Again........

After yet another long layoff, let's try this again.......I've had a lot of things on my mind over the last SIX months since my last post. Rather than blogging about them, I've put some of them into emails. I'll try to post those things here soon (stop me if you've heard that one before). Here's something from a couple of days ago:

I've heard a lot of folks over the years talk about understanding the scriptures "in context." By this it seems that we usually mean understanding a particular verse in the bible within the paragraph or chapter (and sometimes letter/book) in which it was written (we'll call this Context #1). For example, one verse that is often taken out of context is 1 Corinthians 14:33: "For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace." I often hear folks try to use that verse as a proof text to say that we should have an understanding of how God works because "God is not a God of confusion." But the context is a discussion on order in worship, and Paul is making no such statement. In addition, the larger context of the whole of scripture (Context #2) clearly shows that the idea that we should relatively fully understand how God works is preposterous (see Isaiah 55:8-9).

Through some reading I've done recently (particularly the writings of Frank Viola--the church planter, not the Cy Young winner from the Twins and Mets) I think I'm seeing the idea of context in a an additional way (Context #3) that much of the time we neglect. This is in the larger narrative context of the New Testament. Take Paul's letters.......they are listed from longest to shortest, completely separated from the narrative that surrounds them. Most of the time, in a good bible discussion, we will mention a few things about when the letter was written, the audience, where Paul was, etc., but I personally have not taken a close enough look at how the story of the church fits into the larger narrative context. So often it seems that historical study and bible study are separated, but for us to have a full understanding of what the scriptures say we need to study both. Perhaps the best way to explain this is with an example........

One topic that is interesting to examine in this way is that of church planting. The NT picture of church planting becomes clear as we study the pattern in the scriptures. Jerusalem is a unique church for obvious reasons, and Antioch was a product of the dispersion of Acts 8. After that a clear pattern emerges. Paul and others would travel to a town. They would preach the gospel, see a group of believers raised up, leave after a relatively short amount of time, usually return to check up on things and maybe acknowledge some elders (they acknowledged elders rather than appointing them), and wrote letters if they heard of problems they needed to address. What didn't they do? Stay for long periods of time in order to direct everything that goes on. They also didn't immediately appoint elders; they left the brethren to figure things out themselves by the Spirit. Several churches, including Antioch and Corinth, are never mentioned as having elders. And we don't know that Jerusalem has them until Acts 11--fourteen years after the church began there.

In his letters Paul uses the word 'brethren' 130 times; he mentions 'elders' five times, and he uses the word pastor once. His letters were never addressed to elders; it was always to 'the church.' Time and again we see that the brothers and sisters under the headship of Christ were the ones to discern the direction things should go, even as the churches grew. This picture of church planting is very different from the modern method of getting a few families from an existing place, setting up shop in a living room, and sticking around for the next 10+ years. Also, the role that Paul, Timothy, Silas, Barnabus, and others functioned has been pretty much lost in the Western church. They weren't pastors or elders, they were apostles, church planters, itinerant workers in the body of Christ. They were the ones who watched over the churches until elders emerged, and they did so from afar. A more thorough treatment of this particular matter was undertaken by Viola in an e-book you can read for free on his website--"Straight Talk To Pastors" at ptmin.org. It's an interesting and quick read if you can take the time to check it out.

All of this is to say that I want a better understanding of the historical context of the scriptures. I think God has a lot to say if we are willing to look at what He did chronologically. Lisa and I are reading through the lives of Saul and David in the OT in this manner, which means Psalms are mixed in with 1 and 2 Samuel. I hope to undertake a chronological reading of the NT sometime soon.