Part 3
We need an environment where we sense the freedom to be who we are, within boundaries framed by values and a common goal. We need to feel we are safe and supported as whole people who have significant things to contribute, despite our differences. We need to be creative. And we need to communicate with all kinds of people who have information we do not, because none of us knows everything. We need each other. And we need an environment around us that acknowledges and supports these facts.
–Bill Thrall
GOD’S PRESENCE
“Effective leadership teams look to Scripture and Christian theology for their direction and shape. The culture of the church is thoroughly biblical, and who we are as leaders and how we operate must be firmly grounded in Scriptures. The biblical and theological model for team-based ministry…is based on the triune nature of God” (Cladis, 3). Realistically, the first place to start looking for an example that best represents an example of community is in the trinity with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. J. Hampton Keathley, III, Th.M. makes the following observations:
Before the creation of any being, angel or human, there was revelation and communication taking place within the Persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, and so on with the Spirit. When, in the eternal decrees of God, He willed to create a universe with angelic and human beings, it was merely the expression of this very nature of God.
So if God is a fellowship within himself he can let that fellowship go out to his creatures and communicate himself to them according to their capacity to receive. This is what happened supremely when he came to redeem men: he let his fellowship bend down to reach outcast man and lift him up. And so because God is a Trinity he has something to share: it is his own life and communion. It means that the Trinity is the basis of all true fellowship in the world.
Since God is within himself a fellowship, it means that his moral creatures that are made in his image find fullness of life only within a fellowship. This is reflected in marriage, in the home, in society and above all in the church whose koinonia is built upon the fellowship of the three Persons. Christian fellowship is, therefore, the divinest thing on earth, the earthly counterpart of the divine life, as Christ indeed prayed for his followers: ‘That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us’ (John 17:21).
Perhaps the most common icon created to represent the Godhead was a triangle. Originally the three sides were meant to represent God’s unity. However, I personally believe a more accurate icon would be that of a circle. It effectively represents God’s three distinct components as bound together in a common sharing and loving relationship. A circle is inclusive. No one is left out. All are spatially interconnected and hold each other up. There is no top and bottom. Each has a unique purpose and fulfill their purposes in perfect unity without division, jealousy, quarreling, or tension.
When someone says, “I miss you,” what do they mean? They are not telling you that they miss your memory. They are telling you they miss you—your presence. Nothing can really substitute for actual presence. Gifts are nice. Speaking on the phone is fine and even pictures are acceptable reminders but are, at best, poor substitutes for a person’s presence. The same is true with regard to the presence of God.
From the time of their creation until the time of their disobedience Adam and Eve experienced the wonderful presence of God (Genesis 1:28-31; 2:15-19; 3:8-9). However, part of their punishment was their removal from the Garden of Eden. “So the LORD God sent them out of the Garden of Eden, where they would have to work the ground from which the man had been made” (Genesis 3:23 CEV). According to Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, “This signified the exclusion of [Adam], and all his guilty race, from that communion with God which was the bliss and glory of paradise” (e-Sword.net Bible Software).
God’s presence is notable in both the Old and New Testaments. During Israel’s march from Egypt to the Promised Land, He was present in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21,22; 40:38). Moses and the children of Israel experienced the presence of God at the entrance to the tabernacle (Exodus 33:9). When Israel faced the possibility of moving forward without God’s presence, Moses balked at the thought, as though it was too terrible to consider. “If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence” (Exodus 33:15 KJV). Apparently he knew that without the presence of God they were not safe. Moses’ attitude seemed to be: Better to lie down and die here in the wilderness than go forward to Canaan without God's presence. Both the Tabernacle and the Temple became primary symbols of God’s presence among his people (Psalm 63:2).
Eventually Israel failed to satisfy God’s righteous expectations of them, and they forfeited the presence of God resulting in the fall of Jerusalem, the temple’s destruction, and exile. No longer was Israel a people distinguished by the presence of the Living God.
Jesus came to earth to establish, once again, God’s presence among his people. Only they weren't swift to realize this truth. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:10, 11 KJV). But his coming fulfilled a prophecy of Jeremiah:
The LORD said: “Here is the new agreement that I, the LORD, will make with the people of Israel: I will write my laws on their hearts and minds. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they have to teach one another to obey me. I, the LORD, promise that all of them will obey me, ordinary people and rulers alike. I will forgive their sins and forget the evil things they have done" (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
The fact that Israel did not receive Jesus as their messiah, eventually led to their rejection of him and his ultimate death. His death actually became the means whereby God instituted his new covenant with his people. “After the meal, Jesus took a cup of wine in his hands and said, ‘This is my blood, and with it God makes his new agreement with you. Drink this and remember me’" (1 Corinthians 11:25 CEV my emphasis).
This leads to an important question about presence. If Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:13) making intercession for his people (Romans 8:34), who is present to meditate this new covenant? The answer is found in the fourteenth and the sixteenth chapters of the Gospel of John:
I tell you for certain that if you have faith in me, you will do the same things that I am doing. You will do even greater things, now that I am going back to the Father. Ask me, and I will do whatever you ask. This way the Son will bring honor to the Father. I will do whatever you ask me to do. Jesus said to his disciples: If you love me, you will do as I command. Then I will ask the Father to send you the Holy Spirit who will help you and always be with you. The Spirit will show you what is true. The people of this world cannot accept the Spirit, because they don't see or know him. But you know the Spirit, who is with you and will keep on living in you (John 14:12-17 CEV my emphasis).
But I tell you that I am going to do what is best for you. That is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you. The Spirit will come and show the people of this world the truth about sin and God's justice and the judgment (John 16:7, 8 CEV my emphasis).
The Holy Spirit has become the very means by which God’s presence is here and now on planet earth. Gordon Fee suggests, “While the death of Christ was how God’s new covenant was instituted with his people, the presence of the Holy Spirit is the way that covenant is realized in and among them” (15). “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them (Ezekiel 36:26, 27 KJV). “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:2, 3 KJV).
Reggie McNeal, in his book The Present Future makes this rather startling claim:
The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money, and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. …The imminent demise under discussion is the collapse of the unique culture in North America that has come to be called church. This church culture has become confused with biblical Christianity…. In reality, the church culture in North America is a vestige of the original movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose political worldview and lifestyle match theirs (1).
If his characterization of the church is true, it is quite an indictment. What, then, is the purpose of the church as seen through the eyes of Jesus?
First, the purpose of the church is to be totally committed to joining God in his redemptive mission in the world. It means, according to N. T. Wright in his book The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is:
[Getting] used to a mission that includes living in the postmodern world the true Christian praxis (a habitual way of behaving). Christian praxis consists in the love of God in Christ being poured out in us and through us all. …We must get used to living as those who have truly died and risen with Christ so that our self, having been thoroughly deconstructed, can be put back together, not by the agendas that the world presses upon us but by God’s Spirit” (169).
Secondly, the purpose of the church is to become a people of God’s unique presence in and through the Holy Spirit. Wright observes, “…in order that truth might be easily glimpsed, not as a set of doctrines or theories but as a person and as persons indwelt by that person” (170). God intends the church to be more than a building fashioned to facilitate churchy activities; it is to be a community of people with a genuine, observable spiritual vitality. The early believers did not have buildings called “churches;” nor did they “go to church.” They were the church! And today’s believers are still the church, God’s temple(s), inhabited by his Spirit. God’s purpose is to have a people, an enduringly powerful community, who are marked, motivated, and moved by the Holy Spirit’s presence to reach out redemptively into the entire world.
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you (John 20:19-21 KJV my emphasis).
And what are we sent to do? According to Wright we are sent to:
…[Shape] our world in the power of the Spirit; and when the final consummation comes, the work that [we] have done, whether in Bible study or biochemistry, whether in preaching or in pure mathematics, whether in digging ditches or in composing symphonies, will stand, will last (181).
And we are still the church; God’s temple, inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and commissioned to take the Gospel of Christ to all who are spiritually lost.
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