• About
  • Books

memoirandremains

memoirandremains

Tag Archives: Total Church

The Church as the Family of God

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Francis Schaeffer, John, Love, Sanctification

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1 Peter 4:3-4, 1 Peter 4:8-11, Christopher W. Morgan, Display of God, Ephesians 4:1-6, Fellowship of Faith, Francis Schaeffer, images of the church, James W. Thompso, John 13:34-35, love, Love of God, Luke 12:51-53, Mark of a Christian, one-another, Sanctification, The Church According to Paul, The Community of Jesus, The Family of God, Tim Chester, Total Church, Unity

Some rough draft notes on a lecture on the image of the church as a family.

The Church as the Family of God has two elements:

  1. It displays God visibly – particularly the love of God.
  2. It effects of the love of God.

1.  The Display of the Love of God

The Church is a witnessing community.

The Church exists to display the glory of God.

In The Community of Jesus, “The Church and God’s Glory”, Christopher W. Morgan notes five ways in which the Church displays God’s glory:

  1. Our salvation glorifies God by displaying the inexhaustible nature of his grace throughout the age to come.
  2. The very existence as the church glorifies God by displaying his wisdom.
  3. Our unity glorifies God by displaying his oneness.
  4. Our love glorifies God by displaying his love.
  5. Our holiness glorifies God by displaying his holiness. (232-233).

Interestingly it is household of God, the family of God imagery which Scripture uses to underscore and display God’s glory.

Continue reading →

The Community Aspect of Biblical Spirituality

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Fellowship, Sanctification, Worship

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

community, Fellowship, Hearing God's words, Maturity, Peter Adams, Sanctification, Tim Chester, Total Church

God’s love for the individual as a consequence of the gospel, not the heart of the Gospel. This has big implications for evangelicalism, which has always prided itself on getting the gospel right. Here it has particular implications for spirituality, for it means that genuine biblical spirituality will reflect an express this corporate gospel. Many traditions of spirituality 10 towards individualism: evangelical spirituality, if it is biblical, I’ll not fall into the same trap. Stanley Grenz tells us that spirituality for a post modern age will need to be communitarian rather than individualistic, and Christianity that is lived as well as believed. This is biblical spirituality.

Peter Adams, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality

This community spirituality clearly requires a certain level of relationship. We need to be sharing our lives. We need to be with other Christians “daily.” We need friendships that are real, open, and intimate. We need to give one another license to dig into our lives and challenge our hearts. We need leaders who foster this culture by giving and receiving this daily exhortation, who lead not only from their pulpits but with their lives. The word of God needs not only to be central to church life but thoroughly to pervade every aspect of it.

Chester, Tim; Timmis, Steve (2008-08-21). Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community (Re:Lit) (Kindle Locations 2117-2120). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

A Community of Evangelism

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Book Review, Evangelism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Book Review, community, Evangelism, Ministry, Tim Chester, Total Church

In their book Total Church, Tim Chester & Steve Timmis discusse evangelism in a way a bit different than how we typically discuss it. Their overall point in the book is that the Gospel creates a type of “life together” (to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase). The community created by the Gospel is the basic orientation of each member of the church (he contrasts this with a church as a “preaching center” where people appear once a week to get their “spiritual groceries” and then go back to their real lives).

This works out in evangelism as the entire congregation is participant in evangelism. Rather than evangelism being a only proclamation, “Jesus died for you” (they by no means discount the actual proclamation), the proclamation is embodied in the congregation (all of them) (John 13:35).

The gospel word and the gospel community are closely connected. The word creates and nourishes the community, while the community proclaims and embodies the word. The church is the mother of all believers, Calvin asserted, in that she “brings them to new birth by the Word of God, educates and nourishes them all their life, strengthens them and finally leads them to complete perfection.” Martin Luther believed that “The church . . . is constituted by the Word.” He also likened the church to a mother “who gives birth to you and bears you through the Word.”

The evangelism he envisions is actually more demanding, not less demanding that what we typically think of as evangelism:

Continue reading →

Where does my little life fit?

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ecclesiology, Tim Chester, Total Church

This radical, God- centered perspective, Wright [in The Mission of God] suggests, “turns inside out and upside down some of the common ways in which we are accustomed to think about the Christian life. . . . It constantly forces us to open our eyes to the big picture, rather than shelter in the cosy narcissism of our own small worlds.”

We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?,” when the real question is “Where does my little life fit into this great story of God’s mission?”

We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives, when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.

We talk about “applying the Bible to our lives.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality— the real story— to which we are called to conform ourselves?

Tim Chester, Total Church

The Gospel Takes Words

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Envangelism, Ministry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Envangelism, Tim Chester, Total Church

Francis of Assisi is alleged to have said, “Preach the gospel always; if necessary use words.” That may be a great medieval sound bite, but it falls short of what the Bible teaches about evangelism. Jesus began his public ministry by “proclaiming the good news of God” (Mark 1: 14). When he gained a reputation as a miracle-worker , his response was to leave the area so he could give himself to the task of proclamation, for “that is why I have come” (Mark 1: 38). And the risen Lord left his disciples with the specific commission to go to the nations, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28: 20).

There is a tendency in some quarters today to promote a kind of evangelism without proclamation. Acts of service are done or people are invited to experience Christian worship. But without words of explanation these are like signposts pointing nowhere or, worse still, signposts pointing to our good works. The gospel is good news— a message to be proclaimed, a truth to be taught, a word to be spoken, and a story to be told.

Chester, Tim; Timmis, Steve (2008-08-21). Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community (Re:Lit) (Kindle Locations 668-675). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

  • Edward Taylor, Meditation 33
  • Richard Sibbes, The Backsliding Sinner, 2.3
  • Richard Sibbes, The Backsliding Sinner 2.2
  • Dylan Thomas, To Be Encompassed by the Brilliant Earth
  • Richard Sibbes, The Returning Backslider 2.1

Blog at WordPress.com.