1.21 blog

If you’ve been journeying with us through the last several weeks, you know that 1.21 Church is currently exploring what it is that makes us a church rather than just another religious or civic organization. A consistent refrain in my preaching during this time has been that as a church in the Reformed tradition we answer this by saying that the marks of a true church are: the word of God rightly preached, the sacraments rightly administered, and discipline carried out. In our preaching we’ve been able to cover preaching and the sacraments, but not discipline. So for the next couple of posts we’re going to take a quick look at church discipline, the third mark of the church.

The first thing we ought to address is the fact that when we hear “church discipline” (or discipline in general) our primary thought is of punishment. Someone has messed up, and now we’re going to do something to them in order to show them that this was a bad thing to do. That’s not discipline. That’s retribution. And churches aren’t called to retribution. (God will take care of that when and if it’s appropriate) Now, sometimes discipline does involve correction after sin has occurred , but even that isn’t punishment (we’ll talk about that in the next post). Before we talk about that, though, we need to talk about discipline in general.

As Christians we are all called upon to be disciples of Jesus. And you’ll note discipline and disciple share a common etymology. That’s because the one is necessary for the other. Being a disciple isn’t something that comes to us naturally, in order for us to be disciples, we need to experience discipline. And that’s the primary reference when we talk about church discipline (or at least it should be). Through the church’s practices of prayer, preaching, and sacraments, we are formed into the kind of people we should be, but would not be on our own.

Through this sort of discipline we are trained, we learn what to do, what not to do, how to speak, how to think. As Stanley Hauerwas observes, we don’t have minds worth making up until they’ve been formed by the Bible, and the practices of the church. And so in that sense, everyone who belongs to a church is under that church’s discipline. We place ourselves under its authority, and basically say, “Okay, I’m asking you to look out for me and tell me what my life should look like.” I know that in our Liberal North American context we hate and distrust authority. But God says that we need it in our lives, and that one of the forms in which it should come to us is the church.

We need to be under the church’s authority, under its discipline because we need to be under Jesus’ authority. Apart from God ordained authority, we’re in a dangerous place spiritually (but we’ll talk more about that next time).

Are you under church discipline?

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

A week ago today, the Christian Church entered into the Season of Lent. We, at 1.21 Church are using this season specifically to cultivate a greater sense of dependence upon and satisfaction in God, and a greater sense of the utter worthiness of his Son, Jesus Christ. Having been raised Roman Catholic, I’m generally familiar with the liturgical rhythms of the Christian year. However, most folks at our church do not share this background. With that in mind, I wanted to share this brief video that I came across to help explain the Season’s history, its practices, and its purposes.

The man speaking is Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (currently one of the hardest jobs in the world). I don’t always agree with him, but I greatly respect him, and there is much that the Church can gain from listening closely to him.

…Continuing our thoughts from yesterday on why mediocre preaching can be a good thing (from 1 Corinthians 2.1-5). We’ve seen that Paul refused to use his rhetorical know-how to woo the Corinthians over, but instead sought to know nothing among them except for Christ and him crucified, because often “good” preaching can detract from Jesus.

Paul has explained how he wasn’t among the Corinthians, now he explains how he was among them. With weakness, fear, and much trembling. This is not the guy your church would want to hire to do its preaching. This is not the picture of a guy we’d want to follow. But he’s not getting us to follow him, he wants us to follow Christ. He explains once more, he wasn’t using persuasive words of wisdom. Instead, his preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. With the advent of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, we tend to hear “Spirit” and “power” and think of the extraordinary: miracles, healings, tongues, etc. But those phenomena don’t really fit with what Paul has been saying about the way he preached. Here’s what I think he’s getting at, as he preached (poorly it might seem), and people were converted, that this demonstrated the Spirit’s power. The fact that people came to believe this stupid sounding message, preached by this unpersuasive, ugly, trembling man demonstrated that the power belonged to God.

Through preaching, God speaks, judges, converts, and saves. It’s because of this that Paul is able to preach without feeling the need to pull out his rhetorical guns. It’s because of this that mediocre preachers like Pastor Stephen and myself can get up in front of people and preach in all our mediocrity, because ultimately the things preaching aims at can’t be done by us anyway, even if we were good preachers. No matter how good we are at it, God’s the one who has to accomplish anything worthwhile. That’s because preaching is more than instruction. Preaching is an address from God through the preacher. Preaching gives life. Preaching delivers Christ. This requires a strong doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can and does work in a variety of ways. But he has specifically tied himself to the preaching of the gospel. He may work by other means. He will work by this means.

In verse 5, Paul explains a final reason for his weak preaching of Christ crucified: so that the Corinthians’ faith would not rest on human wisdom, but on the power of God. At the end of the day this is what we want. We don’t want to win people over, and have their faith be based on us. We want them to be entrusting themselves to God. We want to preach in a way that’s compatible with the message we’re to proclaim. There are some people who are good at preaching. There’s nothing wrong with that as such. God calls us with various skills, talents, etc. However, each set of preachers has their own struggle and temptation. Good preachers have to struggle against relying on themselves, or preaching in such a way as to draw attention to themselves. If after a sermon we’re thinking, “Oh that [insert name of your favorite preacher], he’s sure witty,” Or, “It was hilarious when he said this,” then there might be a problem. We mediocre preachers have to be careful not to rely on ourselves too, but we also have to fight against the desire to be good preachers. It’s not wrong to want to improve. It’s not wrong to want to offer Jesus your best. But it is wrong to assume that if we were better speakers God would be better able to use our preaching or be more glorified by it. God uses crappy preaching all the time, and he’s not limited to our skills. And when God saves people or sanctifies them through crappy preaching, he gets all the credit. So he wouldn’t get more glory if we were better: we would. Instead, God uses the particular skills of particular preachers to accomplish his particular purposes in the lives of his people. So rejoice in mediocre preaching as long as it’s preaching of the cross.

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

Yesterday Pastor Stephen preached a sermon on preaching from 1 Corinthians 2.1-5. In it we saw what is preached (Christ crucified), who should preach (Pastors especially, but also all Christians), and why we preach (because Jesus is utterly worthy to be proclaimed). One thing that the Apostle Paul highlighted in this passage of Scripture is the way that preaching can sometimes undermine preaching.

Here’s what I mean. We’re often told that style is neutral. That’s not quite right. The way a message is delivered does affect the message. So we want to be careful that the methods we use don’t obscure or change the message we bring. During this time period, there were traveling speech makers, who, for a fee would train you to use rhetoric to win arguments. They’d role into town, make some really persuasive, eloquent speech, collect tuition, and then equip their students to be just as persuasive themselves. They were the heirs of the sophists, a philosophical school in ancient Greece. The sophists were experts in rhetoric and persuasion. They would demonstrate their prowess by successfully arguing both sides of a debate. They’d do clever stuff like use logic to prove that we don’t move. They didn’t care for truth, only persuasion.  So when Paul comes into town, people would have expected a similar show from him. They expect him to argue persuasively and manipulatively about Jesus. But he doesn’t deliver. He’s not counting on his rhetorical skill to win people over. Paul was trained in Rabbinic argumentation, classical drama, and rhetoric. It’s not that he couldn’t have come in and used his verbal skills. It’s that he chose not to for specific purposes.

And Paul’s purpose was to know nothing except for Christ and him crucified. This determination is the reason behind his refusal to come with lofty, wise words. It would contradict his message for him to preach in those ways. If he comes preaching: our salvation rests entirely on Christ, and it’s solely at God’s initiative, and we’re utterly dependent upon him, and Christ is all our wisdom, righteousness, etc., and yet does so in a way that highlights himself and his skill, he undermines the message. Pastors who say, “Jesus is our only hope and salvation,” but then preach sermons where they’re the hero of every illustration undermine their message. Pastors who preach the salvation of sinners by grace alone, and then complain about how the “queers” and Democrats (or fundamentalists and Republicans) and other bad folk are ruining our country undermine the message. If God is truly the author and finisher of salvation. If we really are foolish, weak, and dependent on him, then it makes no sense for us to preach in such a way as to highlight ourselves.

So…at this point I’ve said about half of what I want to. So rather than writing an overlong blog post, I’ll stop here for now. Tomorrow I’ll finish things up.

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

This post will conclude our consideration of the church’s worship. Here we’ll look at the fact that worship exists in two dimensions: gathered and scattered.

I’m not sure who first said it, but it’s become almost an axiom in the evangelical world that “worship is a lifestyle.” In other words, worship is not just what Christians do together for an hour or so on Sunday mornings. It’s what we do throughout the week. 1 Corinthians 10.31 opens up the possibility for all of life as worship by admonishing us, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” No aspect of our life is exempt from the imperative to worship Jesus. And that’s because all of life is worship: whether of Jesus or of something else (idols).

Probably the frequently asked question in this regard is: what does that look like? I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a fan of that question. And I think the reason why is that it assumes that the answer is going to be something more than what we already know. I’m convinced it’s not. God has told us the sort of life that’s pleasing to him (the ten commandments). Worship looks like living the way he calls us to. It looks like loving God, and loving our neighbor (and letting the commandments shape our definition of love). It looks like Colossians 3.17, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” A lifestyle of worship is a lifestyle of grateful obedience. The problem is not that we don’t know what it looks like. The problem is that we want it to look like something else. It’s as simple as this: if you’re a stay at home mom, you manage the house, love and teach your kids, and you do it in gratitude for what Christ has done for you. If you sell cars, you sell good cars for a good price with a grateful heart. And so on. Nothing mystical. Nothing supernatural. Nothing outside the ordinary. Scattered worship.

Anyway, the text we’ve been reflecting upon for these considerations has been Revelation 5. And it’s not silent on this issue either. In verses 11-14, we see an ever-widening circle of worship, as praise for the Lamb expands until it includes every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea. We’re given a vision of all-encompassing worship that includes every aspect of life and the whole of the created order (incidentally, this is symbolized by our bringing bread and wine into our worship in the sacrament of Communion). This is worship expanding beyond the four walls of the church building (or brewery in our case).

Something I love here is that verse ten identifies the people of the Lamb as a kingdom of priests. One of the fruits of the Protestant Reformation was this idea of the priesthood of all believers. While there have been some pretty bad distortions of this in popular evangelical piety (and some of the Radical Reformers), it’s still a treasure of biblical Christianity. We are all priests: in other words, we all have access to God. As we’ve seen, worship doesn’t just happen on Sunday morning with the gathered church. We can worship and enjoy God all the time, anywhere.

However, we’d be fools to read that and think that all we need is this worship-is-a-lifestyle-scattered-type-worship. Remember, this heavenly worship scene happens specifically in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and not apart from the church. If Jesus has purchased himself a church, our worship ought to include them. The trajectory of this passage is for more and more to be brought into the circle of worship, not less. The circle of praise is expanding, not contracting.

If we won’t worship Jesus throughout the week, thinking that our hour of time on Sunday is “enough,” then we don’t really love Jesus as we ought to or understand redemption. At the same time, if we think it’s “enough” to worship Jesus on our own throughout the week, or even with our small group of Christian friends, without also gathering with the whole church on Sunday, then don’t really love Jesus as we ought to or understand redemption.

Who needs the church? We do.

So gather with the church this Sunday, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because Jesus is worthy of the church’s worship. And don’t stop there, worship him throughout the week because his worthiness far exceeds what can be given him in that brief hour.

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

A couple of Sundays ago, 1.21 Church had the priviledge of installing two new deacons to serve the Body of Christ. God has given the church deacons in order to protect the unity and mission of the church by meeting important needs whilst keeping the elders free to devote themselves to the ministries of the Word of God and Prayer (Acts 6).

So now it’s my pleasure to introduce our two newest deacons to you.

Allison Callahan

Allison currently serves the church by helping us stay organized. She makes sure that we have any and all  printed materials ready to go, as well as helping to organize volunteers for any events the church has (if you’ve ever eaten at a 1.21 event, Allison was probably involved). Allison is also helping us to find ways to enter into and serve our city incarnationally. Allison writes,  “I love experiencing different cultures and encountering different people groups, whatever they may be.  I love being able to see what God is doing in those groups and how He is using the gospel to draw those groups to himself.  I have realized that in order to be effective in ministry you need to be completely immersed in the culture in which you live…I feel as if God has given me a huge heart for foreign missions, but have realized that God has put me in this place right now.  I would love to help other people have a better understanding of what God is doing overseas as well as equip them to minister to the people around them where they are.”

If you’d like information about serving in any of these areas, please contact Allison.

Melissa Stone

Melissa and her husband Daniel moved to Winston-Salem from Tempe Arizona this summer in order to be a part of 1.21. Melissa currently serves the church by coordinating our childrens’ ministries (1.21 Kids). This includes recruiting, training, and administrating volunteers, teachers, curriculum, the whole nine. Melissa writes, “1.21 Kids is just one of the ways in which individuals from our church express their worship and celebration of Jesus. Every Sunday, we are given the privilege to serve Jesus by providing some of the 1.21 children with biblical teaching and opportunities to interact with other 1.21 Kids. In no way do we desire to replace the discipleship that parents are called by God to provide to their children. However, we do recognize that Jesus delighted in ministering to children who are just as much sinners in need of His grace.”

If you’d like to help serve in any of these capacities, please contact Melissa for more information.

Please join me in welcoming these two godly servants into their new offices!

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

In a previous post, we looked at some biblical features of corporate worship from Revelation 5. In this post, we’ll take a look at another aspect of our worship that is commonly neglected: the communion of saints. As Christians, we confess the truths of the Apostles’ Creed, which near the end states: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.” Two closely related ideas in the creed are the holy catholic church and the communion of saints.

By the catholic church, we mean the church of Jesus Christ as it has spanned geographic and generational distance. It is the union of all believers in Jesus across the world and throughout time. We here on earth are the church militant, while those who have left this life are now the church triumphant. And, as members of Christ, we are all members of one another (Romans 12.5). Our union with all who are united with Christ is referred to as “the communion of saints.” (See also Hebrews 11.1-12.1). With that background in mind, I want us to take another look at the church’s worship (especially in Revelation 5).

The Book of Revelation consists of a vision that John received “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day [i.e., Sunday]” (Revelation 1.10). And in that vision, John is caught up to the worship of heaven (Revelation 4ff.) The scene in Chapter 5 is the unfolding heavenly liturgy. Among the cast of characters in chapters 4-5 are twenty-four elders. As best as I can tell, these twenty-four elders represent the people of God throughout the ages, the holy catholic church (12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Apostles). Elders, after all, are one of the church offices established in Scripture. Which leads me to believe that in the normal Sunday worship of the church, believers take part in the worship of heaven, like John did in Revelation 4-5.

We see this playing out as well in Hebrews 12.18-29, and First Corinthians 5 (especially verse 4). Both passages work with the assumption that the gathered church is participating in something much larger than just their own gathering. They are united with worshipers in heaven and on the other side of the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is far more happening in our churches’ worship than we realize. If we could capture this wort of realization, I believe it would transform the way we approach Sunday mornings. It wouldn’t be a burdensome chore. It wouldn’t be blasé or commonplace. It would be shot through with importance, dignity, and joy. Here we are before our God, and joining us are countless other brothers and sisters whom we’ve never met, but nevertheless love, with whom we are bound together in ties that transcend our cultural/geographic distance, and with whom we will one day sit at the Wedding Feast.

As our church enters the Season of Lent (beginning Ash Wednesday), we will be begging God to show us our dependence on him, and his utter worthiness of our worship and adoration. Might I also suggest that we beg him to open our eyes to the communion of saints, adding new depth to our conception of worship, and giving us one more reason to praise his Name.

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

Yesterday Pastor Craig preached a sermon from Revelation 5, which depicts a scene of the worship in heaven (I’ll have more to say about this in a subsequent post). The burden of the sermon was that Jesus Christ, the Conquering Lion, the Lamb who was Slain, is worthy of all worship: in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

Jesus is worthy of our worship. We’ll be worshiping him throughout eternity. It behooves us, then, to learn how to worship well. There are several features of worship that I noticed in the text.

1. Worship is Affective. In verse 4, when no one can open the scroll, John weeps loudly. This shows us that worship is holistic, it includes our affections and our emotions. Now, I have a pretty deep distrust of the way some churches basically manipulate and manufacture emotion, or the ways that Christians sometimes associate worship exclusively with emotion (such that they’ve not “really worshiped” unless they reach a certain level of fervor).  But still, it’s inescapable, that worship involves our affections.
2. Worship is concerned with God’s purposes. The main action of this scene is the opening of the scroll that contains God’s purposes for history and the church. John weeps because it seems God’s purposes will be thwarted. The heavenly host worships because the Lamb will be able to open the scroll. Therefore, in worship, our focus should be primarily Godward, and on his purposes, rather than inward/selfward, and with a view to our own purposes (e.g., what we’ll get out of it).
3. Worship is embodied. In verse 8, we see the living creatures and the elders prostrate themselves before the Lamb, and burning incense. They realize that we aren’t just free floating souls. And while worship is primarily a matter of the heart, that does not mean that what we do with our body is inconsequential. God created humanity with bodies, and he’s not changed his mind. We’ll have bodies throughout eternity. Physical stuff (even smells and bells) matters. That’s part of why our corporate worship is sacramental, because we want sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell to be involved in the worship of God. So does God.
4. Worship is orderly. This is not a chaotic scene. Everyone has their appropriate parts and responses, and they say them at the right times. In fact, in Chapter Four, we read that they are frequently repeating the same lines (from memory? by rote? from a book? we don’t know). Some traditions place a high value on spontaneity and lack of planning. There are times when that is appropriate. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in this scene. The worshipers here are no less “led by the Spirit” than our more charismatic brothers and sisters, but they seem to be using (dare I say it?), a fairly liturgical/ritualized form of worship. At its best worship is both orderly/liturgical and free flowing/non-restrictive.
5. Worship is focused on the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. The whole scene centers about the Lamb who was slain, and how he purchased a people for God by his blood. I’ve noticed that a good bit of contemporary worship music (and many “traditional” songs) sings truth (“I am a friend of God”), but fails to give any sort of context or basis for it (“because Jesus Christ died for me”). In my humble (but accurate) opinion, that sort of approach eviscerates worship of its true meaning and purpose. Our worship should never assume the gospel. It should proclaim it, revel in it, and marinate in it. Only Jesus is worthy of our worshipful response. And only in the cross do we understand why that is the case.

Well, I’ve probably alienated enough people for one post. In our next post, we’ll take a look at worship and the “communion of saints.”

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

Continuing our theme of baptism, I’ve thrown together a few great quotes about this sacrament of initiation.

Rather, in baptism, we are subsumed into a story of water and the word. A story of creation formed out of dark waters. A story of a God so righteous that he was willing to make war on the world he created, only to hang up his bow and to promise never to give up on us again. A story of a people, created out of nothing, by a God determined to be worshipped [sic] rightly, led through waters into the desert as imperial chariots foundered. A story of a Jewish woman visited by God in a way that confounded her fiance but caused her to sing. A story of a crazy man out in the desert proclaiming a new kingdom coming in water and fire. A story of one who saved by an issue of water and blood…Christian preching brings out or brings inot view the mystery inherent in the waters of baptism. Baptismal preaching names the reality to which we have all been exposed, that is, the peculiar salvation of theis crucified God. Therefore baptismal preaching is not so much a matter of being didactic, of explaining something, as it is of testifying to something, struggling to describe an event that has already happened to the congregation, bringing into view the significance of our baptism with words. (William H. Willimon, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized p. 5).

By the way, while we’re dealing with Willimon, this essay is gold.

Then we’ve got:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the chidlren of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (The Book of Common Prayer)

Then from the Archbishop of Canterbury [then Bishop of Monmouth]:

The actual shape and rhetoric of sacramental actions [depicts]… a process of estrangement, surrender and re-creation…Baptismal identity is given, not chosen…[The baptismal liturgy] begins…[by] telling us that all are born in sin, and that the gift looked for in baptism is something ‘which by nature [we] cannot have’; and it proceeds to rehearse stories of transition and rescue – Noah and his family, ‘the children of Israel thy people’. The apparently neutral condition of the infant [yes, he's talking about infant baptism...there's still something to learn here even if we disagree] is thus redescribed as on of danger or unfreedom, liability to divine ‘wrath’; what is necessary is incorporation into the society that is within the ark, where it becomes possible to be ‘rooted in charity’. Prayers are said for the ‘death’ of the child’s existing human identity and the distorted affects that go with it, and God is petitioned to number the child among his chosen. After the immersion or affusion, the child is said to be ‘grafted into the body of Christ’s Church’, and prayer is further made that the child may share Christ’s resurrection as it has already, symbolically, shared his death. In conclusion, the duties of the baptized are spelled out, reiterating the theme of death and resurrection: what is symbolically done here, the putting to death of ‘corrupt affections’, is to be renewed daily in concrete behavior…

Both the kinds of belonging evoked here – the condition of sin, belonging with Adam, and the new life of belonging in or with Christ – are not elective matters, not things over which the subject has any control. First there is the unsought and unwelcome solidarity of being in danger, then the ‘grafting’ into a new reality. The danger is associated with misdirected ‘affections’…we want, are drawn by, are moved by, what will kill us; so that, by contrast, the new life is implicitly associated with new attractions, a new sensibility…We must receive grace to want the endlessness of God. But…this has nothing to do with being educated into new perception: there is a gift bestowed…which orients us in a certain way, and what must follow is a discipline to ensure we do not lose sight of it… (Rowan Williams, “The Sacraments of the New Society,” in Christ: The Sacramental Word, pp. 90-91)

And finally:

For [Christ] dedicated and sanctified baptism in his own body in order taht he might have it in common with us as the firmest possible bond of the union and fellowship which he has deigned to form with us…Thus we see that the fulfillment of baptism is in Christ, whom also for this reason we call the proper object of baptism…For all the gifts of God proffered in baptism are found in Christ alone. Yet this cannot take place unless he who baptizes in Christ invokes also the names of the Father and the Spirit. For we are cleansed by his blood because our merciful Father, wishing to receive us into grace in accordance with his incomparable kindness, has set this Mediator among us to gain favor for us in his sight. But we obtain regeneration by Christ’s death and resurrection only if we are sanctified by the Spirit and imbued with a new and spiritual nature. For this reason we obtain and, so to speak, clearly discern in the Father the cause, in the Son the matter, and in the Spirit the effect of our purgation and our regeneration. (John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.15.6)