart of the sins of racism, sexism and othering–simply appealing to common humanity is not enough for us to treat one another as common souls.

A New Classification I Give You

I don’t like using the words we have invented for the classification of those who differentiate themselves from others because it has the same effect for us as their divisiveness does. We don’t associate with racists because they don’t associate with other races. By the very notion of calling someone a racist we acknowledge the validity of defining someone’s whole identity based on their outward appearance. The materialist answer to this quandary is to ‘not see colour,’ which prompts another word materialists use called ‘erasure’. We ‘erase,’ women or people of colour in an attempt to fix in our minds that our blood all runs red–it runs red in muskrats as well but most of us don’t claim that we ought to treat them like people. So, I propose a new term, a term that promotes the love, mercy and understanding that we ought to be showing one another regardless of if we are material girls living in a material world, or idealists who believe in the unity of all things. This word is Agility.

Agility speaks to how nimble one is in their thinking and adaptability to any mental or physical situation based on both mental and physical preparedness. Ones agility may be present ideologically, politically, culturally, religiously, or, indeed, physically; any mode in which we can imagine there will be intersoul communication. So, one may be classified as ‘ideologically agile,’ but perhaps, ‘culturally clumsy,’ while this may seem like painting the pig, it acknowledges each one’s journey and that some of us continue classifying others in divisive ways, but, we will rise above divisiveness and encourage growth by the mass removal of pejoratives. Afterall, what is to be gained by speaking about someone pejoratively? Will they see the error of their ways as we scoff at them from behind our keyboards? Will they turn from their wickedness and see the light of Christ in our haughty eyes? No. The more we capitulate to materialist demand for concrete and divisive pejoratives, the more we live by the flesh instead of by the Spirit. Agility is also rather easily determined in a person–it is seen by their agreeableness, their winsome take, their ability to present the truth to anyone without trite talking points. It is in their humility to say, “I don’t know,” and in their expert intersoul communicative skills.

So the next time someone asks, “whose hungry,” and the group all responds extatically, “I AM!!” Have the bravery to gasp audibly and retort, “It must have been a popular name that year!”

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

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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

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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.

Wicker & Stone | Corinth

Aug 1st, 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

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1 Corinthians 3:10-17

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled^[b] master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. ¹¹For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹²Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. ¹⁴If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. ¹⁵If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
¹⁶Do you not know that you^[c] are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
1 Corinthians 3:10-17 English Standard Version

Wicker Dwellings and Roman Villas

Paul builds out the construction metaphor and says that if another builder comes on site, assumingly Peter or Apollos or any other mature believer, that they must build on top of the foundation that is Christ and will be either rewarded or suffer great loss based on the work they have done when it is tested by fire (likely persecution). He says that the proverbial work being done is the building of the temple of God which is done to specification (by the Spirit) and that anyone who thinks they can build using the materials they are used to building with like wood, hay and stubble; the usual iron age building materials for a double walled, wicker dwelling stuffed with straw for insulation and topped with a stubble roof, will find that these are unfit materials for the house of God and will burn up in the day of testing. These materials are used symbolically for the wisdom of the world, while the adornments of gold, silver and precious stones are symbolic of the wisdom from the Spirit. One type of dwelling comes from a deep, generational custom, especially among the farming community of building the same dwelling, the same way every ten to fifteen years and moving with the land when it goes fallow. The builder of the wicker dwelling builds only for themselves for the next 10-15 years. The builder of a Roman Villa, by contrast, does so not only for their own sake but for the sake of generations who would come after them. In this way, Paul sees his work and the work of Peter, Apollos and the other mature believers as progressive to the point of testing. If what is built on top of the foundation is made of wood hay and stubble, it will need to be rebuilt every ten to fifteen years and moved to where the soil seems more fertile as the common human wisdom says. However, if what is built is made with permanent things and adorned with gold, silver and precious stones like the temple of Solomon then the world will come to us to marvel at the beauty of the temple which we have built to God. The twist is that we collectively; the whole people of God who have received mercy are the temple of God built either with wood hay and stubble or adorned with silver, gold, and precious stones and headed for the day of testing. Will we burn up and move to more fertile ground to build another straw hut, or will we build the house of God on the foundation that is Christ and adorn it with silver, gold and precious stones?

Plural Not Singular

This is not a new passage to most of us. We have heard this passage preached again and again and again as a personal call to holiness, but it is in fact a continuation of Paul’s analogy of the one who plants and the one who waters, only this analogy focuses on the one who lays the foundation and the one who builds on it. It is Paul’s version of, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. When Paul says, “do you (plural) not know that you (plural) are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells within you (plural),” this is another corralling statement by Paul to say that the Spirit of God is in all of us that we have all been given a portion of the Spirit of God and so when we dwell in unity we adorn ourselves as the temple of God with silver and gold and precious stones, and that the world sees us and marvels at the beauty of the temple and proclaims that Jesus was sent from the Father. However, when we live in our little enclaves we build ugly little huts of human wisdom for ourselves until the next wave of popular Christianity moves through and the fallow land around us causes us to burn our old models and move on to the next big thing; a slightly bigger wicker hut.

Paul’s Frustration |Corinth

Jul 27th, 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

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1 Corinthians 2:1-5

And I, when I came to you, brothers,^[a] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony^[b] of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men^[c] but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Paul asserts that when he came to Corinth to proclaim the testimony (some manuscripts say, ‘mystery,’) of God, he allowed it to be a mystery and didn’t really express it in the format of a traditional oration; a well prepared and even better delivered speech. What he proclaimed was the fact that the Christ had come and was crucified. Keep in mind that it was always Paul’s habit to come into the synagogues first and so this message would not have reached the gentile believers until afterwards. We already know from 1:14-17 that Paul did not make it his mission to make many converts and baptise them as he did not consider it his mandate from the spirit; only to communicate the simple message that the Christ had come and was crucified. Paul also says that he made no effort to put on a show of physical prowess as he was sick and weak at the time when he came to them as well as trembling and afraid. His work was done rather out of his weakness in the demonstration of the Spirit (read: Paul’s manifestation of the Spirit through the fruit of the Spirit in his life) and of power, presumably the power of the gospel as previously stated in chapter one but also likely in miracles.

Further Thoughts

We don’t really know what to do with the fact that Paul did not present a succinct five point gospel message with an alter call and a baptismal pool ready to hand. We know his reasoning; that the people of Corinth would not put their faith in his wisdom but in the power of God to save; that is, in Christ. Paul’s frustration is that when the Corinthian believer’s encountered the wisdom of Peter and Apollos, meant for the spiritual digestion of more mature believers, they went ahead and placed their faith in human wisdom anyway. If we take anything from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians perhaps it should be that all truth is revealed truth that takes a certain tolerance to adjust to. If and when we are exposed to a concentration of truth that is higher than our tolerance we tend to think that it originated with the author or speaker and attribute to them the things of God and so slide into the slippery slope of leader worship which Paul was warning against.

The message of the gospel is special revelation from God to everyone who receives it. There are some who say that if special revelation is not saying anything new then we don’t need to hear it. That it would be like a special report flashing across a news screen about old news everyone already knows. But if we applied the principle of “If it’s not new we don’t need it,” to the Bible then we could cut out the majority of the Bible as most of it is God repeating Himself ad nauseum to generation after generation after generation of people who are the recipients of special revelation from God even though he told someone else that one time–in fact, we could cut out most of the New Testament as He isn’t saying anything new there that isn’t deeply rooted in the Old Testament! The mystery of the Gospel is that God reveals Himself afresh to each one who receives it so that we do not place our faith in a leader’s wisdom or a culture’s wisdom or an ethnic wisdom that would exclude anyone who proclaims Christ and Him Crucified.

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

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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.

Grace | Corinth

Jul 22nd, 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

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1 Corinthians 1:4-9

⁴I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, ⁵that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— ⁶even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— ⁷so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁸who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:4-9 English Standard Version

God’s Grace

As Paul often does in his introductions, he thanks God for key events in the lives of his recipients. In this letter he thanks God specifically for His grace having been given to the people at Corinth. He cites the confirmation of the Holy Spirit having been given to them and the confirmation of that grace being every manifestation or, ‘gift,’ of the Spirit. He says that they were, “enriched with all speech and knowledge,” leaning into what he will discuss later about having been given everything that they have in Christ and not having something we ourselves can boast in as being unique or of ourselves. The speech and knowledge giftings may also be an indication that they understood the gospel really well and could communicate it just as well, and as Paul says, they were not lacking in any gifting of the Holy Spirit, but were lacking in the application of service and love to their fellow believers which is addressed in chapter 13.

Welcome to the Main Event

Paul links his thanksgiving over the Corinthians having been given all of the above gifts to the return of Christ. It can be tempting when we read the word, “wait,” to think that we are sitting in our seats reading the literature waiting for the main event of Christ’s revealing. It is the main event, but we didn’t come alone and are surrounded by others who are also waiting for the unveiling of Christ. These others have needs, the same as we do and the Spirit of God in each of us has provided for those needs. It is the unveiling of Christ we are waiting for, which will come up later in Paul’s discussion of following after himself or Peter or Apollos, which, if we stick with our analogy, would be like waiting for the unveiling of our sweaty bus driver instead of the arrival of the King. Paul says that these gifts of the Spirit that we have been given are for sustaining us until the unveiling of Christ. They give us value to one another, to be of service to one another and render us “guiltless,” on the day of Christ.

Paul ends his tiptoeing around the issue by reminding them of God’s faithfulness to do what He said He would do and by reminding them that their proverbial bus has only just started towards the main event where everyone is travelling and waiting and caring for one another and enjoying the fellowship of their common love and expectation at the second coming of Christ.

Further Thoughts

Grace is “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense,” which is just more words we only just barely understand. Imagine the most wealthy, most famous person you know putting on an event to which they invite the whole world. This person says that they will pay for all of the expenses it takes to get to the event and will feed and provide for everyone there to come and see their unveiling and be a part of the new project they are doing which involves giving all of us full access to their wealth which none of us could deplete if we wanted to. All we have to do is set out, and invite people along the way and bear one another’s burdens while we connect with others going the same direction along the road. Consider that the value that God gives us is not ours to boast in–none of us did anything worth inviting us to travel to this event. The use of our existing wealth to fund an air conditioned bus might make us and others more comfortable but we are all headed in the same direction no faster than anyone else. Children are being born on this journey, people get hungry, thirsty, and weary. Where the buses break down, we build permanent structures and the drivers start to think they can kick people off their bus and think that all of a sudden they are not on the road to see Christ anymore but instead they leave the bus and are surrounded by infinitely more travellers on their way to see Jesus. Around the broken down buses some build homes and dig gardens along the road. Some dig new roads that branch off of the narrow path thinking they can get to the destination faster than the main route. Some stop altogether and dig down their roots as having arrived already and send out messengers to bring people to their broken down bus and to their saviour but still sweaty bus driver. We have not moved beyond the problems that the Church in Corinth were experiencing in 55AD, in fact, we experience the very same problems with varying severity. The division in the body of Christ has never been more sever and so the letters to Corinth are more applicable than ever.

Unity in Love

Jul 13th, 2022

Editor

Daniel L. Bacon

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

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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.

Tag: Church Polity

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1 Corinthians 3:10-17

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Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

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Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 1:4-9

God’s Grace

Welcome to the Main Event

Further Thoughts

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

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

The Icebreaker

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