7th book in series released

I am taking a little break from my blog series about the purpose of the church... for a good reason :) The latest title in my book series about the Ten Commandments in the 21st century has been released this week!

'In My Name' is the 7th book in the series, I have been working on for years now. All bloggers that write and publish books, will know how much effort, time, love, struggle, frustration, doubt and jubilation is hidden in the writing process. 

Finding time, or should I say: making time to write, turns out to be the hardest thing to do, again and again. I wrote the bulk of this book while on vacation in Portugal; not a bad place to work after all.

'In My Name' is a short study based on the 3rd Commandment which tells us not to use the name of the Lord in vain. I have linked this commandment to the words of Jesus in the Lord's prayer: 'hallowed be your name'. It is one thing to claim we don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, but what do we do? Are we bringing honor to His name? Do we have a genuine love for His name? And most of all, is everything we do and say then, done in His name?

‘Lord’ is not a word to end our sentences with when we talk to Him, nor is it a filler to make our prayers sound more holy and authentic. ‘Lord’ is His personal revelatory name and He gave it to us for use on a daily basis.

If you have read any of the previous books in this series, you will certainly enjoy this one, which encourages you to invite God's presence in daily situation. Reader's Favorite gave it a thumbs up in a 5-star review.

'In My Name' e-book is available on Amazon for 2.99. The European paperback version will come out beginning of May. 

PS:  I will post a give-away soon!

Purpose of the church (6)

'The equipping must always lead to service', I wrote in my previous blog post. We are being equipped in order to serve God. That sounds pretty cool. Of course, deep down in our heart we all want to do something useful for God. But doing good works .... to what purpose? For sure we do not (and cannot) earn God's love.

Let's go back to our base text (Ephesians 4: 11-13) for this series about the purpose of the church:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up...

The NKJV says it like this:

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ...

So, we do not work in His service for ourselves and weird enough not for God either. He does not need anything from us. In Acts 17:25 we can read: And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. No, we do not serve God in order to become a better person in one way or another. We serve, so that the Church will be built up.

There are many churches and denominations complaining about a decline in growth. This often results in the implementation of all kinds of ideas to make the church services more attractive. But biblically speaking, the church will not be built up by programs and methods, but by the servanthood of believers.

We should not expand the number of seats in a church or congregation, but rather call the people in the seats to take action. Whether there are twenty or two hundred people present. We do not grow by gathering more knowledge (let's be honest, how many sermons can a person hear?) but by doing what we have learned.

Purpose of the church (5)

And  He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry... (Ephesians 4:11).

How often can you read such a text? Not often enough, I think. We can learn so much that will help us today to build a healthy spiritual community, a church that is truly the Body (the representation) of Christ on earth.

Jesus gave it like this for a reason; let us not take anything away from it and add nothing to it. I sincerely believe it would be very useful to take a closer look at the forms of leadership in our contemporary churches in light of Ephesians 4:11-13. By the way, I think it is easier to start a new church with these verses in mind, than to reorganize an existing one with the dogma's, patterns and systems already in place, but that aside.

The people (whether you are a hairdresser, construction worker or nurse) who are called and assigned to one or more of the five functions, tasks or ministries mentioned must always bear in mind that they do that work as part of a team in order to to equip (prepare, get ready) believers to serve God. The Good News Translation calls it 'works of Christian service'.

When we think about the purpose of the church these verses keep popping up. We do not come together just to come together (although that can be very useful from a spiritual and social point of view) but to be equipped for work in the service of God. In that sense we could see the church as a vocational school. We don't know much when we enroll, we learn and learn and ask questions and do our homework. We are not supposed to stay in grade 5 or 6 for ten years, we are called to grow and graduate!

The equipping must always lead to service. There will come a time when we will put the acquired knowledge into practice, when we will do what we have learned. There comes a time when we are going to share God's love with a world in need, whether that is around the corner or in a distant land. In doing so it is very possible that we are called once more... to equip others!

Purpose of the church (4)

'The five are called together for a common task ...' I wrote in my previous blog entry. I was referring to the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers as mentioned in Ephesians 4: 11-13. People who are appointed or given by Jesus for a certain task.

For the sake of clarity, let's go back to that text again:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service (NIV translation). What is their job? Equiping believers for work in God's service. The Good News translation states: He did this to prepare all God's people for the work of Christian service...

That is quite a responsibility. Together (as a team) they must equip (prepare, get ready, arm) the believers to be of service to God. There is no one who can do this on his or her own. Nowadays I see shepherds (also called pastors, reverends, priests) struggle to do this all alone. It is, in my opinion, no wonder that many end up on the couch with a burn-out. Only Jesus himself was shepherd, as well as teacher (rabbi), apostle, evangelist and prophet!

It has never been His intention to put all those qualities in one person! He desires cooperation in a team so that we can keep each other accountable and no one will get the chance to rise above the other. There is no hierarchy in these five functions / tasks. If such a thing exists, we must base it on 1 Corinthians 12:28 where it says: And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers...The shepherd and evangelist are not even mentioned here.

I truly believe we are missing something in our spiritual growth and development if we are being equipped by just one (perhaps two) of these people. Suppose you only listen to a teacher (preacher) and never learn from an apostle what it is like to be sent out and travel and plant churches. You could just end up sitting in a pew for thirty years (with a lot of knowledge, yes) without ever going into the world ....

Now, that is unthinkable, right ...?

Purpose of the church (3)

In my previous blog post I quoted the basic scripture I will use for this series, in three different translations. Ephesians 4: 11-13 gives us an idea about the purpose of the church, don't you think?

Of course these verses are part of a chapter and that chapter is part of a Bible book, in this case a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the faithful believers in Ephesus in the 1st century AD. Ephesus was at that time the capital of the Roman province of Asia, in western Turkey.

Let's take a closer look at what the Bible says here ...

And He Himself [Jesus] gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers...

That sentence in itself gives quite some interesting food for thought and discussion, but is also reason for much gratitude. Jesus gave (appointed or called) some people for a specific task. How wonderful, is my first thought, at least we do not have to invent or set up our own system. The GNT says 'It was he who “gave gifts to people”. The callings and functions are a gift, we cannot earn or get them any other way, we can only receive in obedience.

Some theologians and religious denominations claim that apostles and prophets are no longer given today, that they were only given for a season to start the church two thousand years ago. They believe that only evangelists, shepherds (pastors) and teachers are still being appointed ... To me that seems a random selection with a devastating consequence: by deleting some of the people (functions, gifts, callings) Jesus gave to build up the church we  have elevated others, often to isolated positions.

No one is surprised if someone presents himself as 'the pastor of such and such congregation' or 'the minister of such and such church'. But if someone, for example, claims to be 'the prophet of such and such congregation' he will get the stamp 'strange' or 'sectarian' or 'false'. Now, how in the world did this happen? I invite you to think with me. Biblically speaking it is simply not correct!

Because.... the five are called together for a common task!