It is clear from Scripture that the institutional church is to serve as a center for Christian ministry. That ministry is broad in its assignments that include evangelism and worship as primary factors. Whatever advances those factors in the context of biblical instructions, ought to be engaged as church meaning. In that meaning style becomes an important factor. In acceptable styles the church is to function actively to cultivate growth in the number of persons accepting the redemptive personal gospel of Jesus Christ. In this gospel the necessary order for the acceptance of any human being is advanced through penitence and faith related to the forgiveness of God by which the individual is justified by God and accepted to immortality. That sounds simple, but for mankind it is not as easy as the words may imply to most persons. That is because, for both Christian and pagan the human being is much influenced by that which can be verified by the sensory mechanism – that heard, seen, tasted, smelled and felt. Christianity adds to these well-known mechanisms another aspect of the mind – faith. In the instruction about faith much of the explanation is accomplished through reference to the other senses. The senses provide gates opening to faith.
Faith in the Old Testament was aided by the appeal of incense so to meet the attraction of smell significant of the prevalence of the Spirit of God; of blood offerings so to appeal to vision about life sacrifice for sin; of communication through priests/prophets so to use the hearing of language persuasion for faith; of feasts related to the provision of God in meeting human need through taste related to food for the sustaining of life both spiritual and physical; and, the appeal to feelings through the arts such as music, architecture, prayer, love, and all that appeals to a rising sense of righteousness, and forgiveness for human fault, with a sense of moving upward. The New Testament Christian accepts the history of God working in daily life in the example of Israel so to apply the practice of the senses to current faith making the Christian life practical in the growth of massive populations and in the completion of the redemptive story. As Israel looked forward to the Messiah, the Christian looks backward to him, and applies it all to life, present and future.
Tensions of mankind relate to the interpretation of life and meaning. Christians face differences in the way in which the gift of spiritual life, as defined in Scripture, is to be expressed and achieved. The nearest we can come to agreement is that there are variances in much of what may be done to achieve the original purpose, but we add: As long as the variances do not diminish the necessary meaning of the gospel. The critique of the Apostle John, early in The Revelation, majors in this matter of performance. It is likely that both the short letters we know as 2nd and 3rd John relate to the point of church unity about essentials. The call for unity of the church relative to essentials is often violated by the church.
What music style is to be adopted in the church? How much prayer is to be made, and how personal, how formal, how intense? What doctrinal stance should be taken, and what should be our attitudes toward those of different positions than ours? What is the social responsibility of the church? What comprises our missionary program, and what budget should be devoted to it? What architecture should be adopted in a secular community? How does this congregation interpret the issues of morality? Of biblical values what is included, what is left out, and what appears to be changed in our church? What is the growth of the spiritual life in the church? Are small, sometimes irrelevant matters, occupying our time and distracting from the call of Scripture for spiritual maturity and life growth? The questions, large and small in their value and meaning, will always beg for answers. The spiritual elders (not determined by age) need to be current, energetic for the purposes of God in the congregation. They must find ways, time segments, and tenacity to move forward, prayerfully, in achieving what God means for the noble achievements of a congregation, large or small, not only for the members, but also for the community – and from the community to the world in the missionary call of the closing verses of Matthew 28. A large meaning of Scripture is that the church (institutional) drawing on the Church (spiritual) achieves God’s purposes. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020