Tag: church

Leaders and the Ends of the Earth

~ Jim ~ Leave a comment

There is a spiritual darkness, a spiritual hunger, growing in our culture today and our religious institutions seem unable to address it. The reasons for this are various and only partly known, but we clearly need a new effort to go into the darkness and declare the light.

Unfortunately, it often seems that our religious organizations are even holding us back. The effort needed to keep organizations running smoothly keeps leaders focused inward, which is natural. The leaders, in turn, keep the lay believers focused inward. Unfortunately, this all works in opposition to the “go” mindset. Even when churches reach out, they do so from an organizational perspective.

For example, a lot of outreach consists of inviting people into church. Such invitations may be to religious services or largely secular activities designed to be welcoming and attractive to non-Christians. This is not the same as sending people from church into the darkness, however. Consider that the ways spiritual truths are shared almost always use Christian terminology and often even Scripture, which is not the way people share ideas in the darkness.

As we’ve seen elsewhere, there is a need to reach those who are spiritually furthest from church. They probably will not respond to invitations, have little interest in learning about Christianity (the religion), and so on. They may well need to be brought into a relationship with God before finding a church, and the best church for them may not be the one associated with whoever led them to God.

Thus, those furthest from God (at the spiritual ends of the Earth) are not good targets for typical organizational outreach efforts. In addition, leaders are so focused on the organizations that they seem not to recognize the need to send their people out. Rather than encourage individual seeking, they encourage passive listening to in-church teachings that continue to focus internally.

In a sense, I think something similar is pictured in Acts. When the persecution started after Stephen’s death, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem while the other believers scattered, preaching the word as they went. In other words, in the face of persecution, they redoubled their efforts to spread the gospel (Acts 8:1-4).

This continued until these believers reached areas that were far from Judea, both physically and spiritually. The final breakthrough to people completely separate from God occurred in Antioch, through the ministry of these unknown believers (Acts 11:19).

So, the picture seems to be of the leaders focusing on keeping the church healthy, while the lay believers focus on witnessing of Jesus.

Some of the things I’ve read about the early church also seem to echo this. Writings of the church fathers seem often to do with organizational matters, doctrine, liturgy, and so on. Things that are (rightly and necessarily) focused on keeping the church healthy, but not necessarily growing the kingdom.

On the other hand, one of the earliest clear apologetic writings is by an unknown author (The Letter to Diognetus), apparently a lay believer who simply felt the need to share the gospel clearly with someone who needed to hear it.

To be sure, there are numerous stories of the apostles spreading the gospel in different regions, but these extra-Biblical accounts seem to be exceptions, rather than the rule.

Whether these observations of the early church are correct or not, it does seem that the reality today is that current organizations, and the people who lead them, are not interested in reaching far into the darkness. This leaves an opportunity for lay believers to make that journey, just as happened in Acts.

Revisiting the “Ends of the Earth”

~ Jim ~ Leave a comment

In Jesus’ final appearance before His ascension, He described how the Holy Spirit would enable the disciples to be His witnesses all over the world, starting in Jerusalem. The well-known sequence in Acts 1:8 of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the Earth is used to describe how we should be taking the gospel progressively outward all over the world. It is often used today to encourage Christians to participate, or at least support, evangelism that goes out from wherever they are.

This use of the passage takes its physical meaning, but it is also sometimes used figuratively by applying it to cultural, relational, racial, or economic differences. The idea is to reach those who are different from ourselves, rather than those who are far distant from ourselves. Note that in either case, we place ourselves at the center of the sequence.

This essay considers a different way of looking at the sequence by placing God at the center and thinking of the sequence as a series of spiritual steps. I hope that this perspective can shed new light on ways to reach the growing darkness in today’s world.

To start with, it’s good to recognize that Acts describes the fulfillment of Jesus’ sequence in a physical sense. Evangelism started in Jerusalem, then spread to other regions of Judea, eventually getting to Samaria, and eventually to regions far from Judea. That is the most direct, literal interpretation.

However, it doesn’t really make sense to follow the same physical sequence today since the same countries and regions don’t exist and Christianity has already spread far from Jerusalem. Instead, the sequence is generally applied either by placing ourselves at the center instead of Jerusalem, or by taking the sequence figuratively.

When we place ourselves at the center of a physical interpretation, the ends of the Earth become places that are far from ourselves or our church. For example, for a church in America, that might mean going to Africa. But for a church in Africa, that might mean going to America. The point seems to be to get far from home.

If we take the sequence figuratively, then we often interpret it to mean we should reach people who are different from ourselves in some characteristic. The difference may be cultural, racial, economic, or any number of other ways we describe groups of people. So a wealthy church may reach out to the poor, or intellectuals may be sent to the uneducated, and so on. Once again, this generally places ourselves at the center.

Going back to Scripture, we find that the term “ends of the Earth” is also sometimes used figuratively. It’s often used in the Old Testament to describe places far from Israel, but also sometimes refers to Gentiles without regard for their location.

In fact, Paul uses a quote from Isaiah 49:6 in exactly that way. It mentions God’s salvation going to the ends of the Earth, and Paul applied it to reaching Gentiles instead of Jews. In other words, what Paul seemed to be focusing on was people’s spiritual state, not their physical location.

Paul’s quote seems to be from the Septuagint, which is commonly how the Old Testament was quoted in the New Testament writings. Interestingly, Jesus used exactly that Greek phrasing in Acts 1:8, even though He used other terms in the Gospel accounts that are also commonly translated “ends of the Earth”. In other words, Jesus used different wording in Acts than He used anywhere else, and that different wording matched the Septuagint translation for the Isaiah passage that Paul used.

Could it be that Jesus also intended His sequence to describe spiritual states in addition to physical ones? It’s hard to be sure from such a brief statement, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time His statements often had layered meaning with spiritual undertones.

At the very least, it seems reasonable to take a spiritual perspective like Paul. In that case, the phrase “ends of the Earth” refers to those far from God, having no relationship with Him at all, perhaps even hostile to Him. There are certainly people all around us in that category today. In other words, we don’t need to travel to encounter the ends of the Earth, we just need to be aware of people’s spiritual states.

Note that this interpretation not only has us focus on the spiritual, it places God at the center of the discussion, rather than ourselves. What becomes important is their relationship to Him, rather than their relationship to us.

An interesting followup question is to ask whether there are equivalent meanings to Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. Going back to Paul’s encounter in Acts 13 again, we see three groups of people mentioned before he turns to the Gentiles (a fourth group). They are Jews, proselytes (converts to Judaism) and God-fearers (people who respect or worship god without fully converting). In some ways, these match the physical sequence:

  • Jerusalem is the city of David, the center of Jewish religion. So it most clearly matches pure Jews.
  • Judea was the greater Jewish nation, still focused on God but with a greater involvement with secular activities. This nicely matches the group of people who, although converted to Judaism, were not necessarily culturally Jewish.
  • Samaria was the region of mixture, where Judaism had blended with surrounding cultures, keeping some aspects of the religion but not purely Jewish. As such, it matches the mixed nature of people who fear God but haven’t completely committed to Judaism and likely still live as Gentiles.

There are probably many ways these can be aligned to today’s world. For example, Jerusalem may represent devoted Christians who are deeply involved with church (a center of religious activity). Judea may represent people who are Chrisitan but not involved with traditional religious activities. Samaria might then represent those who are spiritual, perhaps like some aspects of Christianity, maybe even attend some church events if invited, but don’t describe themselves as Christians.

These categories probably are not that important, but thinking through them helps us learn to see people with eyes of faith rather than eyes of flesh.

One initial observation with this perspective is that those at the “ends of the Earth” may have little to no interest in attending church events. Given the prevalence of Christianity in our culture, they often feel they have enough exposure and without any relationship with God, have no interest in changing that. As such, we need to make more deliberate efforts to go to them. This, then, raises a series of questions about how to evangelize people who have no interest in church or Christian activities.

In other words, while it’s easy for those immersed in church-based faith activities to settle with an invitation-based strategy, Jesus call to go to the ends of the Earth should make us realize that this will not work for everyone, may actually be working less and less effectively over time, and that we need to deliberately go to people who are far from God.

I think this spiritual structure can lead to other insights and challenge us to look for new approaches. At least, it has for me.