I want to ask one question to start this blog out, okay here goes....Whats in a church ministry? Seriously, this question seems simple enough but in the end, it can be long and complicated. I will give you the simple answer; in the Bible in the book of Acts it talks about the early church and what the believers did to built the church upon, it says in chapter 2 verse 42 that "And they devoted themselves to the apostles teachings and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers". This seems simple enough to spit out and say 'lets do it!'. Personally I wish is was that easy but its not. The issue that first pops up in the early church was that they were all Jewish believers in the Messiah (Jesus, who was Jewish). Now as then the church is not, its mixed with Jewish and Gentile believers (non-Jews).
This is the issue that in this blog that I will deal with, there are many others that will be talked about in future blogs but for now I want to talk about cultural bearers. As a culture Jews were very family oriented, sabbath keepers (along with the rest of the torah), Rabbinically oriented in spiritual things; just to mention a few. With looking at just these three I will look to not necessarily handle what it was to be a Jewish believer in the 1st century church, but for us to understand that things were very different from the early church to the modern church, as has been an issue in the church from century to century. Like I said the early church did things different like meet in homes and also they would go to temple on Saturdays as to keep sabbath (sabbath was Friday sun down to Saturday sun up). This would just be plain weird for the church to do today nowadays (unless your a messianic Jew).
I want to say just as the early church dealt with contextual issues (Acts 6:1-6, 15:1-29) so do we in the modern church. Now don't get me wrong I'm not getting all emergent on people, but I do believe that we as the church need to deal with the emerging generation as what is commonly known as "the un-churched" (a term about people that didn't grow up in the church or within the confines of church terms/issues). First off , one of the biggest things is we do not live in a Christian nation, with Christian morals or Christian ethics. I make this bold a statement cause of the allowance of non-religious terms in everyday life, the pluralistic teachings we have in schools, the acceptance of sin in any form and the acceptance of non-Christian things from so called Christians. I'm not looking to beat up these so called Christians, I just want to make a point that America is not a Christian nation as so many think it is.
This issue is one that is tough as all cities and states are different. I can attest to this since I grew up in Cleveland, OH moved to Nyack, New York (just 30 minutes north of NYC) and now live in Colorado Springs, CO. One thing has remained the same and will always remain the same no matter where I live. The issue that we deal with sin everywhere we go and we also deal with fallen people in a fallen and depraved world. This will never change and will always influence what we do and who we talk to in our daily lives. What does change is the context of the sin and the sinner. What they like and what the don't like and even the depth of morals and ethics within the culture we are living. Like I said when answered my question at the beginning I mentioned the scripture are the early church from the book of Acts and I truly believe that is the answer but how it is carried out is what needs to be dealt with in great caution and with the utmost love for the people in the culture we live.
The teaching of the bible, prayer and fellowship is of great importance, but I would do it differently with the youth I worked with in NY then I would with the youth I work with in Colorado. The particulars I won't talk about here but a common theme within the scriptures we see specifically is Paul dealing with is culture and the gospel within that culture. The truth of Jesus never changes, but how its communicated is! Jesus is always without sin, God in flesh, substitutionary death on the cross, resurrection from the dead, accession to the right hand of the Father, the coming judgment of mankind and eternal bliss or eternal destruction will never change, but again the context of how that brought to people is different. In todays America you can street preach, but for the most part it won't be effective like it would have been 50-100 years ago (this is something I'm strong with and like to do, so its huge for me to say its not a good thing nowadays). One thing is that relationship are big to people of the younger generations (Gen X and younger).
These emerging generations are not people you can just earn trust with. You have to earn there trust through relationship and showing you care. There are many things that I have learned that I'm good but that just wouldn't work with todays culture most of the time. Another thing in the text we see is that in Acts 17, 18 and the later chapters when Paul was in Rome, he was using the culture to preach the gospel, but while he did that he knew the culture first before he went and preached to the culture. These things were even different in Paul's missionary journeys so we need to be sensitive with love and truth to all we come across.
With some of what I have said has been challenging over the past few months in various forms and various times and have had to ask myself one simple question that keeps me thinking; whats in a contextual church ministry? And how is that carried out in the context i'm ministering in? This question is one that I keep looking back to and can never forget cause just from when I was a teenager to my twenties to now my thirties things have changed more times then I can count. As you minister to God's people I pray and hope you aim to glorify our great God and savior, Jesus Christ!
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