THE BLOGALOGUE SERIES: "Encountering Jesus: Inside and
Outside the Meeting"
Is It Really All
About Jesus?
For me, the essence of an Organic Church is centered around
Jesus. Everything we do should be designed to help us hear Him, experience Him,
worship Him, love Him, serve Him, and draw nearer to Him. Anything that
prevents that from happening should be eliminated from our lives, and from our
time together as a Body.
If I could re-name the movement, I’d call it “Jesus Ekklesia”
because, for me, that’s closer to what it’s all about: It’s for Jesus,
by Jesus and of Jesus. With Jesus at the Center, Jesus at the top, and Jesus
surrounding us, the Ekklesia is a Jesus-centric organism that won’t operate
properly apart from Jesus.
In fact, the Church itself is nothing apart from Christ. The
Apostle Paul calls it a Profound Mystery. Christ and the Church are One – like
a living person who has a head and a body and organs that all work together to
sustain life. We are in Christ and He is in us, and we are the Temple of the
Holy Spirit where Christ lives, and He is the One in whom we live and move and
have our being. So, we are in Christ and He is in us, and we are in the Father.
Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. Yet, if we remain in Him
and He remains in us then we will bear much fruit.
Is it possible to have a meeting without Jesus?
Unfortunately, yes. It’s also possible to have a wonderful meeting “about
Jesus” where people get together to sing about Him, talk about Him and study
Him – much in the same way a group of people might study any other topic of
discussion.
But rather than have a meeting “about Jesus”, or a meeting
“without Jesus”, our aim and purpose should always be to have a meeting “WITH
Jesus.” He is the One we want to hear from. He is the One we want to touch, and
to see and to experience.
Keep in mind, it’s possible to know stuff about someone
without actually knowing the person. For example, I could know all sorts of
trivia about Kobe Bryant, but if he walked in the room he wouldn’t say, “Hello
Keith!” because I don’t actually know Kobe Bryant. I only know stuff about him.
The same is true for Christianity. We can know lots of stuff
about Jesus, but that does not mean that we actually know Jesus in an intimate,
relational way.
But how do we do that? How do we take hold of Christ – or
allow Him to take hold of us?
I mean, if I’m not connecting with the actual Jesus in my
private life, then I’m certainly not going to be able to connect with Him in a
room full of people.
And, of course, if I’m in a room full of people who are also
not in connection with the actual person of Jesus, then even if I am connected
to Him, their limited connection to Him will probably make it impossible for
all of us to encounter Him together.
How do we connect with Jesus as individuals? How do
individual Christians encounter Jesus when they come together as a Church?
Those are the big questions, aren’t they?
I’ll do my best to answer both of those questions.
INDIVIDUAL CONNECTIONS TO CHRIST.
One of the most important things Jesus ever said about the
Christian life was this: “Abide in me and I will abide in you. Apart from me
you can do nothing.”
So, our individual connection to Jesus begins with living in
Him. Not just placing our faith in Him, or trusting in Him for salvation, but
actually living and breathing in Christ daily.
Or, to put it another way, the Christian life is about allowing
Jesus to come and live and breathe in you every moment of every day.
Does that sound like a paradox? Good.
Imagine an empty water bottle with the lid screwed on tight.
It’s full of air. Now throw it into the ocean. It’s surrounded by water, but on
the inside it’s still empty and dry. That’s sort of like what it can be like
for Christians who find themselves surrounded by Christian “things” and ideas,
or even in a gathering of other Christians, but on the inside they are still
empty and dry.
Even if you were to submerge that bottle deep into the center
of the ocean, it would be wet on the outside, but dry on the inside. What needs
to happen is for the bottle to be opened up so that the ocean can come flooding
inside.
Jesus is the Ocean. We are the bottle. We can get close to
Him and still not let Him inside. Total surrender is required for
transformation to begin.
And I say, “to begin” because this is a process not a onetime
event.
We allow the process to begin when we surrender our lives to
Jesus, die to everything that is our self, and open our hearts up to receive
His life, and His heart, and His presence.
We do not ask Jesus into our life, which is empty and dry
and weak, but instead we respond to Jesus as He invites us into His life which is
pure and eternal and abundant.
The Christian life is cultivated and nurtured and celebrated
daily. We spend time with Jesus. We talk to Him the way we talk to our closest
friend. We ask Him daily for help as we put His words into practice. We lean on
Him for wisdom. We turn to Him for comfort. We look to Him for everything.
Keep in mind that practicing the presence of God like this
will likely impact your behavior. It will facilitate the transformational power
of the Holy Spirit as you open yourself up more and more to His command and
control.
Any Christian who is consumed by this sort of attitude and
activity can’t help but experience more of Jesus in their daily life. Now just
imagine what would happen if a dozen or so other Christians who were also
practicing this sort of faith were to get together for a meeting with Jesus as
their functional head?
That’s what Organic Church is all about.
CORPORATE CONNECTIONS TO CHRIST.
When followers of Jesus are accustomed to encountering Jesus
like this seven days a week, it’s nothing out of the ordinary to put something
very similar into practice when they gather with others who are familiar with
the concept.
The New Testament describes for us in some detail what a
gathering of the Body of Christ should look like. In 1 Corinthians 12 through
14, Paul talks about the Church using the metaphor of a body where the head
(which is Christ) controls every member of his body (the members of the church)
as they operate together in ways that are various but necessary to the overall
health of the entire organism.
This means that a church is really only “the Body of Christ”
if it is submitted fully to the Head. If any church is not operating so that
Christ alone is the functional leader – and everyone in the church is operating
in their gifting as directed by the Holy Spirit – then that church is not
actually behaving like a Body. It might be acting like a corporate entity, a 501(c)3,
a business, or a bible study, but it’s not a Body.
When a group of practicing Christian disciples gather
together under Christ in order to see Him and hear Him and encounter Him, the
chances of doing so increase exponentially.
Obviously, if Christians are not practicing a daily
surrender to Christ in their personal lives, and if they are not gathering with
other Christians who are encountering Jesus in this way, and if when they
gather together they don’t all work together to experience Jesus in their midst
as their functional head…then there’s a very, very good chance that they won’t.
Having said that, let me admit something here: It doesn’t
always come together for us either.
Sometimes we realize that we’ve not been walking as close to
Jesus as we should. Sometimes we get together and we discover that most of us
have neglected to seek His face during the week – hey, it happens. We’re all
human. We get distracted. We get busy. We fall back into old habits and
formulas.
At other times we find that one person in the group isn’t as
focused on seeking Him as the rest of us are. In those cases we have grace. We
wait for them. We ask how they’re doing. We minister to them in love.
We don’t compare ourselves to them as if we are more holy
than they are. Mostly because we remember that we ourselves are prone to the
same failures and weaknesses.
Still at other times we can all be in the right place at the
right time and with the same intention and yet we don’t experience the power
and presence of Jesus the way we hoped we might.
Again, that’s ok. Our faith isn’t in an experience. Our
faith and our hope is in a person. We trust Him and we wait for Him. If He decides
to move among us, then we rejoice and we receive. If He decides to remain
silent, then we continue to wait on Him.
I think sometimes Jesus changes things up simply to keep us
from relying on formulas. People love formulas. But when we have a formula we
don’t need God.
Church isn’t about a formula, it is (once again) about a
person. Jesus is a person and so we learn to accommodate Him and to defer to
Him and to relate to Him as a person, not as a formula.
A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE
A few weeks ago our little group experienced the Headship of
Christ and it was really wonderful.
After our singing time, one of our sisters shared about a
message she had seen on someone’s t-shirt at the grocery store the previous
week. It said “Live what you love” and that little phrase stuck with her all
week. She began to meditate on how we should live our lives for Jesus and
follow Him because He is the One we love.
After that, another sister shared two verses from the New
Testament about love and talked about how the Lord had revealed more of His
love to her that week.
Then I jumped in because that morning I had been reading
through 1 John which is all about love and I read a few specific verses from
that book and shared my perspective on how important it is that we learn to
love one another.
Then one of our brothers shared what God had been showing
him last week as he read through the book of Hosea. After that another brother
shared what God had been showing him as he was reading a book about the prophet
Hosea, which dove-tailed beautifully into what everyone else was already
sharing.
We ended by praying for one of our other sisters who shared
a little from her heart about needing to be reminded of the love of God for her
– which is what we had all been talking about all morning long anyway!
As we laid hands on her, and read scriptures over her, and
even sang songs over her of God’s amazing and astounding love for her, everyone
was edified and blessed and touched by the Lord’s tender presence with us.
That was an incredible morning with the saints! And I wish I
could tell you that it happens like that every single week, but it doesn’t.
The good news is that it’s starting to happen more and more
often as we all begin to catch a vision for what the Lord intends for us as individuals
and as a corporate Body of believers.
-kg
**
NOTE: This blog is part of a Blogalogue Series of posts from Neil Cole, Richard Jacobson, Dan Herford, Jon Zens and myself.
The Topic: Encountering Jesus: Inside and Outside the Church
The Schedule:
Video Skype Roundtable discussion: Saturday March 14 or Sunday March 15
