NEW HOMES FOR SALE

The sign says, “NEW HOMES FOR SALE.” Is that what those buildings are. Not really. They are empty houses, just a shell waiting for some family to move in and make them homes.
In about the same way, that building that houses the church is not a church, but just an empty shell that houses the church. The church is the people who inhabit that building and make it a living organism.
It is not Methodist, Baptist, or Presbyterian until the people move in and begin to practice their church polity. The church becomes alive when the people move in.
It is always hard to know when we are in the business of missions what order we should follow as we reach people and see those people established into a local assembly. At what point do the people become a church? That is a question we have to ask because the way we do missions, we are starting churches across cultural lines and we do not want to put those new converts into a new building until we are sure they are a church. If they are not a church, what are they?
Back up with me a minute. Is it possible that the reason we need to know when the people become a church is that the wrong people are starting the church. Paul wrote his disciple, Titus, that he had sent him to Crete to finish the job that was started and to see that there were elders in every church. As far as we know they were meeting in homes and this means that they were churches when they were not buildings and had no pastors.
It is interesting to note that there are no instructions given by Paul as to how a church should be started or when a church became a church. There are a lot of instructions given as to how to reach People, disciple people, and how the people should behave in the local assemblies.
If Paul left people where they were and did not hover over them in their development then he must have known that there were many other factors at work. Not the least of these factors was that the new converts had the resident Holy Spirit directing them and controlling them. We might think that Paul trusted the Holy Spirit to do what He does best in the lives of those new believers and in the life of the developing churches.
It is interesting to see a current movement beyond the basic concept of “church planting” that recognizes that the very best expansion of the church within a culture is going to be under the direction of the national leadership that the Spirit of God moves to accomplish this vital mission. Is there any question that a committed Brazilian believer can start a better Brazilian church than a committed American believer? If that is true why is it that it often takes us so long to get to that point in the development of the national church. Can it be that our obsession with the development of local churches hinders us and keeps us from seeing the bigger picture of the body of Christ in that national setting.
There are several movements in India where churches are being started by the hundreds with no foreign missionaries involved. China has seen the expansion of the national church through the growth of the three-self church and the house church movements. In many Latin countries, the Pentecostal churches have evolved at a rapid pace with only national leadership. We may not be comfortable with all that is happening in those different movements, but we should be mature enough to evaluate and assimilate what is right in them and move on putting the appropriate and Biblical methods into operation.
It is important to note that when we step back and just allow the work of the Lord to develop in these ways without our involvement, error can take over and the results are disastrous. At the same time, if we are the model that we should be and have appropriate involvement with the developing leadership in a nation then we can be used of God to give effective guidance and spiritual leadership.
It is important that we allow God to be God and work in our lives so that we develop spiritual in the midst of accomplishing a spiritual work of God. It is terrible when national Christians grow very close to us and then really don’t like what they see. Paul was effective in growing disciples because the closer that people came to him, the better they liked what they saw because they found out that getting close to Paul was getting close to Christ.

A Lesson From a Cow!

Take a look at that cow in the picture above. In a very real sense it represents what missions is all about.
We were at the Upfold farm. Luke and Sharon Upfold were members of our church in Richards Bay, South Africa. They were a lovely couple who loved the Lord and wanted to please him in all that they did. They have now moved to New Zealand because they were concerned for the safety of their wonderful family.
When I drove around the farm with Luke and noticed all of the different animals they had, I was impressed. They had a great variety of wild animals that roamed freely on their property, but they also had a large number of cows and cattle. If you look carefully at the picture above, you will notice that the coloring is different from any cow that you have ever seen. The reason for that is that it is a South African breed.
As we looked at their herd, Luke proudly stated that they were all African breeds. There were no Jerseys, Holsteins, etc. They would buy animals from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other countries that had African breeds. They did not want any foreign cattle on their farm.
As I have thought about that, it occurred to me that thie is where the church in South Africa should be. It should be a South African breed of church. We should be able to leave every non-biblical cutrural idea at home and allow the local church to grow within its own culture. It is great to look out on that crowd of Afrikaans, Indian, Zulu, colored, English, and whatever else and see it grow as a vital unit one in Christ.
It is not easy for us to leave our culture at home. It means that there will be times when someone in the church will chat with you and speak strongly about the sanctions that my country imposed on his people. That person is delighted that apartheid is over, but does not appreciate the fact that it was the sanctions that had a large part in its being ended. That is alright. History will record what was good for the country and what was not.
We had tea after every service. I had never done that before. I have been in American churches where you cannot eat a cookie in the church. The fellowship drinking a cup of tea was wonderful and the ladies who prepared the special items had a great part in helping to develop that fellowship. There is something Biblical about oneness.
Yes, that South African cow says something good. I think I will make a picture of it and put it on the wall as a reminder of the importance of the South African church being South African in every way possible without losing what the Bible says a church should be. Let us never allow our religious tradition keep that from happening.