The first time I recall being, well, confronted, by a quotation of John 17:20-21 was back in the glory days of Brian Miller's The CGGC in an Emerging World blog.
Jesus prayed,
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
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As I recall, the first time I was reminded of those verses, I was new to the belief that APEST matters for today and I beginning to walk my conviction that I have been gifted to be a prophet.
It was also early in my contention that, in the CGGC, we talk really big but walk small.
And, especially in those days, I confess with sadness that, at times, I was belligerent, more than merely bold.
At the time, I took the message to be that I should quietly and gently submit to our denominational leadership...
...so that, in the CGGC, we can be an answer to the prayer Jesus prayed.
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Even then, all those years ago, my brother's understanding of the prayer felt wrong to me.
It seemed polluted by shepherd heresy, and, excuse the big word, shepherd heteropraxy,...
...that is, the false faith and false works that are the fruit of the dominance of people with the gift of shepherding.
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"...that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you..."
...Just as you are in me and I in you.
I'm struggling against feelings of pride to say that,...
...even then, in my early, belligerent, APEST, prophet days,...
...in spite of my harsh criticism of CGGC leadership,...
...I thought I was closer to living out the prayer of Jesus than our shepherd dominators were.
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Here's the question: In real life, how were Jesus and the Father one?
More to the point:
How, today, are believers in Jesus one if their unity is to be the oneness of the Father and the Son?
I'm convinced that the doctrine of oneness preached by the people who hold institutional authority in the organized church...
...is false,
...is dangerous,
...and is a reason that Western Christianity, specifically, as George Jensen points out, evangelicalism, is dying.
From the perspective of my prophetic gifting:
Unity, for them, is understood to be spiritually lobotomized compliance.
Unity, for them, is intellectually dull. It possesses no (small s) spirit....
...It is void of passion...
It is neither honored nor blessed by the Lord.
It is spiritually bankrupt and corrupt.
It ignores the testimony of Scripture.
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There's a very serious challenge for believers who attempt to live out Jesus' prayer.
In the prayer, Jesus compared the unity of believers to the manner in which the Father and He were one.
It's natural for humans to impulsively make a Rhorschach test out of His prayer.
So, if, for instance, you are a shepherd, you'll understand oneness as a shepherd would. Because I am a prophet, when I begin, I take my prophetic self to my understanding of unity.
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How, in fact, were Jesus and the Father one?
As a starter? Certainly, not in a spiritually lobotomized, compliant, intellectually dull way.
As I noted in the Facebook post,...
...in the garden, Jesus BEGGED the Father to take that cup from Him. His sweat was as drops of blood.
Early on in His ministry, the Spirit drove Jesus...in Greek, ekballo, a very strong word,...into the desert to be tempted by Satan.
Jesus prayed that believers will be one in a way that must take into account those dynamics of the oneness that He and the Father shared.
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I have been a student of revivalism for many years.
Very shortly after I began to believe that APEST matters for today, I had a sort of theological born-again moment when I began to apply what I learned about revivals to life in the Kingdom.
I began to ask myself, for example, what oneness among believers has looked like in times of spiritual and numerical growth.
We, in the CGGC today, know, from experience what an understanding of oneness looks like at a time of spiritual and numerical decline and decay. Spiritual and numerical decline and decay is our reality these days.
It was because I often think about better days that I challenged George Jensen on Facebook.
George's argument is that when people of the church are at odds with each other, evangelism and discipleship don't take place.
The truth can't be denied: The hay day of evangelism and discipleship in the Church of God happened when our body was in the very center of what George calls the squibble squabbles of the day, precisely when people of the church were at odds with each other.
The lesson of history is clear: When believers are one as Jesus and the Father were one...are one,...their connection will be spirited, tense even.
The oneness of Jesus and the Father was perfect. There was no sin it.
Yet, in that oneness, there was the moment when Jesus was begging the Father to change His mind, when His emotion was so powerful that His sweat was as drops of blood.
There was that amazing moment when the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert,...when Jesus didn't follow the Spirit, when Jesus wasn't led by the Spirit...that the Spirit drove Him.
The oneness of believers must contain that honesty, that passion!
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The oneness that believers sought to achieve in the years of the founding of the Church of God possessed that honesty and passion.
In those days, Church of God evangelism and discipleship were effective, ...empowered and blessed by the Spirit.
As far as George Jensen's condemnation of today's evangelicals being at cross purposes over Donald Trump?
So far, to my knowledge no one has begun to sweat drops of blood in expressing their beliefs or desires.
What is going on now among evangelicals is closer to the unity shared by Jesus and the Father than the vision of unity so common today among the people of the institutionalized church.
Rather than condemn it, I thank God for it. I find hope in it.
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Three final thoughts.
1. Can there be sin when believers seek oneness in the honest and passionate way that reflects Jesus in the Garden or the Spirit driving Jesus into the desert? Of course there can be sin. Certainly, there is.
Is there sin today in this Trump thing as believers face the temptation to give into the excess that passion produces? No doubt there is some.
But, the tepid, spiritually lobotomized, compliant, passionless notion of oneness of the shepherds and of the institution is always, always sin.
2. In raising this issue with George, I am attempting to walk my talk...to engage the search for honest, spirited oneness shared by Jesus and the Father and, also, pursued by believers throughout the history of the Kingdom in times of revival...similar to what the first men and women of the Church of God lived.
3. I believe that this is a big deal. We don't have the oneness that Jesus and the Father shared. I'm convinced that most of us misunderstand their oneness and, until we rethink...repent,...we'll never be one as Jesus and the Father are one.
To be one with the Father and Son, we must share God's priorities.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, different views of areas that are less important does not necessarily, or shouldn't, lead to division.
For instance, in the case of a recently discussed article, whether or not Christians feel that the current president should be impeached and removed or not is a conversation we should (!) be able to have and disagree about without accusations toward others who feel differently than we do.
Unless we lose what's non-negotiably important about Jesus in the matter, which can happen.
Or core Christian conviction is that Jesus is Lord and we owe our total allegiance to him and never any human ruler. We are instructed to pray for our human governmental leaders, respect them and the law, but we are free to discuss and disagree as we think appropriate. These disagreements, as long as we agree that Jesus alone is Lord and our hope. Departure from that could well be a threat to our unity, and there are signs of that perhaps in some folks.
More to your point and discussions about APEST, my view is that it is the our varied gifting and perspectives that enable us to have the general sense of unity that Jesus desires for us. We must agree robustly on some core identifiers, but we will have tensions and back and forth robust discussion about relationships, truth, mission, etc. as we reflect the diversity of how the Lord has called us.
Unity is not Uniformity of opinion about any and every issue.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteGood, edifying, comment from the first word to the last.
To be honest, I have not seen, heard and read everything in the evangelical dust up over the CT editorial. So, I could be wrong but I'm not aware that the conversation has become nasty or inflammatory...spirited certainly...but nothing that would imperil, as you say, what's non-negotiable among disciples.
If anything, Jesus and the cause of the gospel have been highlighted and important questions are now being discussed.
And, to the point George raised when he quoted the prayer of Jesus, what's been going on, as far as I can tell, actually reflects the oneness of Jesus and the Father.
That, to me, could become a very good thing.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteOne other remark on your comment, and I know it's out of context.
Close to the end, you say, "We must agree robustly..."
As I said, I find your entire comment edifying but the adverb "robustly" jumped out at me and, momentarily, blinded me.
When I read that sentence, that WORD, I had a moment of understanding.
So much of our problem in the CGGC, and in Western Christianity in general is an adverb problem.
I often talk about the problem of WHAT we do/don't do, i.e., To Talk is to Walk-ism, and, certainly, our walk...WHAT we do is a serious problem.
But, HOW we do anything we do is, perhaps the bigger issue.
What does Western Christianity today do robustly?
Perhaps the most stark difference between the Church of God in its movement days compared to the CGGC today is the difference in the adverbs.
What adverbs apply to them? ROBUSTLY might be the most mellow.
INTENSELY?
PASSIONATELY?
COURAGEOUSLY?
UNSWERVINGLY?
None of those apply to the CGGC today.
And, of course, that's an APEST issue.
Our influential founders were prophets and evangelists. Those people have either left or been driven out of the CGGC.
And, most of what remains is shepherd. And, the adverbs that describe us are the adverbs that describe shepherds.
It's not only what we do and don't do that impairs us.
How we do is also our problem.