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Church Chat [Ecclesiology]

Articles of Church Membership

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When you think about “church”, do you think about “a” church or “the” church? Or both? Which most often? And does it matter which term we use when?

Here are some quotes from a book I’m starting to read:

I’d argue that a general inability to articulate what distinguishes any gathering of believers from a local church is at the root of the confusion surrounding the relationship between baptism and church membership. We can’t very well articulate what makes a church a church, so we struggle to see why anyone who appears to be a Christian should ever be excluded from one. But… baptism and the Lord’s Supper are themselves the hinge between ‘Christian’ and ‘church.’ Together baptism and the Lord’s Supper mark off a church as a unified, visible, local body of believers…

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper structure the church. Scripture teaches that baptism is the front door of the church, and the Lord’s Supper is the family meal… Removing baptism from membership erases the line Jesus himself has drawn between the church and the world.  —Bobby Jamieson, [amazon text=Going Public: Why Baptism Is Required for Church Membership&asin=1433686201] (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2015), pp. 2-3.

Twenty pages into this book, I’m agreeing with much that I read. [Update: Here is my review after reading the entire book.] Baptist author Jamieson has obviously thought long and hard about his topic, and I’m learning things. But excerpts like the ones above are frustrating me, triggering questions like the following:

  • Are we talking about “a” church or “the” church when we talk about “membership”? (Notice how both articles are used, and apparently interchangeably.)
  • Is baptism the line between “church” and “Christian,” or between “church” and “the world”? (Both are asserted above.) If the former, does this leave some Christians in the world? If the latter, then how can some Christians be rightly excluded from church (either “a” or “the”)?

Here is a dependent clause from later (p. 19) that is easy to read right over without noting the same sort of problem:

…When churches ask, ‘Who is a member of the new covenant?’ in order to extend membership to them…

My wife has been trained well. When I read that to her, she asked, “So, are there two kinds of membership?”

Exactly. Notice the two “member” words in the quote, one describing a membership that “is” and the other describing a membership that has not yet been “extended.”

So, when Jamieson is talking about “membership,” is it membership in Christ’s church (“the”), or membership in some local church (“a”)? What about when we speak of membership? Which way does the Bible use the language of membership? Or does it somewhere distinguish between two kinds of membership, so that we can talk of both? If so, where?

Perhaps a better way to write that clause would be like this: “…When churches ask, ‘Who is a member of the new covenant?’ in order to publicly recognize the membership they already possess as members of Christ’s church…”

In proposing this wording, I’m assuming what the author has made clear in context: that we are talking about someone who has been baptized, and about a local church responding to such an already-baptized person.

I’m also proposing that the church—representatives of Christ’s church, to be more precise—act as God’s agents when they baptize new believers into the new covenant Church of Christ. Notice that last phrase: “the new covenant Church of Christ.” This means that I’m also proposing the following:

  • Baptism is designed to be and mark the entrance into both the new covenant and church (both “a” and “the”).
  • The entrance into both (new covenant and church) happens at the same time.
  • You can’t truly belong to either one without truly belonging to the other.
  • Churches should do their best to reflect this reality in their membership practices.

Of course, such assertions need rigorous biblical support, which I am not providing in this brief post.

For now, I mainly want to point out this: Sometimes it is way we use little things like articles (“a” or “the”) and possessive pronouns (“our” or “Christ’s”) that most powerfully shape and reveal our deepest assumptions and priorities. Therefore, pay attention to your “articles of the faith”!

As I continue reading Jamieson’s book, here is my goal: Since I already agree with his main point about the integral connection between baptism and church membership, I’m going to listen closely to what he understands about membership and its relationship to the local and/or universal church. I think both Baptists and Mennonites have things to learn here.

Thanks for listening in to my unfinished thoughts. Share your insights or questions in the comments below.

Book Reviews, Church Chat [Ecclesiology]

A Fellowship of Differents — McKnight (Review)

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McKnight, Scot. A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014). 265 pp. Publisher’s description. (Amazon new price: $15.92 hardcover, $7.99 Kindle, cheaper used.) [amazon template=add to cart1&asin=0310277671]

This idea, that Paul’s mission was a mixed assembly of differents, lies at the core of my beliefs about how the whole Bible works… Are we willing to embrace the diversity of the church as the very thing God most wants? (pp. 89, 91, italics in original, bold added)

The need for the the Church to become more unified is, thankfully, receiving some long-overdue attention. This book is NT scholar Scot McKnight’s contribution to the topic.

[amazon template=image&asin=0310277671]

McKnight is widely-known in at least three ways: As a blogger, as an author of biblical commentaries, and as an author of popular-level books on the Christian life, the atonement, and Bible interpretation. This book falls into the third category: books written for the church rather than the academy. Prior to this book, I had only read McKnight via his other two categories: his blog and his commentaries.

My impression of McKnight prior to this book was mixed, and so is my impression of this book. (I have enjoyed McKnights’s emphasis on the kingdom of God, some of his challenges to Calvinist thinking, and his emphasis on the social and ethical aspects of Christian transformation. I am less than happy with things like his adoption of gender role egalitarianism or his promotion of evolutionary creationism.)

So, what do I think about A Fellowship of Differents?

Some things I like:

  • The emphasis that church life shapes our understanding of the the Christian life. Examples: Highly emotional revival meetings that call people to pray the Sinner’s Prayer might teach us to think of salvation as only a one-time event. Congregations where everyone looks the same (class, ethnicity) might lead us to overlook what the NT says about the radical social composition of Jesus’ Church. What I experience in church shapes what I think Christianity is all about.
  • The challenge to consider who is invisible both in the Church and in our congregations. McKnight mentions the Hampton Ministers’ Conference, “the longest running pastors’ conference in the USA, attended by seven thousand” (p. 18). I’d never heard of it. Neither had McKnight until recently. Why? Certainly, in part (there are also theological reasons), because McKnight and I are white while this 101-year-old conference focuses on the needs of the African-American church. Closer to home: Who might be invisible in my own congregation? Widows and widowers? Children? Races? Women? The poor? Urban? Suburban? Rural? (Win!) Those with higher education? Those with less? Those battling sexual temptation or confusion? Introverts? The abused? The depressed?
  • The challenge to get our of our just-like-me comfort zones. McKnight quotes a confession from Christena Cleveland from her recent book Disunity in Christ (which is also on my wish list): “I chose to build community with people with whom I could pretty much agree on everything” (p. 32). Ouch. Or this: “Genuine friendships, which are two-way, are always transformative. One reason, then, we don’t love those unlike us in the church is because we don’t want their presence rubbing off on us” (p. 59).
  • Helpful insights on the Lord’s Supper. I enjoyed the extended quotation of Justin Martyr’s record of a second-century Christian gathering. First came the Word, then came the Table, and then came Offerings. Woven through the whole account are clauses displaying Christian unity: “We always keep together… All who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place… We all rise together and pray… There is a distribution to each… and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons… we all hold our common assembly” (pp. 102-103). “The Eucharist—as an action, as symbols, as an event—gospels to all those who observe and to all those who participate” (p. 101). The gospel binds us together, and the Supper is to be eaten together (1 Cor. 11:33).
  • Some good exegesis and pastoral advice about same-sex attraction. McKnight includes a whole chapter on sexual matters, much of it devoted to the sub-topic of same-sex matters. I didn’t think the chapter was perfect, but it does reflect a clear stance both that same-sex acts are sinful and that the Church must grow in loving and supporting repentant same-sex Christians. I am glad to see McKnight speak clearly on this topic.
  • A powerful story from Greg Boyd about transformation by grace. The words “there is now no condemnation for them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1) were the key that led to Boyd’s gradual freedom from pornography (pp. 152-53).
  • A reminder that “the best way to be political is to be the church” (p. 187). Both “kingdom” and “church” were political terms, after all.
  • Some good quoteables. Such as: “Joy… is a church-shaped disposition. Only folks in the church can experience what Paul means by joy” (p. 234).

Some things I didn’t like:

  • Careless or inconsistent editing. Examples: The first line on the back cover is an endorsement that begins, “This is [sic] most important book…” (Missing “the.”) On pages 40 and 72 Bible references are unhelpfully buried in endnotes, though often included elsewhere in the main text. On page 52 McKnight says, “Take Paul at his word. Love is the ‘only thing that counts.'” Paul actually said “faith working through love” is the only thing that counts (Gal. 5:6). On page 70 we read, “Some elements of our covenant love commitment of presence include spending our evenings together…” The wording suggests a list, which never comes. On page 98 a story begins in present tense but switches mid-sentence to past tense. On page 141 we are promised some italicized words in a Bible quote, but none are included. More examples of awkward syntax are found on pages 227 and 228.
  • Exaggeration. Examples: “God has designed the church—and this is the heart of Paul’s mission—to be a fellowship of difference and difference” (p. 16). Was church diversity really the very heart of Paul’s mission? Is “the diversity of the church” really “the very thing God most wants” (see above)? Might we be missing a deeper goal that makes diversity meaningful and necessary? And is inclusion of differents really “the church’s biggest challenge” (p. 25)? Don’t get me wrong, I am fully on board that church diversity is a crucial implication of the core gospel message. But these kinds of overstatements put me on the defensive, making me weigh more carefully everything else the author writes.
  • A bit of self-promotion. McKnight describes a book written by a friend, called The Gospel of Yes. “It’s the best title of a book I’ve ever seen (except for The Blue Parakeet).” Which happens to be McKnight’s book.
  • Casual tone. I’m probably just the wrong reader for this book (on page 38 McKnight says “maybe you’ve not read Paul’s story enough to know the details”), but I confess some of these kind of try-to-make-you-laugh comments fall flat with me. Another example: On page 148 McKnight introduces the “circumcision party,” “which ought to be self-explanatory (#ouch).” After describing the circumcision party, he includes this “(#intimidating).” McKnight seemed concerned not to be too formal, so sometimes this book feels like a series of extended blog posts.
  • Uninformative chapter titles. A chapter called “Teacher with the Big Fancy Hat” turns out to be about suffering. Another called “On a Walk with Kris” turns out to be about joy. This might make you curious, but doesn’t help you trace the book’s big idea, nor review content later.
  • Unclear statements about God’s love. On page 34 McKnight quotes Romans 8:31 (“If God is for us, who can be against us?”). In context, Paul writes this to those who have been justified by faith and are walking in the Spirit. But McKnight’s application sounds more general: “God loves everyone.” On the following page he elaborates (in center-justified, bold text as follows) with words that sound more like Joel Osteen than Paul the apostle:

No matter what you have done,
not because you go to church,
not because you read your Bible,
not because folks think you are spiritual,

and

no matter what sins you have committed,
no matter how vicious or mean or vile they were,
no matter how calloused your heart and soul have become,

God loves you.

Not because you are good,
not because you do good things,
not because you are famous or have served others,
but because you are you.

To you, God has said Yes,
God is saying Yes,
and God will eternally say Yes.

God is for the You that is You.

  • Missing balance about church boundaries. McKnight says he originally planned to include a chapter on obedience (see here). I think this book would be much more balanced if it included such a chapter, along with a discussion of the role of church discipline when the diverse people who join our churches don’t faithfully follow the words and way of Jesus. I felt there were too many unqualified statements like this: “As long as one was on the journey toward sexual redemption, Paul was encouraging. At the house churches they didn’t put up a sign that said ‘For the Morally Kosher Only'” (p. 129). Or this: “What Jesus and the apostles taught was that you were welcomed because the church welcomed all to the table” (p. 17). In contrast, buried in a footnote are these words about the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) from Justin Martyr: “No one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that  the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined” (p. 252). If only McKnight had included and discussed such things in his main text! To be fair, McKnight clarifies that love does not mean “toleration” (p. 130); it means helping another experience positive change. But I didn’t notice that McKnight anywhere said what to do if a person in the church resists or seems indifferent to any such growth in holiness.
  • Lack of discussion of the universal church. At one point McKnight writes, “I hope you agree with me that the hope for the world is the local church, and that the heart of God’s plan is found in creating a whole new society in a local church” (p. 188). Interestingly, Ben Witherington, a NT scholar and friend of McKnight, pushed back on this point: “At one point in the book, you say that the local church is the hope of the world. For a minute I thought that was a slip up, and you meant to say Christ is. Talk to us a bit about the interface between Christ and his body, between Christology and your vision of ecclesiology. For my part I would prefer to say that the local church at its best is simply the local expression of ‘the one true church apostolic and universal’. In other words I would not want to talk about church with a little c without talking about church with a big C, though I would agree that, like politics, in one sense all churches are local.” In a subsequent online conversation I had with Witherington, he agreed with me that part of the problem is our tendency to read the “membership” and “body of Christ” language in the NT as referring to the local church, when really such language strongly implies the universal church. There is only one Head of the Church, right? And a head can only have one body?
  • Strong (and poorly defended) assertions about gender equality. McKnight seems to feel that any distinction in gender roles is a denial of gender equality in Christ—a position that, barring hermeneutical gymnastics, leaves Paul contradicting himself. The following quote even suggests that God’s creation order falls short of his plan for us in Christ (this despite the fact that Paul repeatedly cites creation as the basis for his statements about gender roles!): “In creation God ‘gendered’ us into male and female, but in the new creation, God makes us one” (p. 90). You’d be hard pressed to find those two ideas connected with a “but” in the Bible, except perhaps by implication in Christ’s discussion of life after death. “Sexual differences” have “been transcended,” writes McKnight (p. 91). But I’m left without help to know how to such statements to what McKnight writes later: “One in Christ does not mean Paul ceases being male, nor does Junia cease being a female” (95). True, identity, gender or otherwise, is not eradicated in Christ. But, for McKnight, unlike Paul, identity apparently has nothing to do with roles. As has often been pointed out, such a re-reading of Paul also means that one has little hermeneutical basis for denying that Paul’s words affirm homosexual role relationships when he says that “there is no male and female” in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28). Enough on this for now.
  • Salad-bowl feel. Mcknight rightly wants us to adopt a vision of the church as a salad bowl full of diversity. Unfortunately his book felt like a bit of a salad bowl to me, as if he was pulling together a handful of semi-related topics for publication. (Is this true of McKnights earlier books? Or is this the symptom of a popular author who feels pressured to keep the books coming?) The title of the book suggests the book is about diversity and unity in the church. But the back cover suggests other themes: “McKnight shares his personal experience of church and offers to the church a thorough study of what the Apostle Paul writes about the Christian life… Ultimately, McKnight raises two significant questions: What is the church supposed to be? and If the church is what it is supposed to be, what does the Christian life look like?” Wow. with those questions, you can include about anything you want. I think this book would be more compelling if it focused more narrowly on unity and diversity in the church. For example: More hands-on stories of churches wrestling with diversity would help. I think the survey of Paul’s writings could have been more focused on this topic, as well. And sometimes when wide-ranging topics were included (love, grace, suffering, joy–all main themes of either chapters or whole parts of the book), a stronger and clearer connection should have been made with the theme of church diversity. On page 43, I scribbled in the margin, “What does this powerful story have to do with the book’s thesis?” The book could also be improved by a concluding chapter that ties the disparate themes together.

This book has good sections, but is not great.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Have you read this book? Do you want to comment on the book or the ideas in this review? Share your insights here.

Disclosures: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Church Chat [Ecclesiology]

The Schleitheim Confession: Who May Share the Lord’s Supper?

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Who should be included in the Lord’s Supper? As I’ve been researching today for my promised essay on Mennonites and ordinances, I came across this answer in the Schleitheim Confession (the earliest Anabaptist statement of faith):

Concerning the breaking of bread, we have become one and agree thus: all those who desire to break the one bread in remembrance of the broken body of Christ and all those who wish to drink of one drink in remembrance of the shed blood of Christ, they must beforehand be united in the one body of Christ, that is the congregation of God, whose head is Christ, and that by baptism. For as Paul indicates, we cannot be partakers at the same time of the table of the Lord and the table of devils. Nor can we at the same time partake and drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. That is: all those who have fellowship with the dead works of darkness have no part in the light. Thus all those who follow the devil and the world, have no part with those who have been called out of the world unto God. All those who lie in evil have no part in the good.

So it shall and must be, that whoever does not share the calling of the one God to one faith, to one baptism, to one spirit, to one body together with all the children of God, may not be made one loaf together with them, as must be true if one wishes truly to break bread according to the command of Christ.

I find it interesting how this statement affirms two realities at the same time: (a) Not everyone has a right to take part in breaking bread and (b) there is only “one body of Christ” composed of “all the children of God.”

On the one hand, there is a warning that those who “have fellowship with the dead works of darkness” have no right to the Lord’s Table. It is easy to understand this concern, given how the Roman Catholic mass was extended to all citizens within the Holy Roman Empire, holy and unholy alike. Latter in the Schleitheim Confession this separation from evil is described in very specific language:

…Everything which has not been united with our God in Christ is nothing but an abomination which we should shun. By this are meant all popish and repopish works and idolatry, gatherings, church attendance, winehouses, guarantees and commitments of unbelief, and other things of the kind, which the world regards highly, and yet which are carnal or flatly counter to the command of God, after the pattern of all the iniquity which is in the world. From all this we shall be separated…

The second concern, the concern for unity, may seem less expected. After all, this confession was written by believers that had just broken off from what everyone else thought was the church. But this concern for oneness is also clearly stated: Anyone who does not “share” in “one body together with all the children of God” is not eligible to break bread. Perhaps significantly, no mention is made of sharing a oneness merely with one specific congregation; the vision of these Anabaptists extended to all who belonged to Christ. In this context this meant, at minimum [?], that scattered, rapidly-growing, loosely-connected network of what we now call Anabaptist congregations, which at the time were not formally united into one denomination or church alliance. [Edit: For a more accurate nuance than what I initially wrote here, see Kevin Brendler’s comment below, with my response. You can find the notes Brendler mentions by following the Schleitheim Confession link above.]

The Schleitheim Confession cites Paul as it expresses its warning against the dead works of darkness. In 1 Corinthians 10:14-22 Paul includes these words:

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (v. 21)

The Schleitheim Confession’s concern for oneness springs equally from Paul, borrowing language from Ephesians 4:4-6. Paul also expresses this concern in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, where his primary concern is that the Lord’s Supper is being observed in a way that divides believers from one another. Rich believers are consuming the bread and wine of the church love feast without waiting for their poor, tardy brothers! This  selfish practice is so at odds with the sacrificial, serving nature of Christ’s death that the Corinthians are supposedly remembering that Paul wonders whether they are even discerning the signified presence of the Lord’s body in the bread and wine that they are consuming! How can they keep the bread and wine of the supper to themselves when Jesus did not keep his own body from them–when he shared it freely, even unto death?

The framers of the Schleithheim Confession were right to emphasize both holiness and unity. They were right to say that both walking in darkness and being disunited from the one body of Christ make one ineligible for the Lord’s Supper.

But look again. Perhaps most amazingly, these early Anabaptists did not describe these two prerequisites as conflicting values. Rather, they linked them as inseparable:

…They must beforehand be united in the one body of Christ, that is the congregation of God, whose head is Christ, and that by baptism. For as Paul indicates, we cannot be partakers at the same time of the table of the Lord and the table of devils. (emphasis added)

Note the linking word “for.” We could paraphrase these sentences like this: They must be united to the one Church because they must not be unholy. The implication is clear: You are either part of Christ’s one church, or you are unholy. There is no such thing as a holy Christian who has no concern to be united in “one body together with all the children of God.” And there is no such thing as a member of that one body of Christ who is too unholy to take part in the Lord’s Supper.

Since the Roman Catholic Church had dominated Europe for centuries with its strong emphasis on the singularity of the one true Church, these Anabaptists were very clear about the unity of all true believers. Since they had just left that church to escape its entrenched sins, they were clear on the need for holiness. Both concerns were expressed clearly in their qualifications for sharing in the Lord’s Supper.

What about your church? Is it clear on the unity of all true believers? Is it also clear that all members of Christ’s body will do the deeds of light? Are these truths pitted against each other or seen as inseparable? And are both truths clearly displayed whenever you share the Lord’s Supper?

Thank you for reading! I welcome your insights in the comments below.