Paul’s Idea of Community
Have our churches given up on the Spirit?
I just finished a paper on Paul's idea of community and church leadership in the book of Ephesians. Writing that paper has totally blown me away to my understandings of how Paul hoped his churches would function. If you were to break it all down, Paul hoped that the Spirit would ultimately lead the church. Just look at 1Cor 12:4 – "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all." Check out Eph. 4:7, "But each of us was given grace as Christ apportioned it." And later on in that chapter, "Now these are the gifts he gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. There responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ."
Facinating! So if every person who has been given the gift from the Spirit has a responsibility to help equip the rest of the church to build it up into a mature body of Christ! Every believing person that I come into contact with is someone I should deeply respect, as someone I could learn the eternal mysteries of God from, because they hold within them the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Maybe they have the pastoral gift, or an evangelistic one…or something else entirely. I am learning that even and especially those who seem least likely to teach me something about God have the most to say – they are gifts from God to his people.
What do I do to myself when I hole myself up in a seminary that pens me in with people who look/act/think just like me? 'Course, we have our differences, but I don't normally come across people with wildly different backgrounds, polarized opinions on major theological or political issues, or simply someone who just became a Christian days earlier. They have more to teach me in many ways than I have to teach them.
These are exciting times for me. I'm finally moving away from ALL education, and starting to really live into the sloppy, messy world of life with God. Where will he take me? Who will be his teachers in my life? All believers have been given God's Spirit, and have something to contribute. I'm listening…
