True treasures of the Church

Jesus set an example for His church in showing compassion and mercy to those in need. Dr. D. James Kennedy explores how the early church walked just as her Master walked:

Saint Laurence was a deacon in the Christian Church, who was quite generous, especially to the poor. He lived in Aragon of the Roman Empire of the third century. During one of the persecutions, he was ordered to bring to a Roman official some of “the treasures of the Church.” What he brought were some poor, downtrodden and lame people, and he said to them, “These are the treasures of the Church.” For this response, he was roasted to death on a gridiron. (J. D. Douglas, gen. Ed., ‘The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church’, rev. ed. [Grand Rapids: Regency Reference Library of Zondervan, 1974, 1978], p. 586.)

… Jesus set the great example of helping the poor, of caring for the poverty-stricken and downtrodden. He bid His followers to go and do likewise. One of His best-known parable is that of the good Samaritan, the kindly gentleman who stopped and cared for the stranger in need when neither the priest nor the Levite would (Luke 10:25-37). This parable has had a great impact on Western civilization. So also has His parable of the sheep and the goats, wherein Christ says, “Inasmuch as you did it [help the poor] to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Matt. 25:40). This teaching has introduced the idea of “Christ’s poor,” where the poor are treated as if they are Jesus Christ Himself.

… The early Christians made history through generosity to their own, and to nonbelievers as well. The late Yale historian Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote that “in the use of money for the general welfare, Christianity brought five significant innovations.” (Latourette, ‘A History of Christianity’, p. 247.) The first of these innovations, wrote Latourette, is that giving was an obligation of all who joined the ranks, rich or poor, each according to ability.

Also the motive of Christian giving was new. It was done out of love for Christ, for the Christian teaching is that Jesus was rich but became poor for our sakes, so that we might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). Furthermore, the objects of giving changed:

The Christian community stressed the support of its widows, orphans, sick, and disabled, and those who because of their faith were thrown out of employment or were imprisoned. It ransomed men who were put to servile labour for their faith. It entertained travelers. One church would send aid to another church whose members were suffering from famine or persecution. In theory and to no small degree in practice, the Christian community was a brotherhood, bound together in love, in which reciprocal material help was the rule. (Ibid.)

Christian giving was also personalized – from individuals to individuals, not to “masses of men, although often, as in times of famine, it dealt with large numbers.” (Ibid., p. 248.)

Another innovation of Christian charity, according to Latourette, was that it was not limited to church members. They extended their giving to non-Christians as well, so much so that Emperor Julian “the Apostate,” the last Roman emperor to try to stamp out the Christian faith, marveled at how the Christians loved even the pagans, even their enemies. Dr. Richard Todd, history professor at Wichita State University, writes, “It was the church’s care for its own poor and for outsiders that so impressed the pagan Emperor Julian.” (Dowley, ‘A Lion Handbook: The History of Christianity’, p. 191.) Julian wrote: “For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg and the impious Galileans [Christians] support both their own poor and ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.” (Quoted in ibid., p. 147.)

Historian after historian verifies the same thing: The early Church had a great record of helping the needy. Will Durant says that the early Church attracted converts by providing a way out of Rome’s harshness. These converts, declares Durant, “turned from Caesar preaching war to Christ preaching peace, from incredible brutality to unprecedented charity.” (Durant, ‘Caesar and Christ’, p. 667.) Oxford scholar Dr. Robin Lane Fox adds:

To the poor, the widow and orphans, Christians gave alms and support, like the synagogue communities, their forerunners. This “brotherly love” has been minimized as a reason for turning to the Church, as if those who were members could know of it. In fact, it was widely recognized. When Christians were in prison, fellow Christians gathered to bring them food and comforts: Lucian, the pagan satirist, was well aware of this practice. When Christians were brought to die in the arena, the crowds, said Tertullian, would shout, “Look how these Christians love one another.” Christian “love” was public knowledge and must have played its part in drawing outsiders to the faith. (Fox, ‘Pagans and Christians’, p. 324.)

(D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, ‘What if Jesus had never been born?’, Rev. ed. [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001], pp. 28-31.)

The prophetic community of the King

There is a tendency for churches today to set up different ministries to cater to different groups of people. People can be segregated into “homogenous units” in terms of race, language, age, or any other characteristics. I know of churches that conduct separate worship services for people with intellectual disabilities. But is this what God intends His church to be?

The justification for this practice may sound reasonable. After all, what other church models can be more efficient than this in meeting the needs of a particular group of people? Don’t we all feel more comfortable being with our own kind (or at least being spared the awkwardness of having to relate with those who are different from us)? And who can argue with church growth gurus who recommend this as a key strategy for drawing people to the local church?

Howard A. Snyder, long recognised as one of the leading thinkers on church renewal, has this to say:

The very existence of the Christian community is a sign of the kingdom of God… The kingdom mandate of the church is both evangelistic and prophetic.

… The church is prophetic when it creates and sustains a reconciled and reconciling community of believers (2 Cor 5:16-21; Eph 2; Phil 2:1-11; Col 1:21-23). When this happens, evangelism takes on prophetic dimensions. Reconciliation with God is demonstrated by genuine reconciliation within the Christian community and by a continuing ministry of healing reconciliation in the world.

This means that in each local Christian assembly, reconciliation must be more than a theory and more than an invisible spiritual transaction. It must be visible and social. Racial, gender and economic exploitation and all forms of elitism (including that of a professional clergy) must be challenged biblically. Unholy divisions in the body of Christ must be seen as sin and worldliness (1 Cor 3:3-4). Likewise, each church must work or bring full reconciliation between marriage partners, between parents and children, and between employer and employee when alienation and discord in these relationships are discovered (Eph 5:1-6:9).

The church is prophetic when it creates communities that visibly transcend the divisions in society that result from racism, economic or social marginalization, or other forms of injustice and oppression. Faithful churches reject the notion that the church should be made up of “homogeneous units” so as to speed up church growth. The New Testament gospel calls the church to be a community of visible reconciliation. As René Padilla noted, the early apostles “sought to build communities in which Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, poor and rich would worship together and learn the meaning of their unity in Christ right from the start, although they often had to deal with difficulties arising out of the differences in background or social status among the converts.” The early church “not only grew, but it grew across cultural barriers.” Clearly the apostles “never contemplated the possibility of forming homogenous unit churches that would then express their unity [merely] in terms of interchurch relationships. Each church was meant to portray the oneness of its members regardless of their racial, cultural, or social differences.” (C. René Padilla, ‘Mission Between the Times’ [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985], pp. 160, 167.) Based on a study of the New Testament, Padilla rightly concluded:

The breaking down of the barriers that separate people in the world was regarded as an essential aspect of the gospel, not merely as a result of it. Evangelism therefore involved a call to be incorporated into a new humanity that included all kinds of people. Coversion was never a merely religious experience; it was also a means of becoming a member of a community in which people would find their identity in Christ rather than in race, social status, or sex. The apostles would have agreed with [Edmund] Clowney’s dictum that “the point at which human barriers are surmounted is the point at which a believer is joined to Christ and his people.” (Ibid., pp. 166-67; see Edmund Clowney, “The Missionary Flame of Reformed Theology,” in ‘Theological Perspectives on Church Growth’, ed. Harvie M. Conn [Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1976], p. 167.)

For this reason the “homogeneous unit” theory of church growth is unacceptable as an intentional strategy, however helpful it may be in understanding the dynamics of church growth in some contexts and in reminding us to take seriously the important role of ethnicity, language and other cultural dynamics. (Some twentieth-century church-growth theorists, particularly Donald McGavran and Peter Wagner, advocated the so-called homogeneous unit principle as a strategy in church growth. In fact there seems to be no such principle in Scripture, so this approach might better be called the “homogeneous unit ‘theory’.”)

All communities by definition must have some degree of homogeneity in order to exist. The gospel in fact has its own principle of homogeneity, and it is called ‘reconciliation in Christ’. Within the church, the degree of both homogeneity and diversity will, of course, vary from place to place, depending on the cultural context, as we see in the New Testament. (Note the description of the church in Antioch in Acts 11 and 13. The church in Antioch was much more diverse than the early Jerusalem church, yet “a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord,” and Paul and Barnabas discipled “great numbers.” In large measure because of its diversity, now including Gentiles as well as Jews, “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” [Acts 11:21-26].) But the key point of commonality, the glue that holds the church together (if it is true to the gospel), is reconciliation through Jesus Christ. Based on that reconciliation, diverse persons of diverse social situations are made one community, one body. This diversity-in-unity is a key, unique feature of the community of the king. (Diversity is as much a “mark” of the church as is unity, though of course the precise demographic and sociological contours of that diversity will vary greatly according to the cultural context. [See Snyder and Runyon, ‘Decoding the Church’, chap. 1.] Minimally, the diversity of the church will normally include differences of age, gender, personality and spiritual gifts, and usually much more. The greater the range of social heterogeneity united and reconciled in the church, the greater the ‘visible social demonstration’ of the power of the gospel that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It would be a distortion of the gospel, however, to define acceptable diversity so broadly as to include behaviors that are incompatible with Jesus’ teachings.) In this sense, a church’s homogeneity should be its diversity. The key “homogeneous principle” that unites diverse Christians is their oneness in Christ, and a key mark of a faithful church in most contexts is its diversity.

Today there are some hopeful signs. A growing number of congregations are demonstrating that diverse, multiethnic churches can grow healthily and reproduce themselves, just as in the days of the early church. (See, for example, Manuel Ortiz, ‘One New People: Models for Developing a Multiethnic Church’ [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996]; Stephen A. Rhodes, ‘Where the Nations Meet: The Church in a Multicultural World [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998].) Given the biblical picture of the kingdom of God, it is clear that the creation of such reconciled, reconciling communities is one key to the church’s prophetic witness.

Such communities of reconciliation find themselves living in tension with surrounding culture. The differences and distance between the Christian community and the larger human community will vary from one time and place to another, depending on the extent to which culture is godless and under Satan’s dominion. As society becomes more godless, the church must increasingly both see itself and actually structure itself as a self-conscious counterculture. This is necessary for the church’s own faithfulness to the gospel and for any true prophetic role in the world. In much of the world the church is moving into an era when it must increasingly take on the marks of a counterculture. (Michael L. Budde and Robert W. Brimlow, eds., ‘The Church as Counterculture’ [Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000]; Darrell L. Guder, ed., ‘Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America’ [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998]; John R.W. Stott, ‘The Message of the Sermon on the Mount’ [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1978]. Stott notes, “If the church realistically accepted [Jesus’] standards and values as here set forth [in the Sermon on the Mount], and lived by them, it would be the alternative society he always intended it to be, and would offer to the world an authentic Christian counter-culture” [p. 10].)

(Howard A. Snyder, ‘The Community of the King’, Rev. ed. [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004], pp. 116, 125-28.)

Given the trade-offs between efficiency and inclusion (along with all its inconveniences, irritations and disruptions), I believe God wants us to choose the narrow path that leads to life.

Care to evangelise?

Michael Green is the author of over fifty books and has traveled all five continents to teach about Jesus Christ. He has been Principle of St John’s College Nottingham, Rector of St Aldate’s Church Oxford, Professor of Evangelism and New Testament at Regent College Vancouver, and is now Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe, Oxford University. Here’s what he writes in a book that features evangelism in the early church:

Their (the first Christians) dedication and willingness to obey, whatever the cost, is another of the notable marks of their changed lives. God gives his Holy Spirit to those who obey him (Acts 5:32), and they proved the truth of that. That is very near the heart of biblical ‘holiness’, and without it nobody reflects much of the Lord or attracts others to him. The Holy Spirit and holy obedience of life are integrally connected... We have all these examples (in the book of Acts) before us of the link between obedience and the power of the Spirit in evangelism, but we do not heed them... God says that we must care for the poor and needy and not give preference to the rich: we choose to disobey... We then wonder why we are powerless!

... But something else marked those early Christians. If it does not mark us, nobody is going to be very interested in what we say. It was their transparent love. There were great inequalities of wealth and opportunity among most people in antiquity, but it was not allowed to remain so among the Christians. Acts 4:32 tells us that the company of believers were of one heart and one soul. So much so that nobody laid personal claim to his possessions. They had everything in common. And with great power, we read, the apostles bore witness to Jesus. Could it be otherwise when there was not a needy person among them? When those who had houses sold them and pooled the proceeds? Their loving fellowship broke down the natural barriers between blacks and whites, between masters and slaves, between rich and poor, between those from Jewish and Greek backgrounds. They shared their goods, their meals, their worship - everything, as Justin put it, except their wives (the very area where the pagans were most willing to share, as he unkindly reminded them!)... This love for the brethren is crucial. Without it there can be no effective evangelism. The world has to see in Christian circles a warmer, more accepting and caring fellowship than they can find anywhere else - and until they see that they are not going to be all that interested or impressed with God-talk.

... Verse 28 (of Acts chapter 11) shows a remarkable man with prophetic gifts, Agabus, coming into their assembly and telling of a famine that would hit the Christians in Jerusalem. It so happens that we have independent testimony to this event, which took place in the late 40s. But to me the reaction of Antioch is more interesting than the problem at Jerusalem, which was probably due to an agricultural sabbatical year (one in seven was left fallow by Old Testament law) accentuated by the pooling and sharing of capital as practised by the early Christians at Jerusalem. Antioch could have said, ‘We are not too keen on the theology and Judaistic emphases of these Christians at Jerusalem.’ They could have said, ‘That will teach them some economics: those who live off capital rather than income always run into trouble.’ They said neither, but showed their love and care for their brethren by raising a handsome subscription and sending it to them in their hour of need.

It is this sort of practical caring which makes such an impact for the gospel. Until fairly recently I gather that there has been little or no response to the gospel among the Masai, a fierce Kenyan tribe of warrior nomads. But now there is a lively Christian church there. And much of the breakthrough has been due to the loving practical assistance in times of drought and danger afforded by their traditional enemies, the Kikuyu. Unless a deep, loving, practical care for the poor in their predicament is shown, the mere proclaiming of good news will be useless. I have just met an American pastor who spent some years working among the hundreds of prostitutes in Seoul in the latter stage of the Vietnam war. Scores of them were led to Christ, but not before he had identified with them in their felt needs for finding new employment, support their illegitimate children and so forth. There can be no possible split between a social and spiritual gospel. They belong together, and without both elements the good news of Jesus will not get across.

(Michael Green, ‘Evangelism – now and then’ [Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979], pp. 22-25, 38-39.)

How far have we deviated from the early church?

Ronald J. Sider steps on toes again after his controversial ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ has challenged modern evangelical Christianity for the last thirty years. Here is an excerpt from his recent book that questions why Christians are living just like the rest of the world:

The picture of the first Christians in Jerusalem presented in the early chapters of Acts is one of astonishing love and joyous fellowship. Dramatic economic sharing was the norm: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-45 NRSV). From later sections of Acts, it becomes clear that families retained private property. Membership in the new fellowship did not mean one must place all property in a common purse. But the economic sharing was so extensive that observers were compelled to say that “there were no needy persons among them” (4:34). This astonishing economic sharing produced powerful evangelistic results! After saying that these Jerusalem Christians “shared everything they had,” Luke adds, “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (4:32-33).

These early Christians certainly were not perfect. Acts 6 describes how the Hebrew leadership neglected widows from the Greek-speaking minority. So what did they do? They appointed seven deacons (their Greek names indicate they are all from the Greek-speaking minority!) to take charge of the care of all the widows. What was the result of this prompt correction of racial and economic discrimination? The last verse of the story says, “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly” (Acts 6:7). Again, integrity and obedience in the body of Christ have powerful evangelistic results.

… We are the richest people in human history and know that tens of millions of brothers and sisters in Christ live in grinding poverty, and we give only a pittance, and almost all of that goes to our local congregation. Only a tiny fraction of what we do give ever reaches poor Christians in other places. Christ died to create one new multicultural body of believers, yet we display more racism than liberal Christians who doubt his deity.

Our evangelistic efforts are often crippled by our behavior. In both Acts 2 and 6, it is clear that the loving, obedient actions of the first Christians attracted people to Christ.

The same was true during the early centuries of the Christian faith. Numerous documents from those years demonstrate that Christians’ behavior was unusual. Writing in the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr said of Christians:

Those who once delighted in fornication now embrace chastity alone;… we who once took most pleasure in accumulating wealth and property now… share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with men of different tribes because of their different customs now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them and pray for our enemies. (Justin Martyr, ‘First Apology’, quoted in Peter C. Phan, ‘Social Thought’, vol. 20 of Message of the Fathers of the Church, ed. Thomas Halton [Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984], 56.)

Writing in about AD 125, the Christian apologist Aristides described Christians with these words:

They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that hath, distributeth liberally to him that hath not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own brother: for they call themselves brethren, not after the flesh, but after the spirit and God; but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them see him, then he provides for his burial according to his ability; and if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs; and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food. (Aristides, quoted in Martin Hengel, ‘Property and Riches in the Early Church’ [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974], 42-43.)

In both of these documents, the early Christians’ economic sharing and concern for the poor are especially striking. By AD 250, the church at Rome supported fifteen hundred needy persons. (Ibid., 42-44.) Outsiders were amazed by the love that they saw in the Christian community. Tertullian (AD 155-220) reported that even the enemies of Christianity considered the mutual love of Christians to be their “distinctive sign”: “Our care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy… See, they say, how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other.” (Tertullian, ‘Apology 39’, quoted in Phan, ‘Social Thought’, 21.)

Perhaps the most striking commentary on the countercultural character of Christian behavior comes from a grudging comment by a pagan emperor. During his short reign (AD 361-63), Julian the Apostate tried to roll back several decades of toleration and stamp out Christianity. But he was forced to admit to a fellow pagan that “the godless Galileans [Christians] feed not only their poor but ours also.” With chagrin, he acknowledged that his fellow pagans did not even help each other: “Those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.” (Julian the Apostate, quoted in Stephen Neill, ‘A History of Christian Missions’ [New York: Penguin, 1964], 37-38.)

We have seen the stunning contrast between what Jesus and the early church said and did and what so many evangelicals do today. Hopefully that contrast will drive us to our knees, first to repent and then to ask God to help us understand the causes of this scandalous failure and the steps we can take to correct it.

(Ronald J. Sider, ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’ [Michigan: Baker Books, 2005], pp. 36-37,50-53.)