In all the Solas of the Reformation (by Scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone, glory to God alone), there’s nothing about Christians being alone. Quite the opposite: we are brought in to a new community with others. Hebrews 10:19-25 shows us the twin bases of confidence we have for approaching God that then impact on Christian fellowship: the blood of Jesus provides a new way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place; and we have a great high priest over the house of God.
Because of Jesus, because of his once-for-all death and his resurrection that declares him victorious and eternally effective as our mediator, we’re urged to hold confidently to what we believe. To trust in our faithful God. To hold unswervingly to the hope that we have. To know sincerely that we now have access to God. We can pray to him, confident that he hears our prayers because of the mediating work of the Lord Jesus. And because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells his readers they need to make a conscious effort to encourage one another, and spur their fellow Christians on to love and good deeds.
But this sort of mutual care won’t happen if we don’t meet with one another for encouragement, fellowship and exhortation. That is, it won’t happen unless we show up. But nor will it happen, I suggest, unless we are intentional in pursuing these things when we meet together: in thoughtfully putting effort into our relationships; in applying God’s word to one another in encouragement, rebuke, or in appeal to godly living. Being part of a Christian community is more than just turning up once (or twice, or thrice) a week.
In the last Briefing we had some articles on big-picture thinking about church: What is church for? What is church anyway? Hopefully there has been some great food for thought.
This time we’re spending a bit of time on the more every(Sun)day sorts of things—that is, we’re thinking intentionally about pursuing fellowship, encouragement, and exhortation when we meet together. Tony Payne writes about how we put together our meetings, taking into consideration all the component parts. Plus there’s a bit of blue-sky thinking by Carl Laferton about how we could create an attractive community at church that is shaped by the gospel.
Further to this thinking through of the nuts and bolts of how we ‘do church’, Marty Sweeney and Mark Thompson review two books you quite possibly haven’t heard of. Why are we publishing reviews on books you weren’t going to read anyway? Well, after looking at different ways of putting together church meetings, and thinking through how we might go about working out our concept of church community, it’s good to be reminded that evangelicalism isn’t just one big homogeneous mass. There is a diversity of traditions and practices within a group of relatively like-minded people, which is a good thing to recognize if we’re going to be intentionally ‘flexible’ (to use Carl’s phrase) about things that can be changed.
Now, I’m off to do my stretches.
Thanks for the call for connectedness in the Body!