Gifts for Building up the Body

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ… – Ephesians 4:11-12

This is a well-known verse from a well-known chapter from a well-known epistle when it comes to talking about the Church as the Body of Christ.  There’s a fair amount of argument over if this verse is a list of four roles or five.  In English, it’s hard to tell; our translations don’t make it very clear.  But the Greek does:

καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκεν τοὺς μὲν ἀποστόλους (apostles), τοὺς δὲ προφήτας (prophets), τοὺς δὲ εὐαγγελιστάς (evangelists), τοὺς δὲ ποιμένας (pastors) καὶ διδασκάλους (teachers).

δὲ and καὶ both can mean “and,” but in different ways.  δὲ can mean both “and” and “but,” because it’s more of an “also” sort of word.  καὶ  usually means “and,” but also can be translated “also” or “even” or “namely.”  So while δὲ connotes alternatives, καὶ  denotes things that equate.  As a result, poimenas/pastors/shepherds and didaskalous/teachers are equated together as a joint 4th group on the list, rather than separate 4th and 5th items on the list.

With that behind me, I want to share some recent thoughts I had concerning how this “four-fold ministry” (as some like to refer to it) balances itself out.  As Paul clearly stated, these gifts of ministry are for the purpose of building up the body of Christ.  The way that apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers accomplish this work, though, strikes me as a very close-knit balance.  I’ll give the bullet-point summary first, and then explain each in turn:

• Apostles provide organized leadership for the Body.
• Prophets provide disorganized leadership for the Body.
• Evangelists help the Body to grow outwardly.
• Pastor-teachers help the Body to grow inwardly.

First, the apostles – what the heck are they?  Literally, the word apo-stello means “one who’s sent out.”  The original apostles in the New Testament were the people Jesus sent out in person, including Paul since Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.  But even in the New Testament era, the word apostle was transitioning from that literal starting point to that of an official title or job in the Church.  This starts in the first chapter of Acts, when the eleven apostles choose a replacement for Judas Isacariot, Matthias.  Given the ministry that they reserved for themselves in Acts 6, and the nearly-identical job description for bishops in I Timothy, it seems pretty safe to assume that the overseer/bishop office in the epistles is the continuation of the ministry of the original apostles.

Additionally, we have a lot of insight into how Paul understood his apostolic ministry.  His epistle to the Galatians, in particular, has a strong focus on the dual focus of apostolic authority and being a minister of the gospel.  To this day, that remains the basic definition of the role of a bishop in the Church.  Ensuring church unity is the primary purpose of authority, of course – just looking at Paul’s concern for the churches he wrote to makes that clear.  So that’s what the apostle is all about – organized, defined, authorized leadership for the Body of Christ.

Then there’s the prophets, which I whimsically summarized as providing ‘disorganized’ leadership.  I do not mean to insinuate that prophets are anarchists – anarchy by definition is about disunity, which is utterly antithetical to the idea of building the Body.  By disorganized I simply mean outside of the official organizational structure of the Church.  Apostles/bishops are appointed according to a list of biblical qualifications, are recognized leaders in the Church by virtue of their office (yes, office, that’s what they said in Acts 1), and have a lot of biblical instruction on how to be leaders in the Church appropriately.  Prophets, on the other hand, have very little instructions for them in the Bible, and have no official structure to put into.  Instead, they have a host of role models in the Old Testament.

The word pro-phete literally means “one who speaks forth.”  From the Old Testament and the New, we see that prophets are basically just preachers, except with a clearer grasp of what God is saying to His people.  There are two types of prophets – ones who deliver covenants to God’s people (such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus), and ones who enforce those covenants (such as Elijah, Isaiah, Malachi, and John the Baptist).  By enforce I mean they call people out on their violations of the covenant and announce covenant curses that God has promised, as well as advise the leaders (be it the royal house of Israel or the Levites and priests of the Temple) on how to live according to God’s will as revealed in God’s word.  Although that looks very different in the Church than it did in ancient Israel, the role is basically identical.

Prophets today, thus, are people who speak out to the Church and to the world under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, backed by the Bible, to identify where people are going astray and where people are going well.  This is why they actually need to be outside the official structure of Church authority – they’re a checking balance to the apostolic ministry of the bishop.  Ideally we should only need one or the other, as the Holy Spirit works through both, but because we’re still sinful human beings, God has provided us two parallel levels of leadership.  I say leadership, not authority, because the Apostles made it pretty clear that they were calling the shots, but in Paul’s descriptions of the spiritual gift of prophecy, it’s pretty clear that prophets also have a key voice in the life of the Church as a whole.

Third comes the evangelists.  Evangelists are people gifted to share the gospel in effective ways – euangelion is the Greek word for “good message” or “gospel.”  Their contribution to the growth of the Body of Christ is fairly obvious: by effectively sharing the gospel to those outside the Church, they bring new converts in, growing the Church numerically.  Additionally, either by example or by direct training, evangelists help others in the Church learn how to carry out the Great Commission in their own lives, lest the evangelists become some sort of elite group expected to do all of the mission work.

Finally there are the pastor-teachers.  These people complement the evangelists perfectly.  For while evangelism is primarily focused upon bringing people into the Church, pastor-teachers are primarily focused upon keeping people in the Church.  The double title, pastor-teacher, is helpful here because pastors (also meaning shepherds) could arguably just keep the sheep in small sheepfolds to imprison them in blind faith, but because they’re also teachers, it’s more clear that they have to help the sheep mature, not just hide them from the outside world.

Pastor-teachers, then, are the ones who teach, preach, visit, and build and foster relationships within the Church.  They help the Body to grow inwardly, in balance to the evangelists who help the Body to grow outwardly.  Without this balance, the Church could become bloated with shallow believers at one extreme, or isolated ‘holy huddles’ at the other extreme.

So there you have it – apostles fostering ordered leadership for the Body, prophets keeping God’s voice fresh in the Body, evangelists helping the Body to grow larger, and pastor-teachers helping the Body to grow stronger.  Together, they form a powerful network of ministries that keep the Church healthy and whole.  Certainly, individual people might have gifts that link some of these ministries together.  The best preachers, for example, are usually prophets and pastor-teachers.  Bishops are expected not only to be apostles, but pastor-teachers as well.  History has also seen a lot of missionary bishops (apostle + evangelist) such as the Apostle Paul.  The more we engage with each of these sorts of ministers, the better advised we are in discerning God’s call for each of us in the midst of all this.

the Essentials of a Life of Worship

I’ve written a lot about worship on this blog; it’s one of my favorite topics.  There are a lot of worship-related tags on the right-side of this page here: worship, prayer, art, music, Baptism, confession, sacrament…  But something I haven’t really written about before is what makes worship so important for every Christian.  I have hinted at this question when describing the purpose of the Church which includes worship, and the importance of balancing different types of worship for maximum spiritual health and vigor, but now I’ve got a new illustration to try out on this three-fold rule of Christian worship.

Worship is the spiritual life of a Christian.  What are the most basic needs of life’s survival?  Food, water, and sleep.  Eucharistic worship is the food, personal devotions is the water, and the daily office is the sleep.  Let’s explore this intriguing thought more closely.

#1 ~ Eucharistic worship as food

Eucharistic worship is not just receiving Holy Communion, but the whole worship service – opening acclamations, singing praises, hearing the word, preaching the word, confessing our faith, confessing our sins, praying for the state of Christ’s Church and the world, receiving the Eucharist, and being sent out into the world.  How is this is the food of our worship lives?   First of all, Jesus told Peter to “feed my lambs.”  In Eucharistic worship, the leaders of a congregation feed their congregation with the bread of life and the cup of Christ’s blood she for us.   All feed on Christ in their hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.  Secondly, preaching and teaching straight from God’s word builds up the body.  This must be done faithfully and accurately, though; bad teachings are harmful.  Additionally, congregational singing and praying bring out different “side-dishes,” if you will, that supplement the flavor and nutrition of the main course of Word & Sacrament.

Without Eucharistic worship, we starve.  In saying this, I am not putting down any denomination or tradition, except for those people who call themselves Christians but do not “go to church.”  This communal form of worship is what binds us together with God in a unique way, and infuses new life into our spirit.  Now, there are denominations and traditions that change the balance of this meal.  Many Catholic churches really skimp on the preaching and assume that the Sacrament alone will be food enough.  This is true to a point – people can survive on meager teaching and strong sacramental worship, but they’re undernourished.  The same is true for the many Protestant churches that preach well, but don’t serve Communion every Sunday, or downplay its celebration to mere mental recollection, turning it into a shadow of the powerful sacrament it was meant to be.

#2 ~ personal devotions as water

This analogy is especially neat, because the Holy Spirit is often symbolized through water, and the Spirit is the key power behind one’s personal devotions.  From contemplative prayer to Bible studies to political activism in the name of Jesus, this is the most varied and personalized area of worship.  There is one wellspring of the Spirit, but He crops up all over the place.  We each have our own gifts and callings which, to different degrees, God compels us to carry out, lest we find ourselves “kicking against the goads.“  As healthy and filling we may find Eucharistic worship, personal devotions are personally refreshing.

There are lots of Christians who “go to church” but turn out not to be Christians at all.  How can this be?  Partly because they weren’t actually eating the meal offered them on Sunday morning, but mostly because they don’t drink from the wellspring of the Spirit.  Without our personal devotions we spiritually wither and die.  Although God does call us to Himself into community, we are also called as individuals, so failure to make that personal commitment defeats the ability to participate fully in the communal worship.

#3 ~ the daily office as sleep

This analogy could be the butt of jokes – the “boring” one gets to be sleep!  That is unfortunate, but check this out; the analogy works alarmingly well.  What does sleep do for our bodies?  It refreshes us, stabilizes our health, defines our waking life, and if timed well, sleep also enables us to live in more full community with others.  (If we slept all day and stayed up all night, we literally wouldn’t cross paths with most of the world.)

How does the daily office meet these criteria?  First of all, there’s the matter of refreshment and stability.  Our lives as individuals has ups and downs.  The daily office, because it is a regular worship practice that does not change very much from day to day, forms a stable place, emotionally and spiritually, for us to meet with God despite our state of mind, heart, and soul.  Personal devotions can jump around from place to place according to our mood and condition, but the daily office is a place where we can, as individuals, step beyond our own circumstances and join the Church in common prayer and worship to our God.  Secondly, there’s the matter of defining our waking hours and communal participation.  The daily office is a devotion that is designed to disciple people by worshiping together – it builds us up, increasing our maturity, by providing us a healthy spread of prayer and biblical meditation.  And at the same time, when we do this in community, it keeps us on the same page spiritually, providing us a common language that we can share with one another as we grow together in Christ.

Without the stabilizing, disciplined prayer of the Office, we’re much more prone to spiritual burn-out.  Running on our own strength, relying on our personal devotions and personal applications from the Sunday service, we’re forced to invent our own Christian lives.  The daily office enables us to grow with that community of believers, not just in the general area of one another.

Summary

So Eucharistic worship is our food, providing us with the nutrition we need to survive and grow in the Christian life.  Personal devotions are the waters we drink, satisfying our thirst for God’s active presence within us.  The daily office is our sleep, providing us that regular dose of refreshment and rest together from our busy roller-coaster lives.

Someday I might want to explore how the Catholic, Charismatic, and Evangelical streams of Christianity contribute to the Eucharistic, personal, and official forms of worship, respectively, cos there is an intriguing connection emerging.  But for now, suffice it to say, I think this illustration of food, water, and sleep provides a pretty helpful explanation to why this “three-fold rule of Christian worship” is such a big deal.

Liturgical Space: Pre-Lent

I wasn’t planning on changing my “prayer desk” setup until Lent actually began, but I ran out of taper candles and forgot to buy more, and forgot to get them on my wife’s shopping list, so I’ve been carrying on without the center candle in a sort of pre-Lenten spirit.

Back in the day, when Christians really took fasting seriously, Lent would be such an intense time that it had to be worked up to in stages.  Thus a sort of pre-Lent season came into being.  While most modern liturgical calendars don’t have them anymore, some older editions of the Book of Common Prayer, for example, do mention the three weeks of Septuagissima, Sexagessima, and Quintagessima.

Today, the formal observance of a pre-Lent season only shows up in the odd church or small denomination that continues to use an older calendar or prayer book – I believe the East Orthodox churches have something akin to this, and certain traditional Anglican groups do as well.  For the rest of us, the most we do is start talking about Lent and planning and preparing for it a couple weeks in advance.  Most of us don’t fast so profoundly that we have to work our eating habits down to it step by step, though I suspect more people should give it a try at some point in their lives… one can never surmise the spiritual fruit of something without really giving it an honest try (or several tries).

History and tradition aside, I decided not to replace that center candle as a visual reminder that Lent is coming.  It’s a subtle change, for sure, but it’s just noticeable enough for me.  In a small group setting, I’d probably do something more to denote a pre-Lent spirit, and a larger congregational context the change would have to be even more pronounced to be noticeable.  But as Jesus said, he who is faithful with a few things can be entrusted with many.  If I can learn how to express faith and spirituality on a small scale like this, God will help me work up toward the larger-scale things at the parish level.

Lectia Biblia III

How and Why do read the Bible?  What do we read the Bible for?  Although perhaps rarely asked out loud, I get the sense that these are questions that resonate with many Christians today.

In seminary, we were warned to keep up our personal devotional reading of Scripture, even though we’d be studying the Bible academically in some way or another virtually every semester.  This was obvious to some of my classmates, but to some of us it was startling to hear.  If the Bible is the Word of God, isn’t any reading of it going to be good for us?  Well yes, but some are more helpful than others…

1. I could pull out my Greek dictionary and translate a chapter of the New Testament, discovering all sorts of fun little gems that expand my appreciation for and knowledge of the original text.
2. I could take some commentaries off the shelf and check out what other people have said about the same passage to get a more full picture of its teaching.
3. I could read some less formal spiritual writings that reference a particular text to see how it has affected the lives of others.
4. I could read the Bible prayerfully, seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance, keeping vigil for how the text can and should change my life.

These are all valid goals, and useful in their own ways, but there’s a definite progression in those four approaches.

Translating and analysis certainly do yield good truths, but in that process there’s an alarming degree to which I’m in control of the text.  In some of the classes I took in seminary, I sometimes got the impression that I was being encouraged to decide for myself what the ‘best’ grammatical analysis and translation choices might be, as if my opinion was just as valid as the professor’s.  Yes, there’s a degree to which students ought to be empowered so they can grow in confidence, but there’s also the plain reality that my professors have PhD’s and I was still working my master’s degree.  Most likely, I’ll never be as proficient in the original languages as my NT professors were.

Commentaries are a step down from original translation – the hardest academic work of text criticism and translation is done for you (and explained in varying degrees), so that it’s much more accessible to the average reader.  Some parts of scripture are really complicated and confusing, so formal commentaries can be very helpful for making sense of them.  What commentaries almost never do, though, is apply Scripture to every-day life.  In general, they’re written in a primarily academic sense, so that they’ll be useful tools no matter who reads them in whatever century.

This is where informal spiritual writings come in.  By “informal spiritual writings” I mean a wide range of things – personal reflections on scripture, sermons, lectionaries, biblical exhortations, the Apostolic Fathers, the Apocrypha, and so on.  These tend to be more culturally-situated, written for a specific audience, so sometimes we have to learn about the authors’ history & culture to fully appreciate their writings.  But anything that connects scripture to the basic human experiences in life is going to resonate with us on some level.  Academic commentaries tend to be impersonal, but these are much more personal (or “practical,” dare I say).

Of course, reading the Bible on our own, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the most personal connection we can have to God’s written word.  The way I’ve set up this four-step progression might lead one to assume that I’m exalting this as the best way to read scripture.  In a way that’s correct, but I also want to point out the progression of information-mining in these four steps: first, the Bible has to be translated and interpreted into our own modern language.  When we read it ourselves, we do so best in community – with the aid of preachers in our local churches, with some level of guidance from spiritual writings like Our Daily Bread or organized by some sort of lectionary.  Ideally, these informal writings are informed by academic study of Scripture, such that everyone is able to benefit from the teachings of the great theologians of the Church in an accessible way.

The danger with omitting the “informal” category is two-fold: academic idolatry and personal idolatry.  Personal idolatry is pretty straight-forward – me and my Bible know the truth, and I don’t care what anyone else says.  This is an immature attitude and expressly condemned by St. Peter.  Academic idolatry is trickier in a way, because it takes something respectable and exalts it beyond its proper place.  I’ve written about this before, so I won’t repeat it all here.

So getting these four approaches to reading scripture properly ordered and balanced is a good thing.  Derek Olsen, in an excellent article, outlines a similar idea in terms of a “neo-patristic” reading of Scripture.  At the end of his article, he summarizes this full approach roughly as follows:

• Scripture’s best read in the context of liturgy (thus we read it as a community).
• The purpose of Scripture is summarized by 2 Tim. 3:16-17 and Ephesians 4:11-14, in short: building up the body unto salvation.
• We must always be on the lookout to learn how the Bible teaches us to love God and neighbor.
• The meaning of the biblical text is not only its literal meaning, but the fourfold meaning (as I’ve recently discussed also).
• We must remember the Bible’s dual authorship of individual men and the Holy Spirit.
• Academic study of the Bible is useful from all ages of history, not just one particular era.

However you frame it, something we all need to remember is that we must never enslave the Bible to anything, be it an academic idol, our isolated selfish selves, or anything in between.  We’ve got to face up to the awkward fact that the pillar and foundation of the truth is not the Bible, but actually the Church, and thus we’ve got to treat the Bible accordingly.

Stuff thinking Christians should read

One of the great marvels of the modern era in which we live is just how many editions of the Bible that are available to us.  Off the cuff I could name probably ten different translations:

1. TNIV – Today’s New International Version
2. ESV – English Standard Version
3. NASB – New American Standard Bible
4. KJV – King James Version (Authorized Bible)
5. NRSV – New Revised Standard Version
6. AMP – Amplified Bible
7. NET – the net Bible
8. NLT – New Living Translation
9. NJB – New Jerusalem Bible
10. NAB – New American Bible

And if you take off the “Today’s” or “New” from the beginning of most of these, you’ll find many older English editions of the Bible too, dating as far back as, *gasp* the 1950′s.  Okay, there were other translations made in the 19th century too, but it was only the mid-to-late 20th century that this translation enterprise really took off and became a market.

But for all these translations, and overwhelming number of “study Bibles” that each publisher has made, American Biblical literacy on the whole doesn’t seem to have improved all that much.  There are still people around who’ve memorized lots of verses, or who are adept at quoting relevant verses on an as-needed basis, and some of them even understand what they’re reading & reciting.  But for many, reading the Bible is a chore because they haven’t made much sense of it yet.

This problem needs to be tackled from a number of angles: 1) knowledge of the Bible’s content, 2) knowledge of the Bible’s structure, and 3) knowledge of the Bible’s context.

#1 is easy to solve: knowing the Bible’s content is just a matter of 1) reading from the Bible on a daily basis so there is constant exposure to the words of Scripture, and 2) reading through the whole Bible on a regular basis, such as in a year.  Many reading plans exist for this purpose, and I’ve noticed that a lot of Bibles actually come with suggested plans now.  This is a good thing, if people actually use them.  Switching between different translations every now and then can also provide a deeper appreciation for the message of scripture.

#2 is solved by most study Bibles.  These days almost every Bible has some explanatory notes at the beginning of each book within it, and many offer cross-references so you can see when different parts of the Bible are being quoted or alluded to.  These tools vary from publisher to publisher, but on the whole can be quite valuable for helping people to understand how the Bible is structured and how it supports itself.

#3, however, is not solved by the availability of Bibles, choice of translations, or abundance of study Bibles.  Some information about the Bible’s historical & literary context is offered in many bibles, like at the beginning of each book when it might identify the author, date of composition, and the general historic situation.  But Bibles on their own are unable to provide to some degree is what happened in response to the collecting of these sacred writings.  This falls into two categories: 1) how did the Jewish community view & treat the Old Testament in the “intertestamental period” up to the lifetime of Jesus and the Apostles?  2) how did the Early Church receive and reflect on the faith while the New Testament canon was still being sorted out?

The best places to start for these two questions are the Old Testament Apocrypha and the Apostolic Fathers.

Many Protestants feel a shudder of discomfort when they hear the word Apocrypha – it tends to be associated with mysterious and bizarre “Catholic stuff” that’s better left alone.  There is indeed some strange stuff in the Apocrypha, but let’s face it, there’s some pretty weird stuff in Genesis, Samuel, and Kings as well.  One of the arguments I’ve heard leveled against the value of the Apocrypha is that Jesus or the Apostles never quoted them.  This is far from true.  I Ezra (or III Esdras) is referenced twice in the NT, IV Esdras 21 times, I & II Maccabees and Tobit just over 20x each, Judith 11x, Baruch 6x, Sirach nearly 100x, Wisdom of Solomon just over 100x, and so on.  More importantly, these writings give us almost all the historical information that we have on what happened after Malachi and before the gospel books.  They also provide insight into how the Jews were understanding the Old Testament as Messianic hopes started to increase as they approached the time of Jesus.

The Apostolic Fathers are very different situation.  While the New Testament was still in circulation as individual writings and not formally codified as “The New Testament,” Christian leaders continued to write sermons, tracts, and letters to encourage and instruct one another.  Much of the Apostolic Fathers reads a lot like the NT epistles or the book of Hebrews.  But what’s especially valuable here is that this is the second generation of Christians writing – the Apostles’ disciples and successors.  If we remember that the book of Acts is about how the gospel spread and the seeds of the Church are planted across the Gentile Roman world, then we can see the Apostolic Fathers showing us how the Church began to grow upon the “foundation of the Prophets and the Apostles” as Paul once put it in Ephesians 2:20.

Now, I don’t mean to say that every Christian must read the Apocrypha and Apostolic Fathers, but I do assert that people who need to intellectualize their faith and people who want to study the Bible serious really ought to take the time to read these related writings.  The OT was written ultimately to prepare God’s people for the coming of the Messiah, and the Apocrypha shows us how God’s people finally began to anticipate the coming of that Messiah.  The NT was written ultimately to help God’s people to live in the new covenant from Christ, and the Apostolic Fathers show us how the Early Church began doing that.

Oh, and best of all, this stuff is all free to read online.  There may well be better translations available in print, but here are at least some good websites to access these writings:

• The Apocrypha in the RSV translation
• The Apocrypha in the NAB translation
• The Apocrypha in the New Translation of the Septuagint
• Apostolic Fathers: the Didache
• Apostolic Fathers: Epistle of Barnabus
• Apostolic Fathers: I Clement
• Apostolic Fathers: II Clement
• Apostolic Fathers: the Shepherd of Hermas
• Apostolic Fathers: 7 Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch
• Apostolic Fathers: Epistle of Polycarp
• Apostolic Fathers: the Martyrdom of Polycarp
• Apostolic Fathers: Epistle to Diognetus

Purpose Rooted in Identity

I’ve made a great deal of reference in the past to the “three-fold purpose of the Church,” and staked a great deal of my commentary and interpretation of various theological issues on this three-fold principle (worship, edification, ministry).  As have recently been thinking about giving a presentation on this in the upcoming semester, I suddenly realized that I could not remember the premise for this system.  I was sure it was biblical, but no “proof-text” came to mind, so I’ve gone back to my class notes from Systematic Theology III, and am more than pleased with what I found.

First of all, the purpose of the Church is rooted in the identity of the Church.  Well that makes sense!  So what is the identity of the Church?  A fellowship, a family, a shadow kingdom… the list could go on for ages.  We need to get the root of the matter if we’re going to get anywhere near a clear and simple answer.  Dr. Davis at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary describes the Church as a “theanthropic entity,” that is, something that includes both God and humanity together.  Ultimately, the Church is the fellowship between redeemed creation (and creatures) and God.  Adam & Eve experienced this before they fell to sin, the Patriarchs experienced this in limited fashion in their walks with God, Israel experienced this in a slightly broader fashion with the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem and the giving of God’s Law, and the Apostles experienced this in literal fellowship with Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.  This reality is experienced by us today in the form of the Christian Church, enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Where does this lead us?  The presence of God is the key here, so we need to look at God first, the Church second, and the purpose of the Church third.

God is one God, yet three distinct persons within one being: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  These persons can interact with each other, and we can interact with each of them individually, yet they are all eternally and completely one divinity.

Thus, the Church’s identity is going to reflect this dynamic of simultaneous oneness and threeness.  The Church is one thing, as God is one God, but the Church is also three distinct things at the same time.

• As pertains to the Father, the Church is a family.  God the Father literally adopted us through His Son, Jesus, to be children and heirs along with Jesus.
• As pertains to the Son, the Church is His body or bride (no this is not a paradox if you take into account the Bible’s “one flesh” theology of marriage).  Paul spends a lot of time addressing the Church as Christ’s mystical body.
• As pertains to the Holy Spirit, the Church is His Temple.  Remembering that a Temple really just means God’s “house,” a place where He can be found and interacted with, this makes perfect sense, though Paul does offer us some pretty clear teaching in this area too.

So that’s the essence of the Church’s identity, rooted in the identity of God.  How, then, does this inform the purpose of the Church?

• The Church as the family of God points to the function of worship.  Remembering that worship is ‘worth-ship’ – giving and acknowledging the true worth of something – it makes sense that in the course of our family fellowship, we acknowledge and declare God’s worth, which is infinite.  Even when Paul was writing about our adoption into God’s family, he set it in the context of blessing God.  This concept of having been created to worship God was also known to the OT prophets.
• The Church as the body of Christ points to the function of edification.  In the midst of Paul’s teaching about the fact that the Church is the body of Christ, he explicitly states that he gives certain gifts to the Church for the edification of all its members as they grow into the fullness of Christ.
• The Church as the Temple of the Holy Spirit points to the function of mission.  The business of the Holy Spirit throughout the Bible is always creating life.  Whether God’s breathing life into creation for the very first time, restoring life to the physically dead, or giving people who are spiritually dead a second birth, it’s always described in Spirit terms (remembering that in Greek and Hebrew, ‘breath’ and ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’ are all the same word)!  The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, then, is what enables us to go out into the world on a mission involving spiritual ministry and physical ministry.

So that’s the thinking behind this three-fold purpose of the Church.

One last quick note before I finish this post, though, is that we should not get too carried away with the Trinitarian model as if we only worship God the Father, only Jesus enables us to build up the body, and only the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry out God’s mission in the world.  All three persons of God act in union with one another.  In the same way, then, the Church needs to learn how to fulfill all three of these purposes without treating them as completely different things.  Our corporate act of worship can be a form of witness to the world as well as an opportunity to build one another up.  This is not only possible, but a good thing to do!  However, we must never forget that the purpose of worship is to worship God, and nothing else.  Similarly, we can bring worship into our worldly service, or train other Christians while serving the world, but those get in the way of the actual serving, then it’s gone awry.

The Church’s purposes are three: worshiping God, building up the Church, and ministering to those outside the Church.  May God give us grace and endurance to pursue all of these with equal vigor.

An Apostolic Succession

Compared to Paul’s letters to the Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians, and so on, his letters to specific people, like Timothy, have a very different tone.  Broad-sweeping, often complicated, teachings about salvation instead give way to specific instructions and personal reminders.  In a manner reminiscent of the beginning of II Kings, we get little glimpses of a relationship akin to that of Elijah and Elisha – a wizened old man of God nearing the end of his life preparing his disciple to be his successor.

Despite the title of this post, I am not about to make an argument for the doctrine of Apostolic Succession as such.  Someday I’ll build up to that, but right now I just want to reflect on some of the things I read in 1 Timothy last week that highlight Timothy’s succession of Paul in general, and his installation as Bishop of Ephesus specifically.  Three keywords come to mind: son, entrusting, and deposit.

(By way of disclaimer, if you think some of my scriptural quotes are weird, it’s because I’m using my own translation of the Greek, which, as best I can, supplements and clarifies the mainstream translations like the NIV or the ESV.)

First of all, one of the linguistic giveaways is Paul’s opening words in the letter, where he refers to Timothy as his “genuine son.”  The language of father and son is a typical fashion of a master and a disciple.  Jesus warned against the abuse of this, but clearly Paul is demonstrating a godly use of this terminology, different from how the pharisees sought to honor themselves.  Moreover, Paul calls Timothy a “genuine son in the faith,” which sometimes could mean that Paul converted him, but we know this wasn’t the case with Timothy.  Rather, Timothy’s sonship to Paul was a matter of a master-disciple relationship, and in these letters, Paul is preparing Timothy to live without him.

Secondly, there’s the language of entrusting.  Early in the letter, Paul refers to himself as having been entrusted with the gospel.  Though this is an unusual phrase to hear from Paul, it’s essentially what he means every time he defends his apostolic authority in his letters to various churches.  Oftentimes it can be a struggle trying to draw the line between what is unique to the authority of the original Apostles, and what is passed on to the clergy today and/or what is passed on to all Christians today.  Thankfully on this particular subject we get some help.  Shortly after Paul describes his entrustment of the gospel, he speaks of entrusting it to Timothy.  Part of what’s entrusted to these two greater leaders in the Church is a common charge to fight the good fight, teaching love which leads to a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.  These are just initial thoughts; a careful reading of 1:3-20 will bring out more fully the parallels between Paul’s ministry and the ministry that Timothy has received.

Later in the letter, some of Paul’s specific instructions for Timothy bring in more detail surrounding the beginning of Timothy’s ministry.  The “council of elders”/eldership/presbytery/πρεσβυτεφλίου had laid hands on Timothy and spoken forth (“prophesied”) his ministry.  We don’t really know who comprised this council; though we do know Paul was among them.  A safe guess would be that this took place in Jerusalem with some of the original Apostles, but the text gives us no clues.  What this does do, though, is function as reassurance for Timothy that he meets the requirements to be a bishop, and should not worry about how young he is.

Thirdly, and somewhat related to the above, is the subject of a deposit that Timothy received.  This shows up in 1 Timothy 6:20 and again in 2 Timothy 1:14.  This is probably the scriptural origin of what the Early Church called “the deposit of faith.”  Many Evangelicals today think of this deposit as the Bible.  Certainly, the Bible is a deposit for the Church today, but nobody in their right mind can assert that this is what Paul was telling Timothy.  Yes, Timothy had the Hebrew scriptures, the two letters that Paul wrote him, and probably access to the letter written to the Ephesians and maybe even the gospel of Mark.  But at the same time it’s important to realize that what Paul is referring to here is a collection of oral teachings passed on from himself, the other Apostles, and whomever else they’d sent out.

In a word, it’s tradition.  Timothy was entrusted with the message of the gospel, backed up with the Old Testament and the witness and practice of the Apostles, especially Paul in his case.  Hymns, prayers, sacraments, sayings, teachings, fellowship… all these things are what liturgy is made of.  Especially in a mostly illiterate culture, Christian teaching had to be passed on in many different ways; having a liturgical coherence was important from the start!  And, as I’ve argued before, it’s still very important even today.

So those are some of my thoughts on the establishment of Timothy’s tenure as Bishop of Ephesus.  He was an authentic disciple, or “son,” of Paul, he was entrusted with the same thing that Paul had been entrusted with, and received it as a deposit of faith including, but not limited to, the Bible.  I’m not about to say that this is exactly what modern church leadership should look like – that would be too hasty.  It is, however, a prototype that should be considered as a sort of model when we look at how authority within the Church is passed on from generation to generation.