Introduction

In our Post Modern society, 'Generation X' is growing increasingly sceptical and cynical about being controlled by large institutions such as the media, government and the church. Society no longer holds to the ideals that knowledge is the be all and end all of human existence (Modernism), and that technology is not necessarily the solution to our problems.

We live in a world where many people no longer believe in objective truth, truth for them is subjective (existentialism). They say that what is truth for one person is not necessarily truth for another. In our information laden world people find it impossible to make up one congruent picture from the massive amounts of information that they are bombarded with. People today want to see Christianity in action before they believe it.

In this study we will learn more about how we can show the character of God to the world and the main way we can worship God - through quality relationships with one other.

The Most Important Thing

People go to camps, pubs, night-clubs, casinos, sporting matches, churches, play in bands etc... in order to be part of a community; a place where feel they accepted, appreciated, understood, valued, loved, cared for, needed and where they can make a valued contribution into other people's lives. We are addicted to that sense of community.

Communication and unity comes relatively easily on a camp. In today's society there is plenty of top down communication from the media and those above us, but there is little real horizontal (person to person) communication and therefore little unity.

Jesus was a man of great love. There were many occasions when Jesus expressed deep concern and love in his relationships with the people all around him. Read John 11:1-46, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, paying special note to how important people are to.

Jesus carried out normal, day to day relationships like we do today, but with a radical love which changed people. This passage is just another example of the way that Jesus carried out real relationships and loved people in practical ways.

Jesus turned the world on its head because he actually practiced what he preached. His disciples understood clearly what Jesus taught about love and relationships because they lived with it.

Jesus, through his intimate relationships with his disciples showed them a way of living that they could not ignore. They were no longer nobodies. They had something to live for - God and others. Jesus' radical love changed people from nobodies into people who changed the course of history. He was the supreme model of love, acceptance and forgiveness and in turn said `go and do likewise.'

Jesus is moved to tears by the pain of those whom he loves.

Jesus said that the most important things for us to do in this world is to:

• Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and
• Love your neighbour as yourself.

Notice that the expert in the law asked for only one commandment, but Jesus gives two parts of one commandment. You cannot do one without doing the other.

But how do we practically demonstrate this love to others? Here are some definitions that people have given for love.

In the same way now, it is the Christian community which has the responsibility to reflect our relationship with God to the world. People should see our unity and the way we love each other and see that there is something different and desirable, that this sort of love can only come from God, and therefore be attracted to us and want to know more about the God we worship.

The reason for the success of these two communities is the nature of the love expressed in relationships. There is a level of intimacy and of synergy which approaches the pre-fall state of the communion between Adam and Eve and God.`

Community is not the end. Community, the unification of the Body of Christ, is purely a result of Christians glorifying God together. Christians meet together for all sorts of reasons, but the Gospel should always be given priority. Christianity is unique. God did something for us that we could never do for ourselves, and still live.

Jesus, who was sinless, died in our place to pay the debt for our sins so that we could be freed from our sins. When we accept this by faith, we can be forgiven and we can live at peace with God and others. Our lives and all we do are then a response to God saving us (by grace through faith), not done in order to be saved (by works). The Gospel (good news) should be the motivation for all that the Christian does.

Because God accepts and loves me then I can accept, love, and respect others. This is the basis of Christian relationships. We can then show adoration and praise God together. This is Christian community.

So, where do I fit in?

In this study we will look at God's plan for the Body of Christ to function together effectively. Under God's structure he has given each of us unique roles similarly distinct to our roles as males and females. These roles are called spiritual gifts.

Jesus' main topic of teaching was `The Kingdom of God'; the world over which God reigns. Later Paul continued to teach the same theme with the analogy of the Body of Christ. The members of the Body of Christ are Christians who submit to Jesus as the Head, and together represent Jesus to the world. Each Christian has a valuable role in order to build up the other members of the Body and show the full reality of Jesus to the world.

Read Romans 11:33-12:18, and Ephesians 4:11-16. What are the different spiritual gifts identified in these passages? Discuss them.

Don and Katie Fortune, in their book `Discover Your God Given Gifts' divide the spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible into three categories. This study will focus mainly on the motivational gifts from Romans 12:6-8.

• Word of wisdom - a revelation of wisdom beyond natural human wisdom that enables a person to know what to do or say.
• Word of knowledge - a revelation of information for a person, group, or situation that could not have been known by natural means.
• Faith - the kind of wonder-working faith that moves mountains and waits expectantly for results.
• Gifts of healing - the many different ways and varieties of degrees in which God manifests healings.
• Working of miracles - the demonstration of the power and action of God that goes beyond natural laws.
• Prophecy - an anointed proclamation of God through an individual to encourage, exhort or comfort.
• Discerning of spirits - a person's ability to perceive what type of spirit is in operation in a given situation.
• Various kinds of tongues - the language given to the believer by the Holy Spirit but not understood by the speaker.
• Interpretation of tongues - the supernatural ability to express the content of what has been spoken in tongues.

• Apostle - one who establishes and strengthens churches.
• Prophet - one who speak forth the message of God.
• Evangelist - one who is called to preach the Gospel.
• Pastor - one who feeds and shepherds the believers.
• Teacher - one who instructs believers in the Word of God.

There are various views on spiritual gifts, what they are, how you acquire them, and how they are to be used. What is clear is that God has created each individual with unique giftings and personality types so that we need each other to be complete. God designed us so that no one member of the Body can do everything, but when individuals come together and co-operate, our gifts complement one another's gifts to build up the Body of Christ.

Each member plays an integral part in the function of the Body. Each part of the body relies on the other members of the body. All are of equal importance.

While most people contain a mixture of the various giftings, each person has a particular leaning, or a `primary gifting'. An understanding of your personal giftings will help you to direct your efforts into areas where you will be productive and to do things that you will enjoy doing because it is what you were created to do. It will help you take on tasks you can do well and not to take on jobs that you know you won't be effective in. An understanding of others' giftings will help you to work with them and meet their needs and vice versa.

Community Through Time

What is the most important thing God is doing throughout time? When this world is gone what will be left?

Finally, God came to Earth and took away the shame of sin that has separated us from God and from each other since Adam and Eve. Not only has the life and death and resurrection of Jesus taken away sin and enabled the restoration of the vertical communion with God but it has also enabled the restoration of the horizontal community of humanity.

In Ephesians 5 Pauls shows us that marriage is modelled on the relationship of Jesus and the church. The practical application of this is that Christ has given his life for the church and she submits to him; Christ loves her as his own body and she in turn strives to be pure. They are united as one. The bride exists to respect, honour and worship her Groom because of who he is and what he has done for her.

The followers of the Way were outlaws of a sort, so they met together regularly to build each other up into the image of Christ as God's love was displayed in supernatural and natural acts. As this God party went on people would come to check it out. When people would come in contact with this community they were attracted by what they experienced that they would stay to find out what it was all about.

And what about the future? Revelation 21:1-5 gives a snapshot of God's plan for eternity.

Stages of Community

Groups assembled deliberately to form themselves into community routinely go through certain stages in the process. These stages, in order, are:

• Pseudocommunity
• Chaos
• Emptiness
• Community

Pseudocommunity

The first response of a group in seeking to form a community is most often to try to fake it. The members attempt to be an instant community by being extremely pleasant with one another and avoiding all disagreement.

In pseudo community a group attempts to purchase community cheaply by pretence. The essential dynamic of pseudo community is conflict avoidance. True community is conflict-resolving.

The rules of pseudocommunity are: don't do or say anything that might offend someone else; if someone does or says something that offends, annoys, or irritates you, act as if nothing has happened and pretend you are not bothered in the least. This makes for a smoothly functioning group but it also crushes individuality, intimacy, and honesty. The longer it lasts the duller it gets.

The basic pretence of pseudocommunity is the denial of individual differences. People tend to speak in generalities without being vulnerable and without speaking of themselves personally.

We need to learn to celebrate our differences instead of trying to disguise them. We need to learn that the addition of a group of individuals being truly themselves is much more interesting than a group of individuals all trying to be the same as each other.

Once individual differences are not only allowed but encouraged to surface in some such way, the group almost immediately moves into the second stage of community development: chaos.

Chaos

Chaos always centres around well-intentioned but misguided attempts to heal and convert.

By and large, people resist change. So the healers and converters try harder to heal or convert, until finally their victims get their backs up and start trying to heal the healers and convert the converters. It is indeed chaos.

In the stage of chaos, individual differences are, unlike those in pseudocommunity, right out in the open. Only now, instead of trying to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them. Underlying the attempts to heal and convert is not so much the motive of love as the motive to make everyone normal - and the motive to win, as the members fight over whose norm will prevail.

The chaos could easily be circumvented by an authoritarian leader - a dictator - who assigned them specific tasks and goals. The only problem is that a group led by a dictator is not, and never can be, a community. Community and totalitarianism are incompatible.

People usually want to escape from chaos into organisation. It is true that organisation is a solution to chaos. Indeed, it is the primary reason for organisation: to minimise chaos. The trouble is, however, that organisation and community are also incompatible. Committees and chair people do not make a community. An organisation is able to nurture a measure of community within itself only to the extent that it is willing to risk or tolerate a certain lack of structure.

Emptiness

There are only two ways out of chaos. One is into organisation - but organisation is never community. The only other way is into and through emptiness.

Emptiness is the hard part. It is also the most crucial stage of community development. It is the bridge between chaos and community.

The process of emptying ourselves of the barriers that we put up in the chaos stage is the key to the transition from `rugged' to `soft' individualism.

Expectations and Preconceptions

People are terrified of emptiness and the unknown. We want life to conform to our expectations. Until such time as we can empty ourselves of expectations and stop trying to fit others into and our relationships with them into a preconceived mould we cannot really listen, hear and experience. `Life is what happens when you've planned something else.'

Prejudices

It is common that we make judgements about people without any experience of them whatsoever. One reason to distrust instant community is that community-building requires time - the time to have sufficient experience to become conscious of our prejudices and then to empty ourselves of them.

The Need to Heal, Convert, Fix, or Solve

During the stage of chaos, when the members of a group attempt to heal or convert each other, they believe that they are being loving. And they are truly surprised by the chaos that results. After all, isn't it the loving thing to do to relieve your neighbour of her suffering or to help him see the light? Actually, however, almost all these attempts to convert and heal are not only naïve and ineffective but quite self-centred and self-serving.

It hurts me when my friend is in pain. If I can do something to get rid of this pain I will feel better. My most basic motive when I strive to heal is to feel good myself. But there are several problems here. One is that my cure is usually not my friend's. Indeed, offering someone my cure usually only makes that person feel worse. So it was that all the advice that Job's friends gave him in his time of affliction served only to make him more miserable. The fact of the matter is that often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share that pain - to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.

The same is true with the attempt to convert. If your theology or ideology is different from mine, it calls mine into question. It is uncomfortable for me to be uncertain of my own understanding in such basic matters. On the other hand, if I could convert you to my way of thinking, it would not only relieve my discomfort, it would be further proof of the rectitude of my beliefs and cast me in the role of saviour to boot. How much easier and nicer that would be than extending myself to understand you as you are.

As they enter the stage of emptiness the members of a group come to realise that their desire to heal, convert, or otherwise `solve' their interpersonal differences is a self-centred desire for comfort through the obliteration of these differences. And then it begins to dawn on them that there may be an opposite way: the appreciation and celebration of interpersonal differences.

The Need to Control

We need to empty ourselves of our need to be in control. `Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.'

Giving up things that we hide behind is a sacrificial process. Consequently the stage of emptiness in community development is a time of sacrifice. And sacrifice hurts.

Because the stage of emptiness can be so painful, there are two questions I am routinely asked with agony. One is, `Isn't there any way into community except through emptiness?' My answer is `No.' The other question is, `Isn't there any way into community except through the sharing of brokenness?' Again my answer is `No.'

As a group moves into emptiness, a few of its members begin to share their own brokenness - their defeats, failures, doubts, inadequacies, and sins. They begin to stop acting as if they `had it all together' as they reflect on those things they need to empty themselves of. But the other members generally do not listen to them very attentively. Either they revert to attempts to heal or convert the broken members or else they ignore them by quickly changing the topic. Consequently those who have made themselves vulnerable tend to retreat quickly into their shells. It is not easy to confess your weakness when others are apt to try immediately to change you or else behave as if you haven't said anything worth listening to.

Basically this final resistance is an attempt to flee back into pseudo-community. But here the issue at stake is no longer whether individual differences will be denied. The group has moved too far for that. Instead the struggle is over wholeness. It is over whether the group will choose to embrace not only the light of life but also life's darkness. True community is joyful, but it is also realistic. Sorrow and joy must be seen in their proper proportions.

Community

When its death has been completed, open and empty, the group enters community. In this final stage a soft quietness descends. It is a kind of peace. The room is bathed in peace. Then, quietly a member begins to talk about herself. She is being very vulnerable. She is speaking of the deepest part of herself. The group hangs on each word. No one realised she was capable of such eloquence.

When she is finished there is a long hush. It goes on a long time. But it does not seem long. There is no uneasiness in this silence. Slowly, out of the silence, another member begins to talk. He too is speaking very deeply, very personally, about himself. He is not trying to heal or convert the first person. He's not even trying to respond to her. It's not she but he who is the subject. Yet the other members of the group do not sense he has ignored her. What they feel is that it is as if he is laying himself down next to her on the altar.

A silence returns.

Then the next member speaks. And as it goes on, there will be a great deal of sadness and grief expressed; but there will also be much laughter and joy. There will be tears in abundance. Sometimes they will be tears of sadness, sometimes of joy. Sometimes, simultaneously, they will be tears of both. And then something almost more singular happens. An extraordinary amount of healing and converting begins to occur - now that no one is trying to convert and heal. And community has been born.

What now? The group can now focus on the purpose for which they have gathered. They can now think as one and achieve a common purpose. `Community-building first, problem solving second.'

Because I have spoken so glowingly of its virtues, it worries me that some might conclude that life in community is easier or more comfortable than ordinary existence. It is not. But it is certainly more lively, more intense. The agony is actually greater, but so is the joy.

Christian Community & History

A funny thing happened on the way to the millennium: In the Forth Century, the church's wheels fell off. Until then, it had looked like the gospel would reach the uttermost parts at chariot race speed. Or at least before McDonald's did.

No such luck. Just after AD 300, the church made the biggest blunder in its history and crashed like an Indy 500 racer with a stuck throttle and a full tank of gas.

Hardly anyone knows about this blunder today except scholars (who know all about it, but discuss it just among themselves). And yet the effects were disastrous:

Laymen lost the three key freedoms that had fuelled the rapid growth: open worship, open sharing, and open community.

The church degenerated from an army or family into an audience-overnight in some places!

Evangelism slowed to a crawl. Or an ooze.

Church leaders got the bright idea of diversifying into politics and took over whole governments. We now remember this period as the, uh, Dark Ages.

Where did we go wrong?

Within thirty years of Christ's accession, the gospel was being preached in every outpost of the Roman Empire.

Unencumbered by mortgages, committees, staff salaries, and conflicts between choir rehearsal and church softball team practice, the "Followers of the Way" blazed a trail of stunning success.

Then as the church grew in the first three centuries, it thrived on hard times and persecution

• In hard times, the church's strong grass-roots mutual-assistance charities held everyone together
• In persecution, the government sharply defined the church by pushing everyone together, figuratively. And the act of taking a stand for Christ strengthened each man woman and child.

What was their secret? First, the presence of the living God in their hearts. Second, the weekly gathering of the church, an informal and often-boisterous affair with a full-on meal, not just a polite ceremony with a itty bitty bread crumb and a thimbleful of Welch's. Church life was a floating party, with everyone eating dinner at each others' houses and participating 100% in the festivities.

At the weekly get-together, everyone was the star of the show, everyone was needed. Spirits were lifted, problems solved, hurts healed, hearts fed, and the Lord of lords spoke to every soul.

From our vantage point today, it looks as if they had an unbeatable thing going. A sure-fire, runaway, free-wheeling style of church that was gobbling up Satan's territory like a giant pac-man. Why, then, did the roaring success of the early days fade? When did we cool off?

Well, as we grew larger and more popular, our feeling of being a distinct family waned. In a well-churched society, it's hard to think of everybody as a brother or sister in the Lord. "Us vs Them" psychology doesn't work when almost everyone is us. The church became less of a revolutionary band and more of a static establishment. Eloquent preachers began to attract large followings.

The final straw came in 313, when Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan, officially tolerating the church and ending the persecutions. Church leaders from popes to local bishops got involved with the government. Many even became officials. At that time it looked like a good idea. ("Hey, we won! Now we can take over!")

As it turned out, it was a lousy idea. Out top leaders drifted astray on a long, long power trip and let their flocks wander.

After this first flurry of church buildings in 323-327, we ceased being an interactive family and turned into an audience. Spectators.

The Constantine Fiasco

What really killed us was the bricks. In the biggest blunder in her history, the church began constructing lots of building, displacing the catacombs and forest glens - and ending forever the warm, precious, meetings in someone's living room.

Modelled after the Roman forums, the new buildings held hundreds of Christians. Of course, you can't have an intimate, easy interaction with that size crowd. So from the first Sunday it was opened, a new sanctuary put limits on free expression. The new crib strangled the baby. Imagine you were living in that time:

• You may have felt at ease confessing a sin to a couple dozen friends over at Josephus and Johanna's (or let's call them Joe and Jane). But in front of five hundred strangers. Whoa!
• If God taught you something this week and it lay strongly on your heart, you wouldn't hesitate to stand up and spend ten or fifteen minutes sharing it in Joe and Jane's living room. But here in the new hall, there are probably a dozen men and women with a message burning in their hearts. So take a number!
• Over at Joe and Jane's, everybody got into the act in the worship time. You were able to praise the Lord from your heart, again and again as you felt led. It was the most meaningful and healing moment of your week. But here? Take a number!

I could go on, but you get the idea. Without modern acoustics or riving microphones, open meetings became difficult. Not too difficult, mind you, just difficult. So closed meetings took over. All speaking became centralised in a pulpit. And order was maintained. (Again, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)

At Joe and Jane's, you were a participant. Here, you're a spectator. A passive listener. A blip.

At first you don't mind it. The change is all exciting! And being with 500 believers at once - wow! Paradise! Not until years later does it dawn on you that you've been turned into a pew potato.

But now, with 1,000 eyes focused on the pulpit, the man behind it has become extremely important. He's very, very good, of course - probably the best speaker in the area. His warmth and wisdom and skill defuse any latent objections to the new state of affairs. Certainly, his polished sermons beat the sandals off the impromptu teachings you used to hear - and give - at Joe and Jane's.

So it doesn't take long before every local church from London to Alexandria has its own building and its own professional Christian standing up in front every Sunday, doing most of the talking. Eventually, the love-feasts get so big and rowdy that they're banned.

No prophet or leader comes to the fore, decrying the passing of the house church or condemning the new diversion of church funds into real estate development. No one of any note questions taking initiative away from ordinary believers and bestowing it upon the new priesthood class.

And no one points out that the holy Scriptures don't sanction any of this.

By 400, just 87 years later, the Roman Empire had gone from being less than four percent Christian to eighty per cent Christian... with no conversions!! (In fact, true evangelism virtually disappeared from the face of the Earth during that time.) It was arguably the worst disaster since Noah.

Paradise Lost

All the major problems of the church today - other than sin - can be traced back 1700 years, to when the church became an audience (Go ahead, make my day - try to think of one that can't.)

When we switched from living rooms to church buildings and professionally staffed the local church, we lost all momentum. The local church became weak and cold.

Non-priests were termed "laymen," a word not even found in the Bible - for good reason. I have struggled to find a better word to use. About the best I've found is `player,' with the corresponding term for a minister being `coach.' It would be nice to just call all laymen Christians, but what would that make your pastor? A non-Christian?

As a "layman" in a Fourth Century church building, you no longer approached God directly. The priest did so on your behalf. And thus did an architectural problem turn into a doctrinal problem. The priesthood of the believer was lost.

The Bible was taken from the hands of the layman and given to the priest. (If you're not allowed to decided what it means, why bother to read it?)

With the Scriptures out of the hands of the people, the priesthood was free to play with it unencumbered by the corrective discipline of secular life. For a thousand years, cloistered monks lovingly piled theological baggage atop the Bible until, by the time of Luther, hardly a layman in Europe knew the all-important meaning of "justification by faith."

Without the Scriptures to lift them out of the mud, laymen turned into serfs in the feudalism of the Dark Ages.

Ironically, in that darkness the only candle of hope and upward mobility was the church. Becoming a priest was the only way out of oblivion. We commonly laud the medieval church for providing this sole escape hatch from the pit; we should remember that the church helped to dig it.

The Road to Ruin

The early church had so much success and momentum that they should logically have evangelised everyone from turkey to Tokyo by AD 600.

Many historians say the problem was that believers felt disillusioned when Christ didn't return right away. Well, we now have nineteen centuries of "disillusionment," and we're the biggest religion in the world.

What really went haywire? As I said, the church got so big and popular that it could erect its own buildings. Unfortunately, this solved a long-standing problem that should have been left standing. Whenever a healthy house-church got too big for its living room, it had to split - into two living rooms. New leadership was thus always being sucked upward through the ranks.

But when church buildings began to sprout across the Empire, congregations no longer had to face the awkward anguish of who got to stay with the favourite elders and who had to split off with the nobodies. Everybody stayed with everybody. Heavenly!

Trouble is, sharing and intimacy were tricky in a crowd of 500. And the big crowds put a premium on eloquence. So the stuttering new converts started to stay in their shells. Anonymity replaced fellowship. Communication during meetings began to be dominated by the few who could read and had access to book: In the end, that meant the priests. The laity, citizens of long-crumbling Roman empire, were turned into spiritual eunuchs and lost the strength the empire needed so desperately at that time. By 476, Rome fell for the final time, and the church led the way into the Dark Ages.

The 2/3 Reformation

A thousand tear-stained years later, Luther, Calvin & Co. (bless 'em) began picking up the pieces. They put Christian theology back together like a lovely jigsaw puzzle.

They also worked a bit on the church's practices and functions, and got about half of them glued back together, more or less. Fabulous work. The best fixit job since Nehemiah.

But they couldn't do everything. Rome wasn't unbuilt in a day. So the Puritans had to pick up some more pieces., the 18th century, the Wesley's picked up some more. Starting in 1901, the Pentecostal movement picked up even more. And the chap who founded your denomination undoubtedly eclipsed them all.

But there's still a gigantic hole in the church. The "priesthood of the believer," the central goal of the Reformation, has been restored only theologically, not practically. It still exists mainly on paper. In very important ways, our churches remain closed to laymen.

Between clergy and laity there is still a big, uncrossable gap - academic, professional, and liturgical. For example:

Even though we acknowledge the common saying, "Everyone has at least one sermon in him," almost no one is ever encouraged or even allowed to deliver that one sermon. This practice is a horrendous exercise in quenching the Spirit. It frosts me that the "one sermon" in the heart of a faithful dentist or truck driver or engineer should forever be deemed less worthwhile than all two thousand of the lifetime sermons of a M.Div.

Most of the church is too watery to formulate and enforce biblical standards for full-time ministry, so we imitate the opposition, the world. We don't allow laymen to mature into ministers. Jesus and Paul believed in on the job training; we put our faith in seminaries.

We almost idolise schools and their graduates. Their lecterns are baptised as pulpits, lecture become sermons, students are parishioners, and degrees are, well, required... from world- approved institutions. But even in college, if you sit still for seven years, they'll give you a Ph.D. and let you stand up and do the talking. In church, you can sit for seventy years and never get to say a peep. Worse, you'll be conditioned to be afraid to peep. The system is designed to be static!

Odds are, god has given a handful of people in your church a gift for counselling. But odds are, that gift will never be developed to a pastoral level. the pastor will continue to be your church's counsellor of first and last resort. (Question: How can he "equip saints for the work of the ministry" when he holds a monopoly on doing so much of that work?)

You may have a retired executive who could do wonders with your church's business affairs. You'd love it if he would commit to that work. But he won't. He knows it's part of the pastor's job description. So the pastor will continue to get stuck with that blizzard of details until your whole church understands that they bear the responsibility for the work - and the pastor is only the pastor!

Free the Pastor, free the People

Laymen today have regained the word of God, but not the work of God. The priesthood of the believer has been restored de jure, not de facto.

The very earliest Christians had plenty of problems, but the pastor-centred church wasn't one of them. their churches were elder led, and the burden of God's work was spread like dew on the prairie.

You can take a load off your pastor's back by changing your church into one in which the Spirit leads you through your laity. You'll have a far more powerful church, one in which the workload is borne by a skilled and equipped army of laymen who know their gifts and work like troopers.

How can you do this? Well, you can begin by opening up your church service and granting full participation rights to all those nice folks taking up your pew space on Sundays. In other words, unlock your church and unchain the pastor.

We didn't loose everything in the Fourth Century. Our doctrine survived well. But among the rights and privileges we lost, open worship, open sharing and ministry are the most prominent by far.

In the absence of these freedoms, your church is a closed club, and you're back to the enervating strategies we've all used in the past:

• trying just a little harder
• spending just one more hour in prayer
• witnessing to just one more person
• working just a little faster
• studying just one more chapter of the Bible per day
• wasting just a little less time
• reading one more Christian book
• serving on one more committee

and putting more time and effort into the lives of other believers - who will then go back and rejoin the same frozen-shut system that caused the problems in the first place.

Discussion Questions

The Most Important Thing

• Why did you come on camp? What do you hope to get from being here this weekend?
• What are the most important things in your world?
• Jesus was a man of great love. There were many occasions when Jesus expressed deep concern and love in his relationships with the people all around him. Read John 11:1-46, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, paying special note to how important people are to.
• How did Jesus express his relationships with his disciples?
• What moved Jesus to be concerned? Note the comment of the Jews in v36 - How did they know how much Jesus loved Lazarus? What does this tell us about the character of God?
• Read Matthew 22:34-40. What did Jesus say when questioned as to what he thought is the most important thing to do?
• Read 1 John 4:17-21 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. What are the fruits of our love for God?
• Read John 13:33-35 and 17:20-23. How will people know about Christ now he is no longer on earth?
• After Jesus' death and ascension, the early Christians tried hard to follow his example and live as he commanded. Read Acts 2:42-47. How did they interact with each other? Why did they get together? How important was each member of this group to each other and why? What did they do together to express this?
• Read 1 John 4:7-21 and John 12:32; 3:14-16. What is the real reason for Christian community?
• How much do your relationships with your Christian friends reflect this type of love and community?
• How much does your church reflect the importance of the deep love of Christian relationships?
• Reflect again.... What is the most important thing in God's world? What is the most important thing in your world? What are you going to do about it?

So, where do I fit in?

• What has camp been like for you so far? Has it been what you expected?
• Read Romans 11:33-12:18, and Ephesians 4:11-16. What are the different spiritual gifts identified in these passages? Discuss them.
• Read 1 Peter 4:10&11 and Ephesians 4:15&16. What is the purpose of spiritual gifts?
• Read 1 Corinthians 12:11-27. Are there some gifts that are more important than others? Should you feel down because your gifts seem less significant?
• Which main gifts do you think you possess?
• How do your gifts affect the way you live now?
• How do you think an understanding of your gifts could affect the way you live?
• What would you like to do with your gifts as part of the Body of Christ?
• Spend some time now writing your vision down for where you would like to be and what you would like do with your God given gifts.
• Transfer your vision to the postcard and share your vision with the group if you feel comfortable in doing so.

Reference List

Any of these references are great for getting a better understanding of Christian community.

• Belziki, Dr Gilbert , Church as Community, Defining Moments - Willow Creek Audio Journal
• Belziki, Dr Gilbert, Spiritual Gifts - Turning Spectators into Players in Community Church, Defining Moments - Willow Creek Audio Journal
• Fortune, Don & Katie, Discover Your God-Given Gifts, Peace Makers.
• Peck, M Scott, 1987, The Different Drum, Rider.
• Peck, M Scott, 1993, Further Along the Road Less Travelled, Simon & Schuster.
• Peck, M Scott, People of the Lie, Arrow.
• Rutz, James, The Open Church, Seedsowers
• Semler, Ricardo, Maverick, Arrow.
• Naden, Roy C and Cruise, Robert J, Spiritual Gifts Inventory.
• Yancey, Phillip, The Jesus I Never Knew.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Mum, Dad, Luke Jaaniste, Fiona George, Ian Thompson, Ruth Salecich, John & Carly Grant, Keith Leg, Suzanne Oxford, Nigel Rablin, Ian Thomson & Cederic Taylor.

Footnotes