First insight: Jesus is the church planter.
By meditating this week on Lk. 10:38-42, we are, I believe, living in a "house of peace". Spend a few moments looking at the picture above and imagining what it must have been like to be in that home in that moment.
The first insight that comes to me is that Jesus is functioning as a church planter here. For a long time, I never thought of Him in that role. Church planting was something that His disciples began to do in the book of Acts but it wasn't something that He did. It just didn't occur to me that they were doing exactly what they had seen Him do. ("... everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher." Lk. 6:40)
One reason that I hadn't thought of Jesus as a church planter was that the word "church" isn't used in passages like this one in Lk. 10. It doesn't say, "And, Jesus planted a church in Martha's home." But, as I began to think more deeply about the essential nature of "church", I came to a different conclusion. Speaking of Peter's home, Roger Gehring says, "...this house appears not only as the house of Peter and the home of Jesus but as the house of the new family of God as well." (House Church and Mission, p. 47.)
So, if church = a new family of God, then Jesus is certainly a church planter. And, He was doing the same thing in Martha's home that He did in Peter's home.
Jesus is the first church planter. He is the first apostle (Heb. 3:1). As you look at the picture above, you are seeing a church planter at work.
And, when we plant churches, we are simply following His example.
Your thoughts?
John
Awesome! I've never before seen this encounter though the lens of Jesus as a church planter. I suspect there are many, many more situations like this that have been overlooked because we have all worn the "rose colored" glasses of institutionalism for so long...
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that jumps out at me from the Luke 10 passage, looking at it from a fresh perspective, is the fact that the most important thing that should should be at the center of our House meetings is the person of Jesus Christ. Pretty basic, yet we can become distracted from the centrality of Christ so easily. Getting food together for the group, thinking about what I am going to share, what are the kids doing..etc.. It seems to go back to the idea of listening to Him first and formost. Letting Christ have His proper place at our table. Mary got this and Martha didn't.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding Jesus as a church planter is an important shift for us.
ReplyDeleteNoah - That's exactly right! Gehring makes the point that Jesus established "families of God" (house churches) in Galilee (Peter's home - Mk. 1:29-31), Judea (Martha and Mary's home, Simon the Leper's home - Mark 14:3), the Decapolis (the home of the demon delivered man (Lk 8:38-39) and probably many more.
ReplyDeleteWade - Yes! The person of Jesus is at the center. Our first job is to listen to Him like Mary. Everything else flows from this. We don't start with eating or teaching or singing or mission. We start with listening.
Hobby - I agree! If Jesus is our model for ministry, then this understanding has huge implications!
I am feeling lost in trying to see how "church" equals a new family of God. I have looked at this a number of times in several documents now and I am just not connecting the birth of a a new family of God directly with being house church. Why does Gehring making this correlation make it so? I welcome some illumination here.
ReplyDeleteLancia