"Body Life" is a term coming out of the Jesus movement that refers to the church’s most recent discovery of open, participatory meetings. Christians are always surprised to find that their favorite meetings are the ones that are not led by any individual. Almost everyone has experienced at least one of those meetings where God’s presence permeated every word spoken and every song sung. But, far from being a rare treat, this experience is meant to be our "normal Christian church life," and constitutes the tip of a much larger iceberg for us to enjoy. We are not meant to sit passively, silently listening for two to three hours every week in church while relegating 99% of the core functioning to a handful of clergy or staff members. Protestants, of all people, know better than to allow a special "reverend" class of people to do all the planning and leading for us, considering that our traditions originated upon the foundation of "the priesthood of all believers."

Most church meetings would entirely collapse if one day the preacher, music leader, and other staff members all decided to stay home. A few key members of the Body have to function for the whole. Our current situation too closely resembles a dialogue I once read:

"How are you doing?"
"Pretty well, under the circumstances."
"What are the circumstances?"
"Well, I have a very effective arm. It moves with quite a bit of animation. But then I have my bad leg."
"What's wrong with it?"
"I guess it's paralyzed. At least it doesn't do much except twitch once a week or so, but that's nothing compared with the rest of me."
"What's the problem?"
"From all appearances, the rest is dead. At least it stinks and bits of flesh are always falling off. I keep it well covered. About all that's left beyond that is my mouth, which fortunately works just fine. How about you?"  (Jim Elliff, www.CCWonline.org) 

A.W. Tozer once said "the presence [of God] and the manifestation of the presence are not the same . . . He is manifested only when and as we are aware of His presence" (Pursuit of God, p.64 ). The same thing can be applied to the Body of Christ. Walk into any gathering of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, Assemblies of God (etc), and you will surely find the members of the Body of Christ present, because believers are there. But the presence of the Body doesn’t necessarily indicate the actual functioning of the Body. In fact, of possibly hundreds present, typically only three or four individuals facilitate the entire meeting. One giant tongue standing up in front of a room full of ears. Imagine if only three or four parts of your physical body were actually functioning right now; a doctor would surely note the time and call the coroner. Yet we consider that this somehow follows scriptural guidelines (for a different picture, see 1 Cor.14:26-31). Church staff members are always lamenting about how difficult it is to motivate church members to participate and share the burden for activities in the church; but then they actively perpetuate the very predicament they have come to despise. Pastors are burned out and members are bored. But when anyone snaps out of it and suggests a different way, he becomes a "loose cannon" and a liability to the congregation.

Many Parts, One Body

This can only happen because we are completely unaware what it means to be the Body of Christ. Being the Body of Christ means that together we are one with Christ and therefore one with each other. My individual union with Him is insufficient to accomplish God’s purpose in saving me; that’s why He has always courted a collective people, a "them," with whom He may do His bidding. By taking both you and me into Himself, making us one with Him, He has made us one with each other. No longer can we see ourselves as separate entities, but together parts of the same Body. We need each other as the hand needs the foot, or the tongue needs the ear, or the eye needs the lungs (see 1 Cor.12). You meet Christ in ways that I do not, and I might see Him in places that you do not. I may be having a "dry" week, or month (or year!), but your week with the Lord may have been refreshing and fruitful. I need your portion of Christ and you need mine. God did not make us islands; He made us parts of one Body.

And this dramatic interdependence only makes sense in the context of oneness with Christ. As 1 Cor 12:12 says, "As the body has many members, yet is one body, so also is Christ." It did not say "so also is the church." It says "so also is Christ." Our experience of union with each other springs from the font of a revelation of our being "in Christ." Any attempt toward "Body Life" apart from such a driving, all-consuming vision of Christ as the everything of our faith will end up in "bless me" clubs, sterile "cell" groups, or one of the myriad of issue-centered house churches spreading across this country. We should gather to express the person of Christ, not ourselves or our own fleshly needs and aspirations.

But the "blindspot of modern evangelicals" (as Edwards calls it) is that the New Testament describes and speaks towards a corporate experience of the indwelling Life of Christ, which is known only in the Christian community. Most of the great verses quoted by teachers of the deeper Christian life were addressed to churches—groups of people intimately sharing this knowledge and experience with one another. But when the typical modern reader picks up the Bible, he or she will probably ask, "What does God want to say to me (individually) today." While this approach appeals to the romantic in all of us, and also puts an existential "edge" to the Scriptures, it conceals the fact that these truths work best when "fleshed out" among the Christian community. You, as an individual, will never be able to grasp that "you have died with Christ" (Rom. 6:3-11), or that you are "seated with Him in heavenly places" (Eph. 2:6) because it takes the whole fellowship of believers to grasp something so big and multifaceted. If you want to know "the height, depth, length, and breadth of the love of Christ," you’ll need to be "together with all the saints"(Eph.3:18). Your little eyes are just too small to take in such a bright light as Jesus Christ. He is too big for you to know well by yourself.

Some Hindrances Along the Way

At this point you might say, "but I belong to a church." That may be true; but you’re probably not experiencing the church if you mean that believers routinely gather to watch a handful of clergy do what are the responsibilities of everyone present, only to return home (miles away) to a typically sequestered American lifestyle. I am suggesting that we have some cultural and sociological hurdles to jump if we are ever to restore the New Testament concept of the Christian community (a.k.a. "the church). But before we consider what positive actions are necessary, let’s look at a few preliminary considerations:

First, I will assume that anyone with access to a New Testament knows that "the church" is not a building made out of brick and mortar (a thought totally foreign to the early believers), nor is it a chartered organization (though that is how the world defines us), but the believers themselves collectively comprising the dwelling place of God. You do not cease to be the church when there are no presiding officers endorsing the activities. Nor is a church a place to which you can go; it is a people among whom you live. Do not ask whether or not an assembly of believers is "the church" based on what they do when they gather. They simply are the church because they are in Christ and He is in them. On the other hand, some ways of meeting invite the Spirit to move and guide more than others.

Second, I must restate that, if your concept of a thriving church involves less than 10% of those present doing the leading (teaching, planning, praying, song-selecting, etc.), then you are letting centuries of tradition guide your thinking more than the story of the New Testament Church. Go back and read that story, putting the letters to the churches back in order, reading them within the story. You will find that once an apostle or "church planter" left a group of people, each church went through a period of time without leaders, during which everyone learned how to function and contribute. Theologians always point to the account of the church in Jerusalem in the book of Acts to prove that someone should always be "up front" preaching and leading. But as you follow the story beyond the initial birthing of the church in Jerusalem (even more so in the other cities), leaders disappear and "the brothers and sisters" take over. In fact, the only place in the New Testament that actually lets us peek into a weekly Christian meeting is 1 Corinthians 14:26-31. Try to find a leader in that meeting. Who is in charge? The Holy Spirit is the only ostensible leader in such an "unled," unfacilitated meeting.

Next Sunday morning, when your minister stands to deliver his message, I dare you to do what this passage instructs: Whenever God illumines or reveals something to you of benefit to the congregation, stand up and share it with the whole church. What do you think will happen? They will surely usher you out the door, as if the minister has more scriptural justification to speak than anyone else present. But one man cannot adequately speak for God on his own, every week of every year, for twenty years. God has much more to say to His people than can be spoken through one or two people. It is no wonder that so many people leave their churches because "the pastor just wasn’t feeding me." He was never meant to.

The third consideration is the hardest one to accept: God is not going to establish a divine issue of "Body Life" within the traditional church setting because these two things are antagonistic to each other. God will not pour His new wine into old wineskins, because they will pop and all the wine will be lost—both the new and the old. Like oil and water, vibrant "church life" and traditional church cannot coexist for long in the same place because they operate on totally different principles. Traditional church practices are based on the repetition of methods and programs, and are rooted in structures of human leadership. Dynamic "body life" cannot be contained within such a static environment, and it will always stretch such structures beyond their capacity to contain it. If you try to introduce Spirit-led community life into a place where there is already a leader or group of leaders guiding the group, you will force the current leaders to forfeit their function and positions (which they believe were assigned to them by God). No sensible builder would build something new on top of existing structures; he will look for a clearing—an open place with no obstacles. That’s why Paul asserted that he would never do something so foolish as to try to build the church of God on top of someone else’s already-laid foundation (Rom.15:20). Do not bother trying to "stay within the system," hoping to reform it or inject life into it. You’re just going to make a mess.

(A brief note about church staff members: When they are resourceful, observant people, you will ask yourself: "If this is such an obvious problem, why have they not seen it and addressed it? But look closer and you will see that staff members are already experiencing a level of "body life" because they are allowed to function! They see each other daily (community), they plan and guide the direction of the church, and they even get to open their mouths in the meetings! The problem here is not that a few specially revered (and salaried) individuals get to do this, but that the rest of us don’t! We should all be "staff members" from now on. No distinctions. So the next time your pastor declares that "every member is a minister," you should ask him which Sunday you will get to preach and pick the songs.)

Finally, consider that remaining in the traditional church setting confines your new experience of Christ to the individual level. Perhaps you wish to stay put and find God there "in captivity." You just might. But you will be virtually alone in your experience. This is not because others do not experience Him there—it is because there is no way to share a corporate discovery of Christ while most of the Body lies dormant, conditioned to passively "being fed" by a few members. For Christ to be known in church He must be expressed in our meetings. And if He is to be expressed in our meetings, it will take all of us to do it—the whole Body.

What Shall We Then Do?

Having considered all of these things, where do we go from here? We must first see that, when we gather, we are reassembling Christ Himself in visible, audible, touchable form. Therefore our meetings should attest to that fact. Remember that we are Him, reassembled; that’s what being His Body means. So until all of Him is free to function, He will not be fully seen. Do not rationalize our present traditional practices by concluding that our diverse giftings are exercised somewhere outside of the meeting. Our corporate meetings are the most public demonstrations of who we are–Christianity is known by its meetings. So when we gather, all in one place, Christ must be seen in all His fullness. That meeting must not look like anything else in this world—certainly not a meeting of a business, a university, or any other man-made institution. Jesus said that we are not of this world any more than He is of this world (John 17:14, 16). So why do our assemblies look like a shareholders’ meeting for Microsoft, with a CEO, a board of directors, and then "the little people" watching quietly?

Christ is in you, wanting to speak. Christ is in another, wanting to sing; through another He wishes to show care; through another He wants to challenge and exhort. Another member of His Body can hardly contain her desire to praise Him for something. Every part of Him is bursting at the seams to be displayed. If we believe He is alive and in us, then the way we meet should provide opportunity for this expression to take place. Let us begin with an overwhelming awareness of the presence of Christ among us, filling and guiding the members of His Body.

Next we should take back the meetings that are rightfully ours. Only Christ is head of His Body, and therefore no man but Him should take center stage when we gather. The present-day concept of the minister has got to go. We must begin to expect the Lord Jesus to speak through His whole Body. This calls for action, not airy philosophizing and pontificating about God’s ultimate desires for His people. Realize that our predicament arose from fallen man’s natural tendency to appoint kings to lead us. Therefore, a minimal or partial alteration of our church traditions will only gravitate back into that which comes natural to us. We must build the house of God on open soil—flat ground, without the antique furniture of our old traditions. Do not suppose that a fresh movement of God’s Spirit will leave intact our positions of leadership, our multi-million dollar building budgets, or our programs of perpetual motion. God will not pour His new wine into an old wineskin. We will need a new wineskin: a totally new way to meet.

Organism Versus Organization

Like a newborn baby or a freshly plowed field, the birth of the church will always begin with utter simplicity. All living things have structure "wired into them" at their conception, but it takes months or years to see them fully develop. Life develops organically. But we have become accustomed to thinking of the Body of Christ as a machine. Most churches are begun with preselected staff positions, accompanied by 5-year plans for growth (and always a very expensive building soon to follow). We seem to believe, like Dr. Frankenstein, that if we just assemble all the right parts of the body and supply a jolt of electricity, we can create a living organism. Instead we find ourselves fighting a monster. The Church is not a machine. A machine is an organization; the Church is a living organism.

Here’s a test to determine whether our churches are living organisms or machines: Do they basically look and perform the same way week after week, year after year, and decade after decade? Life is full of variety and change, while machines repeat identical movements over and over again as long as you keep them running. For example, a 2002 model car will still be a 2002 model car 50 years later. Parts will need replacing, but only by identical parts. On the contrary, a 2002 model human being will look quite different 50 years later. In fact, biologists tell us that every cell in the body will be new within 7 years.

Life requires a dynamic, living organism to contain it. The rigid gears of a machine would only kill it. No sensible person would put leg braces on a perfectly healthy baby just to ensure that she grow legs of the right length and proportion. Yet that is how we approach spiritual things. We typically begin by declaring that a healthy church should have this and do that, and therefore that we should "facilitate" those things right from the start. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man"(Matt.16:23).

Gene Edwards has pointed out that "seeing" the church as a living organism—a "she" rather than an "it"—often involves a "revelation" just as radical and paradigm-shifting as when you first "saw" that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. She is the completion of Him (Eph.1:22-23), so it only makes sense that knowing and experiencing her (a.k.a. the Body) parallels knowing and experiencing Him (the Head). But while many have spoken of seeing Him, very few have spoken of also seeing Her. Those who have seen Her no longer look at a group of Christians and see various separate giftings and personalities; rather they see a corporate being, with a life of Her own, and a personality and voice of Her own. This is not just romantic semantics—this is real. There is a living, breathing person waiting to be seen among us. This revelation (lit. "uncovering") is what all of history has been building towards (Rom.8:19-23, Rev.21) since the first moment when God said "Let there be." The Lord is answering Paul’s prayer that the eyes of our heart (singular) would be opened so that we would know what is the hope of His calling (Eph.1:18).

Let's Get Practical

Once you’ve unearthed this pearl of great price, the only thing left to do is sell your house. Yes, you read that right. Sell your house. Move into a neighborhood with other Christians so that you can actually see them on a regular basis. This is the sociological/cultural change to which I referred earlier. Modern American "cocooning" just won’t cut it. You’ll need to live close to one another and participate in each other’s daily lives if you’re ever going to approach New Testament-style community. Biblical cities like Thessalonica, Philippi, and Antioch were much smaller (on average one or two square miles) than the cities in which most of us live today. Industrialization, automobiles, and interstates have radically altered living conditions, spreading us out from each other. Television and home deliveries have conditioned us to quarantine ourselves into our own private worlds every night. This is one cultural hurdle we must leap if we are ever to restore the family of God to its intended intimacy. We are brothers and sisters estranged from one another, as if split up and adopted into separate foster families. If we are ever to commit our lives to this lofty goal, we must put our money where our mouth is and be willing to relocate—even at a loss. Come on, live a little!

But I wouldn’t recommend doing this without having someone around who knows what he or she is doing. New Testament believers had something we don’t even know we need: Itinerant church planters. Churches in the New Testament did not just happen. They were started by men (and women?) called by God, trained through years of church life, and sent by the Holy Spirit for precisely that purpose. They provided the deep and powerful sight of Christ as All in All. Like Paul, they revealed to believers the full scope and meaning of Christ and the cross (1 Cor.2:2). They showed believers what it means to be the family of God—brothers and sisters in Christ. They also provided "handles" for the Christian faith with practical insights to aid God’s people in knowing Him well (which required that they knew Him very well).

And perhaps most importantly, once the brothers and sisters had learned how to live in these things on their own, these church planters moved on to another town without leaving behind any leadership structure. Granted, they were often run out of town violently, but God’s hand was in this as well. In one region (Galatia: Acts 14:23) local leadership had emerged by the time of Paul and Barnabas’ second visit, but we should note well that all of the churches seem to have typically begun without local leadership. To confirm this you need only read Paul’s letters to each of the churches and notice the almost complete lack of reference to local leadership, even among churches that were several years old. Where were the pastors, elders, or staff during all the problems experienced in Galatia, Corinth, Thessalonica, or Philippi? If there were any leaders that had developed from among the brothers and sisters, they apparently served no central function in either meetings or crisis management. Paul’s letters were simply addressed to the brothers and sisters in each church, implying that the responsibility of caring for and directing the church was in their hands. Church planters of the first-century variety worked towards a true "priesthood of all believers" and then got out of the way.

It Helps to Have This Guy

The concept of an itinerant church planter, whose job is to "work himself out of a job," is foreign to most Christians today. Modern Christendom depends entirely on the domination of the local pastor. It takes years for us to let go of that particular religious tradition; but then when we grasp the impropriety of the current concept of "the preacher," we may recoil at the mention of some other type of leader. We may ask, "But what about Christ alone being our Head?" An experienced church planter who has lived in church life for several years as a simple brother or sister will not interfere with the headship of Christ among a fellowship of believers. Functional dependence upon Christ will be his or her goal from the outset. "But aren't we going to just be led by the Spirit?" Yes, but we have much to learn in the way of practical church life. Like animals born and raised in captivity, we have become domesticated and lulled into passivity. An animal that has spent all of its life in a cage does not know how to live by its own instincts. A creature in such a condition needs a wild animal to come along an help it recover its inborn traits. A church planter is a "wild animal" who has spent enough years in freedom to relearn how to live without chains or cages.

Unfortunately, such truly wild animals are few and far between, although that does not change the necessity of such a character in this drama. We must see that this person is not optional in the birth and development of the Body of Christ, but is as natural and necessary as the nose on the face of a newborn baby. Any contemporary expression of the Body of Christ will be organically consistent with the church in its biblical expressions. Beginning with the original twelve apostles, the church planter was central to the story of Acts. It would also help to see that the function of the apostle (lit. "sent one") or church planter did not stop with the first Twelve. Paul made thirteen (1 Cor.15:8-9), Barnabas made fourteen (Acts 14:14), Timothy and Silas made sixteen (1 Thess. 2:6b, and 1:1), and at least six more guys (Acts 20:4) brought the number to 22. Theologians and ministers limit the number to twelve out of either ignorance, tradition, or fear that opening the category to a continuing gift could somehow undermine the authority of biblical revelation. But such a logical leap is not necessary. For an in-depth study of this idea, I would refer you to Watchman Nee's treatment of the subject in The Normal Christian Church Life (pp.1-17).

These are the ingredients of church life: A revelation of the centrality and sufficiency of Christ, a revelation of the church as a living organism united with Christ her Head, the annihilation of the clergy-laity distinction, the recovery of open, "leaderless" meetings, a socio-culturally radical Christian community life, and if possible, an experienced church planter. Sounds like "add water and stir" to you? Don't count on it. This kingdom is not of this world. But these things will be present in a living extension of the Body of Christ.

The Church of Christ fulfills the eternal purpose of God in creation. All of God’s work moves towards this end. And the work of God is encompassed within and accomplished by the Cross of Christ. Whether we’re considering the individual believer’s relationship to God or the corporate life of the Body of Christ, all spiritual life issues out from a subjective experience of that historical cross.

 

<on to Chapter Three>

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