John H Armstrong

Should the Church Gather for the Unchurched?

When I was in Phoenix in Arizona I met Rev. Matthew Marino. Matt is the Episcopal Canon of Arizona for Youth and Adult Ministries. He serves out of the diocesan office in Phoenix, where we met for the first time in November last year. We had a delightful time and connected very easily. 

Matt has 30 years experience leading youth ministry in a variety of contexts (rural, suburban and urban) and across the economic and ethnic continuum. He has developed a variety of training programs including the two-year Youth Ministry Apprenticeship training for full-time youth directors, curriculums for Young Life's multi-ethnic Student-Staff and volunteers, and the Remuda Ranch Center Aftercare Recovery Workbook. He has a Master’s in Educational Leadership from Arizona State University and was a member of Fuller Theological Seminary's first Urban Youth Ministry Cohort. Matt is Canon for Youth and Young Adults, leads the YMA training and a church plant team at St. Jude's, Phoenix. Matt's passion is developing a generation of Christian leaders in the Anglican tradition. Matt and Kari, his bride of 23 years, have two high school aged children. As a family they like to sail, read and eat. Preferably all at the same time . . . and in San Diego.

Matt began reading the ACT 3 Weekly shortly after we met up in November. He wrote this to me just a few days ago:

Dear John,

Thank  you for this ACT 3 Weekly series on "Churchless Christianity." I had a twitter conversation last night with a college kid who left my ordination service (in July of 2011) and got into it with three guys on his college campus who were arguing, "We don't need the church to follow Christ." It seems to me that if church is just a good pot of coffee, a message and a few songs, then those people might be right: they don't need a lot to be that attractive meeting place for a church that is trying so hard to attract them.

If the visible church is what it was originally: A gathering OF the body of Christ FOR the body of Christ, then this wouldn't even be a [serious] conversation. The church created it's own irrelevance when we made church into a meeting for the unchurched. Given the church they know, the "Jesus and me" group are right -- a Christian really doesn't much need the church. It is like my freshman son with Young Life: I wish he would go to the meetings in order to use it as a vehicle to reach his friends for Christ- but he feels zero NEED to go himself. 

However, when the faithful gather to participate in both the Word AND the Sacraments as Jesus taught us, drawing strength from His Spirit and from one another to go into the world to actually love the least, last and lost, then there is real spiritual power in the church meeting as the church. Let us follow the model of the earliest Christians and meet to spur one another on to love and good deeds in the sanctifying presence of the Word read, sung, preached and responded to and the mystery of the sanctifying presence of God in the family meal of the body of Christ -- the Eucharist. Then we will be propelled into the world as a multi-ethnic, multi-economic picture of the unifying power of God's grace to transform hearts, families and communities. 

You can't get that on TV or You Tube! 

Blessings,

Matt

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I Am the Bread of Life

One of the most transforming passages in the whole of Scripture is John 6. I have lived here for several years. There is no way for me to adequately explain how this text has worked its way into my soul but it has and there is no mistake about the spiritual reality. 

I no longer "debate" the various ways that Christians explain the Lord's Supper. I find the entire debate unprofitable. If you ask me, "Is this Christ body and blood?" then my answer is uncategorically affirmative. If you ask me to "define" what this means and how this happens then I have no earthly idea. I also believe that you can make no sense whatsoever out of John 6 by denying that these words and Christ's intention here are related to the Eucharistic life that we share with Christ in the Bread and the Wine. 

If you want to debate this then I have no interest. If you want to share in this mystery by faith then you are quite likely to understand what I am saying and why I say it in this way. Since I have made the Eucharist a weekly (or more often) celebration in my life I have been transformed into the image of Christ in ways that are fresh and living. I am saddened that we fight over this simple meal Jesus gave to unite us in Him. I am delighted that God, in his great mercy, opened my heart to "see" the joy of this food and drink, his body and blood for the life of the world.  

One of my favorite songs, frequently sung in communion, is "I Am the Bread of Life." I include it here. If you've never heard it, enjoy. If you have you, like me, cannot hear it again without being deeply moved by the very words of Jesus himself. 

 

"A Bible and a Radio, But No Church"

One of the leading evangelical and ecumenical theologians of our time is Thomas C. Oden. Tom turned 80 last fall and continues to write magnificent works that serve the wider catholic community. He has provided the church with a fresh treasure of magnificent written work that will survive him by decades. You can sample something of Tom's story, a story of of how he turned away from theological liberalism in particular, in an online article that is well worth reading. 

I have had the privilege of knowing Tom for the past ten years-plus, though we are not extremely close as friends. We have served together in one specific ministry context which allowed us to talk and share several times in private. I count Tom among my Top Ten modern Christian thinkers and writers. In an aticle in Christianity Today, published in 2011, Tom wrote:

Christ promised the early church the Spirit, who came on the first Pentecost and continues to dwell in the lives of the faithful. He promised that the Spirit would abide with this community, guide it, lead it to all truth, and help it recollect the words of the Lord. This is just what has been happening for the 20 centuries since the ascension. We’re moving in the wrong direction when we say individualistically, “I’ve got my Bible; I don’t need anything except these words.” Protestants now need to recover a sense of the active work of the Spirit in history and through living communities. Our modern individualism too easily tempts us to take our Bible and abstract ourselves from the wider believing community. We end up with a Bible and a radio, but no church.

I have been reading a lot of Facebook posts recently. I am increasingly sensing that there is real value in using the social media to build ongoing conversations that can become healthy relationships. It is also a way to build up existing relationships through further social contact. Either way the social media cannot replace the biblical emphasis on real human relationships that must be found in community with real people. These relationships can not simply be virtual conversations. Oden explains why this is so in the quotation above.

I believe the majority of evangelical Christians that I've met over my long lifetime have a Bible and a radio/tape/CD/conference experience (fill in the blank), but NO church. Yes, some still go to a church but increasingly I hear of friends who are abandoning real church for all kinds of fads that suggest they believe we can be healthy disciples without the physical/spiritual reality of meeting with real embodied people where we pray with them, sing with them, weep with them, laugh with them and receive the body and blood of Christ with them. 

A few days ago I took communion around the front of my church at the Table. The people were positioned in such a way that I was literally touching the shoulders of the persons on my right and left as I took the sacrament. I was reminded by this simple embodied experience that Communion is a spiritual high point precisely because it is taken in the flesh with others standing/kneeling beside me. Anything less is not full-orbed Christian practice. Think about the physical aspect of this deeply spiritual experience and remember that if all you have is a Bible and ______ then you do not have a church. 

A Reformed Liturgy for Communion

I am often amazed at just how little some Christians understand their own church and the theology that church affirms. This is particularly true with regard to the understanding many in the Reformed churches have of communion.

Very few Reformed Christians realize that John Calvin actually held this meal in very high regard. He believed it was more than a memorial of Christ. It was the “real presence” of Jesus with his church. He also hoped weekly communion would become the norm.

For some years I have longed to receive the Eucharist often. Minimally, I want to come to the Table once a week. Ideally, even more often.

I recently looked at the Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America regarding the communion service and found the following words:

Together we proclaim the mystery of the faith:

Christ has died!

Christ is risen!

Christ will come again!

This affirmation is followed by this prayer:

Send your Holy Spirit upon us, we pray, that the bread which we break and the cup which we bless may be to us the communion of the body and blood of Christ. Grant that, being joined together in him, we may attain to the unity of the faith and grow up in all things into Christ our Lord.

And as this grain has been gathered from many fields into one loaf, and these grapes from many hills into one cup, grant, O Lord, that your whole Church may soon be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

This is a magnificent expression of the church’s faith at the Table. It is a catholic expression too. One that seeks to proclaim the mystery of Christ’s presence at the table without engaging in speculation rooted in concepts of philosophy that are not biblical or helpful.

Who Gets Into Heaven?

I wrote yesterday about a recent experience of sharing my vision of unity with a large group of conservative Protestant leaders in Chicago. Some were very positive. A few reacted not so positively. The flash point became whether or not Roman Catholics are included in the work of ecumenism. (I am not making this up! Some of you on other sides of this subject may find this amusing but it is how some conservative evangelicals really do think and respond to this discussion about ecumenism.)

The context was an address that I gave on John 17:20-23. I suggested, as I always do, that relational unity was what Jesus prayed for in the context of this prayer. Just as he and the Father were in a perfect relationship so we should pursue relationship with one another in Christ in order for the world to see that the Father had sent the Son. I have explained these points elsewhere, especially in my book, Your Church Is Too Small.

After I spoke a pastor addressed the group on one of the microphones set up for response and suggested that it was one thing to have visible and shared unity with other evangelicals but that Catholics and evangelicals could not share in unity since we did not preach the same gospel. He cited the Council of Trent, Vatican II and other Catholic reference points along the way. (He actually didn’t get right what he was trying to say from these sources but this didn’t deter his many words or central point! He appealed to the “anathemas” of Trent as applying to us so our gospel was condemned still.)

After the meeting was over the man who spoke came to speak to me in private. He was gracious, kind and resolute. He treated me with gentleness and wanted to have a dialogue about what he had said. After some back and forth about points and counterpoints I decided to ask a simple question. “Do you believe that any person who believes that Jesus really was the Christ who came into the world to save sinners, who died for our sins on the cross, and was raised on the third day for our justification (salvation) is to be regarded as a true Christian?” I added, “This person is personally devoted to Jesus and loves him as their Savior?” I then asked: “Will this person, in your view, be welcomed by God into the eternal kingdom at the Last Day?” He said, “Yes.” I then said that millions of Catholics believe precisely this and thus will be saved accordingly. He protested and said that if they received the Mass as the “real” body and blood of Jesus they could not be saved!

I am not making this up. At this point I realized the conversation would go nowhere. I tried to graciously move on and offered my sincere expressions of love and my continued profound disagreement on the matter.

What was this brother doing? He was saying that faith in Jesus, real faith which is rooted in love and devotion to Christ no less, is not real if a person has the wrong view of the Eucharist. Now I know Catholics who believe the same about non-Catholics. (The Catholic Church does not teach this but some Catholics still believe it, or at least act as if they did.) If this argument is true then believing correctly about “what happens to the bread and wine” in the Eucharist is a barrier to, or an open door to, heaven. Really?

If this is true then I am saved by Christ plus right views of _________________(fill in the blank).

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe John 6 is saying a lot more about the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine than most evangelicals but my understanding of John 6 does not make me a Christian or a non-Christian. I held one view of this text at one point in my life and hold a different understanding now. I am no more and no less a child of God as a result. I believe my faith is stronger and my worship is greatly altered for the better by this Spirit-given insight but I am not “in” or “out” of the kingdom based on this doctrinal understanding.

It seems to me that this is the problem here. We know our view well. We also think we know the view of the other person just as well. We think we know their view so well that we then have the right, indeed the God-given burden, to condemn them and thus assume that their understanding will keep them away from saving faith in Jesus.

We Are All Part of the One Loaf

I am particularly interested in the metaphors and images the New Testament uses to show us exactly how the church is one. I confess I have previously paid too little attention to 1 Corinthians 10:17. “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.” The church is not only one body but it is one loaf. Just as there is one body so there must be only one loaf.

Remember the context of these words – the Eucharist. The loaf is a reference to the bread, which is the body of Christ. When we share the bread we share as one people because there are not two kinds of bread, one one for this group and one for the other. We all consume the same bread which is the one body of Christ. Andrew Murray wrote: “He who partakes of the body and blood of Jesus is incorporated with His body, the church, and stands thenceforth in close relationship with all its members.” In the New Covenant, thus in the meal of the covenant, there is such a deep and wonderful union with Jesus that there is new life and new love. Thus Jesus can say, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).

Andrew Murray suggests that this thought is often forgotten at the Lord’s Table, to our great loss. He asks how often have we taken the meal without knowing or loving the brothers and sisters who partake it with us. In many cases we hardly know them at all if the truth is known. In some churches it doesn’t even seem to matter if we do. Murray adds, “Many have sought a closer connection with the Lord and not found it because they would have the Head without the body! Jesus must be loved, honored, served, and known in His members. . . . Not only must love to Him whose bread I eat be the object of my desire, promise, and prayer, but also the love to all who eat that bread along with me.”

The Message says:

Don’t we take into ourselves the body, the very life, of Christ? Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him. We don’t reduce Christ to what we are; he raises us to what he is.

The Eucharist really does provide for us the body of Christ but could we not also see that it gives us our oneness in Him? This seems to be the very argument the apostle makes here.

The Passing of the Peace

When I began to understand ancient liturgical practice some years ago one of the more beautiful discoveries was “The Passing of the Peace.” I had never heard the term until I was introduced to the practice in a liturgical context. Like everything else I encounter in the practice of worship I wanted to know what this term really meant and where the practice came from.

First, for those who do not know the term, it is used in many liturgical services after the reading of biblical texts, the sermon and The Lord’s Prayer. It always comes before the Eucharist or communion. The church will be led in prayer as a congregation and various ways of responding and praying are used. Following this the “passing of the peace” generally occurs. The leader says, “The peace of Christ be with you.” The congregation responds, “And also with you.” And then the leader urges the people to share the peace with one another.

Second, the “passing of the peace” occurs just before the Eucharist, for a very obvious biblical reason. In Paul’s extensive treatment of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 he makes it clear that we are not to “eat the bread and drink the cup in an unworthy manner” (11:27). We are exhorted to self-examination (11:28) and “discerning the body” (11:29). Earlier Paul told the Corinthian congregation that “divisions” and “factions” in the church should not exist (11:18-19). The entire context says, in the clearest possible language, that we should make sure we are at peace with each other before we come to the Table. The “passing of the peace” is a liturgical reminder of this central truth. It is a time to search your own life and make sure that you are not communing with others in the congregation with whom you have unsettled disagreements that have created “division” and “faction.” Unity is the whole point.

Because I am deeply committed to practicing the unity of the church this practice has profound significance in my own life. And because of what I now know about “passing the peace” I find the evangelical substitute: “Greet the person next to you and say hello” to be a very weak substitute for this ancient liturgical practice. The most non-liturgical church I know could introduce this practice and it would profoundly help people to grasp the actual point of 1 Corinthians 11 in the process. Liturgical churches need a better understanding of the reason for this ancient practice if it is to have its intended purpose in the lives of their people. Next time you “pass the peace” do it with a heart that is right with God and your brothers and sisters. If your heart is not right with your brother or sister deal with that before you partake of the bread and the wine.

Why I Changed My View on Infant Baptism

A few months ago a friend, who had been a Baptist and then became a Presbyterian, asked me for a short answer as to why and how I had changed my view of baptism (which had been the view that baptism was by immersion of believers only). The answer I gave him was “short” and thus will not satisfy those who want a full-blown explanation. But maybe the very shortness of my response will be useful to friends as well as casual readers of this site.

1. Ephesians 4 presented serious problems for my view of adult baptism only. If there is "one baptism" then how could I continue to insist that the immersion of adults was the only true Christian baptism? In effect, who was I to reject the baptism of other Christians who were convinced on the basis of good reason and sound judgment? This question deeply troubled me based upon my understanding of the church and the sacraments. I began to see the adult baptism only view as inherently sectarian, though I would not accuse all Baptists of being sectarians in practice.

2. The fact is that so long as I was a Baptist minister I had no "real" theology of children except to say that they were lost souls until some point when they came to confess faith in Christ. I now believe regeneration is not so obvious in real life experience and that faith can grow from a seed that the Spirit grants and then brings to life. This spiritual operation is a sovereign work of God and thus a work of true grace, not of free will or human effort. Luther, for example, argued that this in itself was a strong argument for infant baptism, namely that the child could do nothing but receive what was given to them by their parents and the church.

3. By not including children in the visible covenantal family we regard the Old Testament arrangement as merely preparatory and thus make the New Covenant less inclusive than the Old since children were no longer included in the family. But the New Covenant is better, greater, and more inclusive in scope. The New Covenant is truly new and it is an international missional fulfillment of the old. How could children be included in the lesser (older) arrangement and then be excluded from the better and newer one? This just didn't make sense to me when I asked the question this way. The famous Catholic philosopher Pascal rightly said, "Jesus Christ, whom both Testaments regard, the Old as its hope, the New as its model, and both as their center." If this is true then the New Covenant must include all the promises of the old, with the focus clearly on Christ who is the center of both. God made promises to Abraham and his seed. I believe those promises are to me, in Christ, and to my seed. I am a spiritual heir of Abraham and we are all  joint-heirs of God's promises in Christ, which are all yes and amen!

4. Finally, many texts began to appear to make new sense to me once I began to reject the polemics that I had always embraced. New exegesis resulted from asking the questions of this new theology, a theology which grew out of pastoral practice and love.

I never insist, of course, that anyone has to agree with my change of view regarding baptism. My own son remains an adult immersionist in his ministry as a church planter. My own granddaughter was baptized on profession of faith at age 10 and I rejoiced in the occasion. I obviously have not yet convinced my son on this matter even though you can see on "The ACT 3 Story" (the video on our site: www.act3online.com) that he has my spiritual DNA in most every way. Life and its ambiguities and differences make for real diversity which should make the pursuit of unity a great blessing, which for me this issue is all about in the end.

Reflections on a First Communion Service

A few weeks ago my wife and I witnessed a very moving first communion service at our local Lutheran congregation. I am not a Lutheran by denomination but my Reformed Church congregation is quite far away from home. As an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America (RCA) I am a minister of Word and Sacrament and can serve in an (ELCA) Lutheran Church like the one I attend near my home. We visited this church five years ago this July and then became associate members shortly after getting involved. We have come to love the people of this church and feel very much at home there. When Anita’s mom died a few weeks ago we were so completely supported by this church that it deeply moved us. On the three previous occasions of the passing of one of our parents no church ever responded to us with such support and love as Lutheran Church of the Master. Both the pastoral team and the people were wonderfully Christ-like and gave us such help and love.

Two years ago, when the pastor of our church had moved on to a different church in Ohio, Anita and I were asked to take the fifth graders through a training program for their first communion. I had never conducted such a class since I had been a Baptist minister during my twenty years as a local church pastor (1972-92). We dutifully used the Lutheran material given to us but we personalized the training and sought to make Christ as real and evident to these kids as his grace allowed to us. I found serving these 29 children, and their parents, to be a powerful pastoral experience unlike anything I had known in my Baptist context.

Anyway, a few weeks ago (April 25), we witnessed another first communion service in our Lutheran congregation. This time I was moved in a different way. One young girl came forward with her mother and sisters, etc. I remembered communing her older sister two years ago. At that time her dad and mom were both there with her. Today her dad was absent because he passed away just a few months ago. Many of us in the congregation wept as this family went forward. The communing minister so carefully handled this moving moment with tenderness and pastoral love. 

The liturgy of the entire service is moving. The children were told that after much preparation and prayer they were now coming with their parents to personally experience Jesus in the sacrament. They were asked to confess their faith and asked if they believed that the body and blood of Christ were given for their salvation. Included for the whole church was a “Renunciation of Evil.” This comes right out of the liturgy of the ancient church and is something most Baptists know little or nothing about. We were asked three questions:

Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?

Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?

Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?

Each time we answered, children and congregation together: “I renounce them!” I found myself moved again to confess my own baptism and to deeply confess my confidence in Jesus Christ alone.

I know the response of many evangelicals to all of this. They say, “This is all rote and has no real meaning.” Well, you could fool me. In most of the evangelical churches I know and visit children take communion whenever they feel like it, or when their parents tell them it is OK to take it when it is passed along a row of seated people. The sacrament belongs to the parents, or so it seems in these places. But as my wife said to me during the service, “Kids who take communion in that context will never remember their first communion at all.”

I do remember my first communion as a Baptist. It was required that I confess my faith and be baptized before I could take communion. I so looked forward to coming to the Lord’s Table and thus I remember my first communion very well. It makes me very sad when I see so many churches today where this practice is not carried out faithfully in some meaningful way. When this happens “first communion” has little or no significance at all. Whether you are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Bible Church or Catholic you ought to make a great deal of this wonderful day. You might be surprised how important this would be to your children if your church took all of this far more seriously. More serious catechizing, and less reliance upon our own ideas, would improve things greatly in almost every church I know.

Holy Thursday

Today is Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday. Historically the liturgies of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week do not differ much at all but today the week changes. Liturgically, Lent ends with the Eucharist on this day. This day is the first day of what has been called the Easter Triduum, the three-day period which solemnly celebrates the greatest mysteries of the faith—Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. Many churches will commemorate Jesus institution of the Last Supper with his disciples this evening. This was, all agree, the point in history where Jesus instituted the meal that almost all Christians still remember him by regardless of what they call it, how they understand it, or how frequently they celebrate it. The readings associated with this day are understandable: 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 and John 13:1–15. My own tradition includes the washing of feet in the service of the evening. I had never participated in this until about five years ago and I have come to deeply appreciate its importance in my life as a ritual with incredible meaning.

But why is today called Maundy Thursday? Well, in John 13:34 Jesus commands his disciples to “love one another.” The Latin for commandment is mandatum. Since this Thursday commemorates the events of that Thursday evening we remember it by reminding ourselves that Jesus commanded our love for each other and thus the foot-washing ritual also reminds us of that love.

Like so many of the celebrations of Holy Week the events associated with the liturgy of today developed in the early centuries following the death of the apostles. As the Christian Church began to remember all that Jesus had done and taught, and as the written record of that teaching in the four Gospels circulated and was read and processed (remember only about 10% of the population in the Roman era were literate) the church realized that people would recall these sacred mysteries best if they were visibly re-enacted in worship as holy symbols of the gospel of Christ.

In my first year in the pastorate, in a small Southern Baptist church, I began my first Maundy Thursday service of worship. Some wondered what on earth their young pastor, still in graduate school studying theology, was doing but the event stands out in my mind as one of the more important things I did in that little church. The people were gracious and they attended in significant number that evening. I thus began there, at age 22, to take a special interest in Holy Week. Over time that interest would grow and I would embrace the importance and place of this entire week as one that could provide very unique meaning for my life of faith. I hope you are remembering the mysteries of your great faith this week in some way. You might even find a place today where you can come to the Lord’s Table if your own church has no service. Check around since many churches do offer a special service this evening.