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Over the next few postings I am going to post a rather lengthy email exchange between myself and a brother in Christ about the Scripture “…not forsaking our own assembling together…”in Hebrews 10:25. I am not doing it so people will choose sides and exacerbate the conflict with more angry rhetoric and I would ask any of you reading not to do that in your feedbacks. I am posting it because I want to hold the charges and my responses up to the light of the wider body. Maybe we all have something to learn here, not only about Scripture interpretation but also how to deal with our differences in what I hope are constructive ways.

In my view, this is a conversation on the cutting edge of defining our freedom in Christ and the motives we tap to help people discover the reality of Father’s family. I know others of you face this same kind of confrontation from people who do not understand how God works. At stake in this exchange is not just how we interpret one verse of Scripture, but how we see the new covenant. It seems to me that many people outside the system today are busy trying to create their own system that they hope will be more effective than the ones they left. I am always amazed and disappointed at how quickly we want to rob the freedom Jesus purchased for us and put people back under obligation as a means to new covenant life.

Most of the emails I get like this come from strangers angry at something I have written that threatens their system. This, however, is from someone I know well and whose home I’ve been in. He is a friend and brother. Thus when it began with a simple request that I clarify an article of mine that he had read, I had no idea what was really behind it. (His emails are in italics; my responses are inset in blue.)

I wanted to drop you a note and say that I read your article, Why I Don’t Go to Church Anymore (excerpted recently in a magazine). There was a stream of what you said that was confusing to me. You almost seem to be espousing an oxymoronic gathering-less church. When you say you are not aware of a Scripture that tells us to go to church, you overlook Hebrews 10:25, “Let us not give up meeting together, as is the habit of some.” It may not be what you meant, but it sounds like you were saying that gathering together is not scriptural or important. Did I misunderstand you?

Having not heard back from him, I thought that cleared things up. But a month later, the following email appeared in my inbox:

Your teaching on church is false teaching. By definition, “ekklesia” is a gathering. How else can the church be the church, if not gathered? Hebrews CLEARLY says that we should not forsake our assembling, and then you say they are not “mandated.” Your sentence, “I’d never say meetings are unimportant or unscriptural, because I treasure them as God allows. But I wouldn’t say that Scripture mandates them either” is double-speak, and confuses your hearers. I’m not sure where your confusion has entered in, but you are spreading your confusion to others and doing damage. You need prayer, brother. Can we get together some time soon?

And with it he also sent me a copy of an email sent to the magazine who had published the article:

I exhort you in the Lord to print and publish only worthy, not worthless words. You published what Wayne said AND teaches: the gathering is not “mandated.” This is false teaching, and directly contradicts scripture. Both author AND you are accountable to God for what you publish. Do not take the scriptural warnings about false teaching lightly. By publishing broadly, you increase your accountability to God.

I strongly encourage you to run your magazine’s contents (in their entirety) past a group of people functioning in the fivefold gifts who are willing to take responsibility before God for the words of the magazine. This is a time of foundation laying, and precision is extremely important in getting the foundation right.

In my next posting, I’ll give you my response.

Today with fear and trembling about how much time this might cost me, I’m beginning a Yahoo Group to help people who frequent Lifestream to meet and encourage each other on similar journeys of being transformed by God’s life. Lifesream Journeys, is designed to provide a forum to discuss the issues, insights and concerns of people seeking to grow in an intimate friendship with God, authentic relationships with other believers, and relevant ways to touch the world. This list is a companion to Wayne’s writings and a place for people to share their stories, lessons they are learning on the journey and to encourage each other to follow Jesus more closely. Hopefully it will help like-hearted people from around the world to connect with each other.

This list is not to argue or debate issues, though respectful disagreement is OK. Contentious people will be warned once then dropped from the list.

Fair warning, Yahoo will be adding commercial content around the messages that are exchanged and we have no control over what those might contain. If it becomes a problem, we’ll have to sort out another option.

A new issue of BodyLife, was posted today. The lead article is on learning to listen and follow Jesus’ leadings in the simplest day-to-day realities. That makes the difference between stagnant and dry spirituality, and the fullness of living life in him. If you’d like to comment or interact on that article, or any thing else in that issue, you may do so here.

Angi, your comments broke my heart with your comments to my last post. You wrote, “I’ve been obsessing that his medical issues are somehow God’s judgment and/or discipline for my sins. I keep thinking if I were more committed or more spiritual that these things would not be happening.”

No! No! No! No! That’s the voice of religion talking. There is no end to that kind of thinking. We can never be good enough, never be committed enough, and never be spiritual enough to earn anything from God’s hand. The new covenant reversed all of that. We do not change ourselves for God so that he will bless us. He blesses us by walking alongside us and changing us from the inside out. Please ask the Abba Father to set you free from this way of thinking so that you can know his love in the midst of the struggles you are having with your husband’s health. That’s what he wants.

I also heard back from the person who asked the original question:

As I said, this could take thousands of words to cover all the possibilities here….

We think of discipline as punishment for disobedience, when Father sees it as training for righteousness. There is a big difference there. Remember Hebrews saying that our fathers disciplined as seemed good to them, but God does it truly for good. So there is a bit of distinction there between how man disciplines and how God does. I do not think God punishes every act of disobedience. I don’t think he needs to. The consequences of living life without him or in opposition to his desires leads, us to pain enough. His desire is to rescue us out of our disobedience and teach us how to trust him. Thus his discipline is to teach us how to obey, not to whack us for not doing so. That’s a huge religious overlay that has been passed on for centuries among God’s people and I think it empowers leaders to keep people in fear of God, but doesn’t serve God’s desire to relate to us.

And I think you’re mistaking the consequences of I Cor 11 for Jesus ‘killing’ people. I think what he is saying is that by partaking in a way that does not discern the Lord’s body we actually take in a condemnation that devours us from the inside. Again, this is more consequence than an overt act on his part as retribution. Only a religious overlay sees God with the giant flyswatter ready to whack someone when they step out of line. The problem is we step out of line all the time. There would be no end of the whacking we’d receive. But God does warn us of consequences that result from living out of synch with his desires for us and that’s just the way he made the world work so that we would be drawn back to him.

Perhaps more problematic is Ananias and Sapphira’s demise. They lied before the body and it is clear that God strikes them dead at Peter’s feet. Again, a religious overlay would see God with the divine flyswatter smacking them dead for lying. But if God did that every time there would be no one left in the Body of Christ today. I know people who have lied about far worse things and live on. Rather than see this as retribution, this was God’s way of training the body to honesty. It was a unique moment, no doubt about that, and admittedly it is a graphic demonstration. As I read the story it is not clear that God rejects them only deals with their failure in a way that would stop others for jockeying for position by their deceit over money. That worked. And we don’t know that Ananias and Sapphira were condemned to hell for their actions. It might prove that their faith was a fraud, but it could also be that God had a greater purpose in bringing them home to himself rather than let them live on the way they were headed. We just don’t know.

What’s very important here is watching how Jesus treated sinners in his ministry. Remember he is the exact representation of the Father’s nature. Jesus lived the reality of leading people to God’s grace while not condoning their sin or failures. At the same time he knew we needed help getting free and wasn’t going to use God’s power to scare us into righteousness, which is how many people see the discipline of Hebrews 12. I don’t.

If that makes sense…

A question I was asked this morning in my email, is one I think many believers have. If you want to look over my shoulder, here it is.

This would take a few thousand words to answer completely, and I don’t think I can pull that off just now….

Suffice it to say that Father’s discipline for his children is not retribution or punishment like we often think of it. Father’s discipline is training. He doesn’t add to our pain to make a point, he tries to help us learn how to bend to his ways. I think of it like the vines I used to tie in my father’s vineyard. We’d have to bring them up to the wire and gently wrap them. But you could hear the canes struggle to get there against their desire to be unrestricted. Now, I know they don’t feel pain, but training them to bear fruit does stress them, especially where they are unyielding. So his discipline is usually unpleasant for us, but it is in hopes of transforming us more into his image, not in punishing us for our failures. There’s a huge difference there.

I used to fear God’s discipline too, but I don’t any more. The only reason I was afraid of his discipline is because I was afraid of him. I thought of God in religious ways that were unworthy of him. As God has shaken those out of my life, I find myself with joy yielding to his training. I want to be more like him. And I know that he knows how weak I am, how easily I am lured by the flesh, and he doesn’t hate me for it, but wants to work in me to displace the power of sin. Just because I stand fully justified before him, doesn’t mean both of us aren’t aware of those things in my life that serve Wayne instead of the Father I love. We are justified so that the relationship is not impaired by those failures and he can come alongside us in our struggle against our own selfishness and teach us day by day how to live more freely in him. This is one of the greatest joys of redemption. We actually get to live in him as he transform us into his image.

Father’s discipline is not something we need to fear, but something we can embrace because we’re confident in who he is and what he wants to do in us. I love when Hebrews tells us to endure all hardship as discipline. He’s not saying it all is, or that God is creating difficult times for us, but that if we treat it like discipline we will know how to respond to him in it. Then our difficulties will actually work to transform us (Seep Romans 5 here) to be more like him and this freer to live in the world with his joy. There’s more about this in my book, In My Father’s Vineyard , especially the sections on summer and winter if you have it.

Ask God to show you how much he loves you and then you won’t fear his discipline but be blessed by it. That is the point of the Hebrews 12 passage, isn’t it?

Steve’s comment to my last blog incited some further thoughts this weekend. He wrote:

I think you strike to the root of why we find comfort in religious systems. They allow us the illusion of control, just as the tree in the Garden of Eden did. They also allow us to fashion God in our own image and make us comfortable in how we live it. The only problem is they don’t work. People that are honest about that get ostracized and many more go along pretending, thinking they must be the problem, not the system. Either way people end up frustrated.

Religious systems also are great for controlling others, if you’re at the top. We have inherited an unspoken ethos from institutional religion that if we are not protected by tradition, obligation, ritual or leaders we will fall into error. But what happens when our traditions, obligations, rituals and/or leaders fall into error? It only took the Galatians a decade to fall away from the simplicity and power of God leading them to embrace all four of those things. And they left the Galatians dead spiritually, because none of those things can create the life that really is life.

But perhaps the major surface reason we have an expanding array of models to implement is that this is the best way to sell your ideas in the world, and to the body of Christ. Quick-fix, how-to books are the bane of our culture. It doesn’t matter if they don’t work. It only matters that people think they will long enough to buy the book or enroll in the course. And when they don’t work they can be blamed for not implementing it exactly right.

I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that I need to fashion a replicatable model for church life, create a new term for it, and write the book. That’s the way to make a living from writing and be significant in whatever movement I choose to land. What’s more, I know they’re right. But I’ve implemented all of my models and found out that while they could create an illusion of life over which I had a measure of control, they were useless in bearing the fruit of the kingdom. While it would sell well, it wouldn’t serve Jesus’ work in the world.

I used to get angry at those who marketed their latest religious systems. I thought it was righteous indignation, until Jesus made it clear I was only jealous that others got to do what I couldn’t. I don’t any more. What Sara and I have come to live in the last five years is better than any financial security I’d achieve by selling a boatload of books. I’d rather walk around with keys that set people free to live in God’s reality than lock them into prison cells of obligation and ritual. I’d rather live out where the waters flow deep, where God makes himself known in a variety of ways as suits his purpose among a group of people, than shape them with a cookie-cutter that divides and wounds the body of Christ. And I’d rather be an unknown whisper in someone’s ear to follow to the fullest what God has put in their heart than to speak at the largest convention of so-called church experts.

This is life, not a job! This is reality, not an excuse for books sales! This is his kingdom, not a tool to build my own.

Sara and I just returned from Pismo Beach (left), our special get-away spot on the California Coast. It was only three days, but it was the only all-alone time we’ve been able to find this summer and Sara goes back to work on Monday. So it was a bit late and way too short, but we had three uninterrupted days together, which were awesome! I’m now putting the finishing touches on a new BodyLife that will be out Monday if all goes well.

On Tuesday night our Galatians group stumbled across a wonderful quote. In answer to the question of what purpose the law had if it was unable to make us perfect, Paul answered:

Most people read Galatians, thinking Judaism was the problem. I think Eugene Peterson gets it exactly right through out his whole translation. Judaism wasn’t the problem, religion was. Any system of rules and obligations will not produce the life of God because it depends on human response, not God’s action in response to his promise

So why isn’t that obvious to everyone?

In our day religious systems proliferate like horny rats. People just get out of one and start looking for another. When that one disappoints yet again they look for another. And seemingly there is no end of people willing to devise them thinking that they have finally stumbled on the system that will better all other systems. I’ve been on that road. It’s crazy. Paul is right, not one of them can create the life of God.

I love the conclusion one brother made in an email that will appear in the new issue of BodyLife:

It’s not that some of those things can’t be useful tools to help us see God’s hand working in our lives, but as a methodology to recapture New Testament community they are destined to fail. The law was meant to end our dependence on any religious system. If God’s own didn’t work, what hope do we have of implementing our own, as well thought out as they might be? As Kevin Smith from Australia likes to say, “Jesus didn’t leave us with a system, but with his Spirit. When that becomes obvious to us we’ll be ready to live as the church instead of trying to build an unreasonable facsimile thereof.

After posting my last blog, I ran across some quotes via Rob Lane’s blog. They are both taken from John Eldredge’s book, Waking the Dead and are worth repeating here:

What a great reminder. If we don’t take community seriously, it just isn’t going to happen. We cannot produce it by our own strength, but neither can we sit passively by and hope it shows up for us. We cooperate with God’s working in us as we build look for ways to experience the vitality and joy of New Testament community.

Over the past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time around my parents home due to my dad’s surgery. That put me near a whole group of people that Sara and I used to fellowship with when we first got out of college and in the years that followed. And even though a lot of that fellowship was around institutional machinery that I wouldn’t put the same time and effort in today, we all marveled at the relationships we had found with each other during those years.

Thirty years later we can pick up with those people exactly where we left off. The connection in Christ, compassion for each other and desire to share God’s life has survived the distance and miles that grew between us. What a joy it was to connect with these relationships again and share where the journey has taken us.

One of the things that many of them shared is that they no longer had relationships like these. Even though many of them are still a part of that same institution, and helping with leading in it, it has grown and changed over time. Many of them no longer connect with each other because they are too worn out with the program. When I asked if new people coming found their way into the kind of relationships we had back then, I was told it was just too big for that. One of the couples even reminded me how we’d been discouraged from the fellowship times we spent together because they weren’t part of the sanctioned program.

We certainly miss something when helping people build authentic relationships is lost to preserving an institution. People always hope one will spawn the other, but it never does. The priorities of an institution will eventually run counter to the priorities of family. Sara and I have been grateful that wherever we have been God has helped us build enduring friendships with brothers and sisters. We look back over our lives and celebrate the heritage of deep friendships that we have enjoyed at every stage of our journey. Some span 30 years, others ten; still others have only begun in the last couple of years.

But these kind of relationships offer the truest joy of sharing life in Father’s family. The time you invest today in building relationships with others on this journey will be fruit you can feast on over a lifetime. If our life together doesn’t build those kinds of friendships, what good is it? We have to remember not to get so caught up in the affairs of this world that we don’t take time to intentionally build friendships with people God puts in our paths.

Our Galatians group was together last night after a long time of missing each other with various trips, commitments and surgeries over the summer. It was good to be together again. Picking up in Galatians 3 last night we came across this jewel:

People who take it upon themselves to do something for God will find themselves often working against his very purpose in their own lives. What we seek to do for him is usually based on our agenda or our best wisdom. Paul offers us something so much different here. Instead of trying to do what we think God wants, let’s live by embracing what God arranges for us each day. God is in the simplest, most immediate details of our life, inviting us to him and wanting to show us how to live free in the midst of life as it comes at us.

God will put things in our path today. By entering into his work we will find the fruitfulness of the kingdom. But if we are too set on our agenda, we’ll walk right over the things that God is doing and never even know it.