Towers and Temples
I’m sure I’ve never had an original thought and that would include this blog. Surely, others have written extensively about this… but I can’t get the Tower of Babel out of my mind. Let me explain…
In Genesis 11, the people countermanded the plain command of God. God had given mankind very easily understood directions: fill up the world and subdue it. Be fruitful and multiply. It was plain that God intended mankind to fill this world, bringing order and civilization to every corner of it. By Genesis 11, the people had decided to ignore that command. They began building a city with a central tower for the express purpose of keeping together. God saw their rebellion and took action against them, confusing their languages so thoroughly that they had to separate from each other.
Flash forward to Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. For a thousand years, there had only been one way to approach God. The Old Testament was full of laws – well over 600 of them – that directed every aspect of life; especially religious life. Jesus sat down and told the people no fewer than five times (Matthew 5) “you have heard it said… but I say unto you.” There HAD to have been people offended at this shocking sermon. “Who are you to destroy our faith? Who are you to make wholesale changes?” Jesus wasn’t just discarding traditions, he was quoting the Old law (which no one knew was Old but him) and changing it from external to internal. Instead of merely refraining from adultery, we were told to stop wanting to commit it. Instead of merely refraining from murder, we were told to stop hating. What Jesus started on that day, he lived out in a scandalous way. While he visited the temple and synagogue, he lived out his religious life among the people, far from the official centers of the Jewish religion.
He loved and accepted those who were God’s Chosen People, regardless of whether or not their blood was Jewish. He crossed boundaries, broke taboos, and consistently told us to engage each other as neighbors, loving each other – even our enemies. The main point, though, is he did this outside of the temple precincts.
We were then told that God had come to live in us. We are baptized into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are resident in us, not behind a curtain in the Temple. Paul reveals the nature of this quantum shift in religious reality when he avers that we are now the temples of God. The temple is now mobile. We take the priesthood with us on the road, into every store, into our schools and homes.
Which is precisely what Jesus told us to do. “Go into all the world…”
And we didn’t. Ignoring the plain command, we retreated into newly built Towers of Babel. Instead of establishing gatherings in homes in every neighborhood of the world, we centralized our gatherings and equated absence from those assemblies with apostasy. If a group wanted to worship in a house, we assumed something was wrong with them. We were all for mission work, but sent only our youngest, least experienced, fully expecting their return within a few years. Short term missions were okay for all ages but all too often they resulted in “flash Americanization” of local churches in Africa, Asia, and Europe. America was the center, the source – the model.
We gather in our towers, worship in our towers, and call ourselves faithful while the world goes to hell. We don’t share from our wallets, we don’t share our homes, and we don’t give away many of our goods because we already gave a few percent to the church, thus fulfilling our temple tax. Our duty, we proclaim, is done. If sent into our neighborhoods, we do not teach – we invite.
Jesus said “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.” Two thousand years later, we only lift him up inside our closed walls… and the world remains unreached. We have reduced the directive to go into all the world (and to love God and love all people) to something like “show up at worship and, when outside worship, be ethical, kind, and moral. In other words, inside our walls, be Christians. Outside our walls, it is only necessary to live as nice as the average Buddhist. And we wonder why our faith is not filling the world.
In our current economic crisis, we see church staff being reduced, church programs jettisoned, and missionaries recalled. How much money would we have if we didn’t have the huge mortgages and utility bills attached to our towers? How much more effective would we be if we migrated into our communities, gathering to celebrate our faith and share our stories (rather than to complete a set of rituals in order to appease our God for another seven days)?
Why, after all this time, are we still dragging people back to a temple Jesus discarded, to a Tower that keeps us from fulfilling his command?
Since we already have these towers, we need to pay off the mortgages even at great cost to each of us. We built them. We created this problem. We need to be the ones to step up to solve it. Then, we need to open our buildings to the community, letting them wear them out. We need to use them as celebration centers where we share our stories of how God used us as mobile temples that week. We need to begin a culture of sending our best into every corner of the world, starting with right next door to our towers.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Makes perfect sense to me. I’ve had similar thoughts before, but couldn’t express them quite as eloquently as you.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Once again, convincingly stated and so true. We are to share Christ wherever and whenever we have opportunities – at work, at the playground with our little ones, at the grocery story with a staff, in the doctor’s waiting room, as a soccer coach, at the neighborhood BBQ and so on and so on. We still need and want to find time and a place to assemble together to encourage one another and sing praises. Thanks for your post.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Have we truly made the local church the Temple? I’ll have to think a bit about that. Certainly I can see the tendency to do so. But it seems to me that in the latter part of the 20th century and now in the 21st, the church is moving more and more away from church centralization and toward parachurch ministries, house churches, and teaching as we go. Yes, there are the megachurches (and I attend one that is close to that size), but I think that is more due to the fact that a larger church has more different kinds of service to offer, and more ways to serve than a small church does.
Once again, though, you’ve posed questions that intrigue me, Patrick. You do love to throw the odd grenade into the water-cooler group. Keep it up.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
WOOHOO! in yo FACE!
I really appreciate the practical and sacrificial admonition at the end.
BTW, I know your distaste for reading theology, but The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright would be right up your alley, where ideas like this are concerned.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Danny writes: “a larger church has more different kinds of service to offer, and more ways to serve than a small church does.”
That’s SORT OF true, and sort of not, I think. Let me explain (no wait, there is too much. Let me sum up.)
Let’s say there are 1000 Christians in a particular community. They could gather in any number of ways, and offer sacrificial service to the community in any number of ways. One of those options, of course, would be to buy property at which they could gather each week — pay people to lead them — pay for equipment and plumbing, etc etc. But think about the TTT resources being expended on overhead and selfservice in that model. Like the Temple, a vast amount of the resources over which we’ve been made stewards goes to overhead — keeping the “expedient” system running.
Ironically, many of the things we’ve labeled expedients over the years are actually expedients to the mission of keeping the Smiths happy, rather than expedients to the mission of God.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Also, a larger church offers more ways to serve without ever encountering a lost person or the non-christian world. Serving the Body of Christ is important, but I fear we’ve gone beyond keeping healthy and fit and plopped right down in the armchair of vanity.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Nick, I don’t know that the expenses of running one large church overwhelms the expenses of running a bunch of smaller churches. Now if we are not to have churches at all, that’s a different matter. I think, though, that the only places where house churches are really successful are where there isn’t much other option. In other words, believers tend to gather together. This may be an inefficient way of doing things, but it is an extremely common way. And we musn’t forget that the gospel was spread through the synagogue, at least in the Jewish community.
As for serving without encountering a lost person–you can do that anywhere. The size of the church really doesn’t matter. Certainly many smaller churches exist largely to cater to the pew warmers.
The big problem I find with a large church is something we try hard to stop–coming in the front door and going out the back without ever making a connection.
As I said, this is food for thought. Maybe the time for church buildings is passing. I’d like to see us try to use our buildings (and our people) better before we decide to chuck it all. I also try to remember not to judge the motives of my brothers. There are often things I don’t know.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Powerful words! You asked, “Why, after all this time, are we still dragging people back to a temple Jesus discarded, to a Tower that keeps us from fulfilling his command?”
Because that’s all most of us have ever known. And for the most part, our leadership is completely devoted to this system and they have no idea how to break from from the Temple model. When a preacher comes along and challenges the status quo, he is soon looking for another Temple.
My 30 years of preaching, I saw far more allegiance to the system than I did to the Savior. It’s one reason I am no longer preaching. Just got tired of the system and the system keepers.
So now I’m in another fellowship of believers … still tied to a system! Sigh . . .
November 10th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Great post Patrick!
I sometimes wonder if we will be among the “many who are called” or the “few who are chosen”. I have so many thoughts going through my mind that I would be all over the map if I try to express them right now.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Most of my life I’ve wanted to see a church grow and prosper without either a church building or a paid preacher. Finally, as I’m nearing the end of my seventh decade of life, I have seen this — in the church-planting activities of Alexander Prokopchuk in Ukraine.
(To read the rest of what I wrote about the work of this marvelous Christian man, go to my blog here: http://committedtotruth.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/link-to-article-posted-by-edward-fudge/.)
November 11th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I am all for small groups and such but if started to go towards more house churches what would happen? I start a house church with a few other couples on Sunday Morning and soon more couples join and we have to move to a larger house. Then we outgrow that one. Then the next one. Soon, we have to build a building because our house church got so big and we are back to square one.
I think there is a happy medium somewhere there. I love our small group and would love to do more with it, maybe even have worship one Sunday a month with our small group instead of meeting Sunday night.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I fnd God’s statement interesting in II Sam. 7:4-7. Is God positive or negative towards the idea of building a temple. In light of the disapproval over appointing a “king,” this seems to be a very similar situation. God is giving them a temple, but it’s not really what he wants… the whole world was His temple.
I agree with the one above that suggested you would appreciate The Challenge of Jesus.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Two major items of the Old Testament are ignored in the book of Hebrews; the monarchy and the temple. Probably because God didn’t want either one. To some degree, we have both and our “kings” and “temples” get most of our resources.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I wonder if the synagogue is more analagous to the church than is the temple.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Dennis,
WOW! What an insight.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I repent in dust & ashes! The early church worshipped in house “churches” longer than the US has been a country! I Amen all the comments; as for Rolands comment, if our house church grows too large your thought is one option. Dr John Ellas thinks it better to plant another house church because once you’ve gone beyond 8-12 people you’re no longer a small group but are approaching small church status again; as far as how you function. Thank you Patrick for your very eye-opening, mind altering, heart rending and game changing challenge( how OT prophet of you!) I repent in dust & ashes. Love all you my brethren(and sisthren!)