Riverside Church desires to become a family of Spirit-transformed communities to impact our world through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like villages along a river, we connect to each other through the sustaining power of Christ's love. We exist for the glory of Jesus Christ and the good of neighbors, nations, and the next generation because we believe that "where the River flows, everything will live..." (Ezekiel 47:9)
Would you like to get an overview of the whole Bible broken down into daily readings? Each week we'll post a new Reading Schedule on the front page of our website with 7 daily readings from the Bible. Beginning June 1st we'll start with Genesis and continue with each book of the Bible in order until we finish Revelation. Our goal is to complete the survey by the start of Advent at the end of November.
I have a good friend who thinks that what we typically refer to as our "church" is really just a parachurch organization. I tend to agree with him. Here's what he means:
Generally speaking, what we refer to as "the church" is an organization with a paid and volunteer leadership who develop and direct programs in which the members of the organization participate in a particular place or building. (Notice that this definition includes churches of all sizes, from the small, rural church with one bi-vocational pastor to the urban or suburban mega-church with a staff of hundreds.) But biblically speaking, the church is the body of Christ, the people, the organism that lives and moves and has its being within the structure provided by the organization.
Think about it. What do you and I call the place to which we travel for worship on Sundays? Have you ever said something like, "Our church is having VBS this week" or "When is the church going to replace those old choir robes with new ones?" or "Have you been tithing to the church?" or "There sure are a lot of churches in this part of town." True, we could be referring to the group of people who are members of our local body, but it seems all too easy to slip into the mindset that the organization is the church and not the people.
If the people of the church (the organism) are really the church, then the organization of the church as I have defined it is really a parachurch organization. Para- means "alongside" and parachurch is a term that has been given to groups and organizations who "come alongside" the church to aid her in her mission. We typically think of groups like Young Life, Chirstian schools and seminaries, and mission boards as parachurch organizations because they do not claim to be churches, but rather servants of local churches and of the Church at large.
So then, the organization with a paid and volunteer leadership who develop and direct programs in which the members of the organization participate in a particular place or building is really a parachurch organization. The structure that has developed in order to organize the life and activity of the organism is meant to come alongside the people to equip and encourage them to be the church. When we rightly define the people as the church, then it becomes clear that the organization that we commonly call "the church" is really parachurch.
This is an important disctinction to make because as I just mentioned, the purpose of the church organization is to serve the organism. However, all too often we pastors and church leaders treat the organism (the people) as if they exist to serve the organization (leaders and programs).
Why do we feel the need to pressure people to give or give more? Because if they don't give, the organization will not survive and our staff, missionaries, and bills won't get paid. Why do we so easily become numbers-centered and spend so much time and energy figuring out ways to get more people in the pews? Because if they don't come our programs won't run, our paid and volunteer staff will have nothing to do, and people will go to other "churches" whose programs "meet their needs." When the organization begins to depend on the organism to prop up or perpetuate itself, the church (the body, the organism) is in danger of being devoured. What might have begun as a church organism being served by its church organization quickly and subtly becomes a group of people who exist to serve the organization.
I'll give two examples of this organization-devouring-the-organism phenomenon: one broad-brushed and one in which I am the guilty party.
When church growth experts tell us that we must build and maintain "excellent" programs for youth and children because that will attract and keep their parents, I believe we are in danger of sacrificing our children on the altar of church growth. We're using children to get something we really want...their parents in our pews. That's the organism serving the organization.
A personal example: When I was a Middle School Youth Pastor in a large suburban church, I asked a certain couple to join our volunteer team of leaders in the middle school ministry. I wanted them on board because of their love for Jesus and for people. They said no, and in so many words explained that if they joined our team of volunteers they wouldn't have time to lead the weekly Bible study that they had at their home with friends of their middle school son. Yikes! It hit me hard. I was asking them to give up THEIR ministry to teenagers in their own sphere of influence so that they could serve in MY ministry to teenagers. I was asking the organism to serve the organization. What I should have done was ask them how I could help equip and resource them for the ministry that God had given them in their own neighborhood.
I have much to learn and unlearn. These thoughts are in process, not completely settled. I am not saying that the organization is bad or unnecessary, indeed it is necessary and good, but I'll save that thought for another post. However, I am more and more convinced that Jesus has called the organization to serve the organism and that I have spent most of the last 20 years operating the other way. The question becomes: how can the organization of our churches do a better job of coming alongside our people to equip them to do the work of their ministry? Are we willing to sacrifice the perpetuation of our organization in order to better serve the people, the church for whom Jesus sacrificed Himself?
I've been teaching a class on a survey of the Bible and have found a few resources that have helped me more effectively communicate the "big picture" of God's Story in the Old and New Testaments.
First, a DVD-ROM called The Bible Overview: How to Understand the Bible as a Whole has excellent PowerPoint presentations that walk you through the major events of both testaments using clear, easy-to-grasp symbols and labels. I appreciate the kingdom-centered approach to the drama of redemption that unfolds in the Bible. Click here to see a sample screenshot of the Complete Picture. The DVD-ROM includes PowerPoint presentations, handouts, leader's guide, and even a PDF version of cards that can be printed, cut out, and used to reproduce the Complete Picture chart on a wall or white board. They've also included picture files that will enable you to make your own PowerPoint slides, so that you can adapt this material to your teaching situation.
This curriculum also includes a PowerPoint presentation on how to read the Bible using what they call the COMA Method. COMA is short hand for the four steps of good Bible study: Context, Observation, Meaning, and Application. I appreciate the emphasis on understanding a passage of Scripture in the Context of the larger story of God's redemptive plan.
This is one of the best tools I've seen for helping people of all ages get a grip on God's overarching Story. Amazingly, this curriculum only costs $25.00.
Second, I would highly recommend Robert Vaughan's God's Big Picture, a short book that follows the kingdom of God theme from cover to cover of the Bible. Vaughan concisely defines the Kingdom of God as "God's People in God's Place under God's rule and blessing," and then traces these themes throughout the Bible.
This book fits perfectly with The Bible Overview curriculum that I mentioned above. I was able to use Vaughan's alliterated divisions of the Story by putting them under the major headings of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration and laying them over the Complete Picture chart as follows:
CREATION
The Pattern of the Kingdom (Creation story)
FALL
The Perished Kingdom (The Fall and Babel)
REDEMPTION
The Promised Kingdom (The Covenant with Abraham)
The Partial Kingdom (The Law and Kings)
The Prophesied Kingdom (The Prophets)
The Present Kingdom (Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension of Jesus)
RESTORATION
The Proclaimed Kingdom (Pentecost and the Church)
The Perfected Kingdom (Return of Christ; New Heavens and Earth)
“In its most basic structure, the Bible follows this dramatic pattern. It has an introduction, a dramatic problem that arises, a resolution to the problem, and a summing up or conclusion. We might refer to these four elements within the biblical storyline as creation, fall, redemption, and consummation…The creation-fall-redemption-consummation storyline is the central theme of Scripture, and it forms the Bible’s overarching literary structure" (page xi).
Fourth, I've found the PowerPoint presentations of Rose Publishing to be useful for helping folks visualize biblical content and Bible lands. Each PowerPoint CD-ROM also includes PDF files with well-produced handouts for students. I've also used their Ten Foot Bible Timeline chart on our classroom wall in conjunction with The Bible Overview cards I mentioned above.
"We are all capable of fighting for what has little value while forgetting things of transcendent value...It is so hard for us to make the truly important things functionally important to us...When I opt for a me-centered 'more,' what I actually get is always much, much less" (pp. 26-28).
BASIC OUTLINE:
The tendency "to talk about more, but to settle for less" is common to all humans.
We have inherited this less-is-more attraction from Adam and Eve, who were looking for more ("you will be like God") when they settled for less ("she took of its fruit and ate...and he ate").
Our enemy has continued to use this less-is-more tactic throughout biblical history...even tried it on Jesus.
Our only hope is the good news that God in Christ has come to redeem us from our obsession with smaller kingdoms and to recreate us into people who "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33).
SOME FAVORITE (and convicting!) QUOTES:
"A man will forget that, as a father, he has been welcomed to the transcendent glory of being part of God's work of forming human souls. Instead he will buy into the replacement glory of career success. More and more, his life will be eaten up and defined by his work. Less and less will his sense of purpose have to do with the formative community that only he can offer his children. Sadly, his children cease to be one of the joyful focuses of his living and become an obligation in an already-too-busy schedule. Less and less do his children know him, respect him, trust him, or feel his love" (page 29).
"The struggle I am describing very often takes place inside the borders of good theology and regular participation in the scheduled programs of the church. It is possible, and maybe even quite regular, to participate in these things and still be settling, in the little moments of my daily existence, for much, much less than the transcendence for which you were created. Things as mundane as wardrobe, menu, schedule, workload, location, traffic, weather, being right, getting affirmed, money, housing, employment, gardens, family rooms, sex, leisure, who's in the bathroom first, who did what with my newspaper, who ate the last of the cereal, etc.--all of all which are important in some way--rise to a spiritually dangerous level of importance in the heat of the moment. These are the moments we live in every day. The normal day is a 24-hour collection of little moments. Day after day, week after week, and year after year, these little moments set the character of a person's life.
When little things become the big thing for which I consistently fight, I have forsaken transcendence for the temporary shadow glories of creation" (pp. 30-31).
The Church's Greatest Evangelism Tool Is The Church
Wisdom from the preaching of Sinclair Ferguson:
I remember cringing a few years ago when the Mel Gibson Passion movie came out, and I noticed a number of ministers...making foolish pronouncements like 'This is the greatest evangelistic tool there has ever been in the entire history of the church.' When anyone uses that type of language you can be pretty certain that they know almost nothing about the history of the church.
What about the church? Doesn't Jesus teach us here [John 17:20-23] that His single greatest evangelistic agency is the church? And notice--I think this is significant--not the church simply as a random collection of individuals who have been converted, but the church as a new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, and community, and joy, and sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ among His people.
That's the reason, you know, in the New Testament there's hardly any instruction whatsoever about how to be a witness. And by contrast, in our evangelism manuals all the emphasis lies on 'How can you as an individual be a witness?' and 'Here are the questions you need to learn to ask.' Now what's that a sign of? That's a sign of the bankruptcy of the church, because when the church is full of the power of the Holy Spirit what happens is what Simon Peter describes in 1 Peter, chapter 3--that you're in a situation that you need to be ready to give an answer for the hope that's in you.
When the church fails to be the church, individual Christians need to learn how to ask questions that will make ungodly people think about godly things. But when the church is the church, the people of God simply need to answer the questions that the very character of the church is prompting the world to ask.
And that's what we desperately need. That is perhaps the single greatest need we have as a community of God's people. That there might be something about the very atmosphere of our fellowship together in the unity of the bonds of the Holy Spirit that makes people ask the question 'Where on earth, or in heaven, did that come from?' And if they're not compelled to ask that question about our church, it's an almost certain sign that there's very little that's heavenly about our community...
Now, I'm a middle-aged man, and so I am less cautious than I once was in saying what I'm about to say. Our churches have the key of making an extraordinary impact upon our society in our pockets, if we will just take that key out. What is it? Be the church.
--from a sermon on John 17 titled "The Church and Christ's Burden" given by Sinclair Ferguson at the EPC General Assembly on Thursday evening, June 19th, 2008.
"There is woven inside each of us a desire for something more--a craving to be part of something bigger, greater, and more profound than our relatively meaningless day-to-day existence" (page 14).
BRIEF OUTLINE:
"You were hardwired by your Creator for a glory orientation...We were simply made for glory, but not just the shadow glories of the created world. We were made for the one glory that is transcendent--the glory of God. When you grasp this, your life begins to make a difference" (pp. 18-19).
"Let's consider the glory-focus of Genesis 1 and 2. There are four transcendent glories that were created to be the life-shaping focus of every human being. The first is the glory for which every human being is to live, and the following three are glories that flow from the first" (page 19).
"God glory...our lives were designed to be shaped more by our attachment to the Creator than by the creation. We were made to experience, to be part of, to be consumed by, and to live in pursuit of the one glory that is truly glorious--the glory of God" (page 19).
"Stewardship glory...[Adam and Eve] were constructed to do more than take care of themselves; they were called to care for the wide variety of amazing things God had purposefully crafted to be reflectors of his glory...it was a call for Adam and Eve to never shrink the size of their care to care for themselves" (page 20).
"Community glory...God makes Adam and Eve and immediately calls them to the transcendent glory of a world-reaching, generation-spanning, and history-encompassing community. This commitment to community was meant to be a major shaping focus of their day-to-day living" (page 21).
"Truth glory...Immediately upon creating Adam and Eve, God did something that he had not done with anything else he made. He spoke to them...God's words contained knowledge of him, the meaning and purpose of life, a moral structure for living, the nature of human identity, a fundamental human job description, a call to human community, and a call to divine worship...Every thought was meant to be shaped by the truth glory that he would patiently and progressively impart to them" (pp. 21-22).
SOME FAVORITE QUOTES:
"I am afraid there are many people of faith who attend church each week, give regularly to God's work, know their Bible pretty well, and don't live overtly evil lives; but they have settled for 'below and less' when they were created for 'above and more.'
The mistake they have made is that they have shrunk their Christianity to the size of their own lives. They have taken God's grace and wisdom as an invitation to a better marriage, a better relationship with their children, a better extended family life, better success at work, etc. And there is a way that God's grace does invite me to all of these things. But here is the point of this little book: God invites you to so much more!" (pp. 17-18)
"It is about living for a greater kingdom than the kingdom of my life, my family, and my job. And where do I live for this greater kingdom? In my life, my family, and my job!" (page 23)
Tune: Park Street - "All You that Fear Jehovah's Name" Play Tune:
vv. 1, 2 Hear a just cause, O God the Lord! Gladly receive my plaintive word. I cry with lips of purity: Look on my case with equity! Look on my case with equity!
v. 3 Let judgment from Your throne proceed; You have discerned my every need. Let naught of sin in me be found, and from my tongue let truth resound! And from my tongue let truth resound!
vv. 4, 5 As for the deeds of sinful men, I will not walk those paths again. My feet hold firm from first to last: Help me pursue Your righteous path; Help me pursue Your righteous path!
Riverside Church desires to become a family of Spirit-transformed communities to impact our world through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like villages along a river, we connect to each other through the sustaining power of Christ's love. We exist for the glory of Jesus Christ and the good of neighbors, nations, and the next generation because we believe that "where the River flows, everything will live..." (
6/29/08,
When The Church Is Really Parachurch
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