se7en questions from frank viola

by: Administrator

Questions from “The Deep Ecclesiology of the Body” from the book OUT OF THE OOZE.

1.     In the idea of a deep ecclesiology, how “deep” is “deep?”

I have a friend who says, “if it’s deep, bury it.“

I suppose my answer to your question would be: deep enough to lay hold of the taproot of the church. And that taproot is not a thing, a doctrine, nor a theology. It’s a Person . . . the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

If we could see with the eyesight of God, we would make a startling discovery. That the church is not an “it” . . . it’s a Person. It’s the counterpart of Christ Himself, His very Body, His very Bride. The church is to Christ what Eve was to Adam. She came out of Him, she was a part of Him, and she became one with Him.

Thus, as I say in the chapter, “A deep ecclesiology honors all Christians regardless of their religious pedigree. It esteems all Christians wherever they are on the basis that they are membered to Jesus Christ. Those models of church which make Jesus Christ central in its life, its mission, and its expression are faithful to a deep ecclesiology. Those models which clash with the church’s DNA—which is Christ—are incompatible with a deep ecclesiology.”

2.      With most churches still seeking people to “lead” with “outward powers,” how do we rethink leadership to be an inward grace?

If I knew the answer to that question I would consider myself two-fold a Solomon.  I think one element is to recognize that there is only one person who rightfully has the right to lead the church. That one person is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the only Head of the Body. That means that He’s both the source and the authority of her life.

Leadership, then, is really an expression of the Headship of Christ through His Body. That means it’s a grace and an operation of Divine life through the believing community. In my judgment, the contemporary model that a few people have the right to lead the church (often called “the clergy” or “the pastoral staff”) violates the spiritual principles of the Body of Christ as described in the NT.

The NT is clear that every member of the Body is gifted and has ministry. That means that each believer leads in his or her own sphere and according to his or her own gift. I work with churches where the leadership of Christ is distributed and expressed through the whole Body. Thus decisions are made by consensus rather than by those who are appointed to bark orders to the rest of the church. It’s a very different practice and understanding that what’s commonly known today, but I believe it has abundant biblical support.  I’ve written a new book that releases in August that explores this kind of leadership in great detail.

3.     What do you see as two core changes the church needs to address in the 21C?

One would be to discover Jesus Christ -- not as a doctrine, a theology, an example to follow, or even as a “cause,” but as a living, breathing person who can be known, experienced, loved, and adored corporately.  For the last decade, I’ve conducted conferences that center on the Person of Christ.  Not as a doctrine, theology, or even as a model to follow. But as a Person who indwells us and who we can know, love, experience, and live by. (Meaning, we can live by His indwelling life. That is the Christian life as far as I’m concerned. “Not I, but Christ lives in me,” as Paul once put it.)

Unfortunately, an indwelling Christ is something that many contemporary Christians know little about in the way of experience. Last year, I spoke in a series of conferences on The Eternal Purpose of God in Christ.  I delivered messages on Jesus Christ as Head of His Body and as our indwelling Lord. Most of the people there were spellbound and wanted to know more. The question I was asked repeatedly was, “I’ve never heard this before. Please tell me more!”

We all have a spiritual instinct to know our Lord and to live by His indwelling life. The message of Christ’s indwelling was central to the apostles of Century One. But today, it seems to be lost in many sectors of the Christian world.

One of my heritages is the charismatic movement. Today, I consider myself a post-charismatic. I’ve come to discover that, with rare exception, the work of the Holy Spirit is to introduce Jesus Christ to us. To my mind, the purest work of the Spirit of God is to show you and I Christ. And in that showing, or “revealing,” we begin to discover the greatness of our Lord.

When a Christian walks away from encountering His greatness, a lot of other things they thought were great suddenly become cheap. A lot of the things that they were once enthralled with turn into saw dust at the glimpse of His peerless worth.

It has been my observation that everything in the Christian life eventually wears out. Whether it be studying the Bible, chasing spiritual gifts, talking theology, mastering doctrine, following some exciting new spiritual fad, etc. It all grows old and tiresome eventually. There is one exception: Jesus Christ, the real Lord, never ever wears out. The riches that are in Him are inexhaustible (Eph. 3). Thus God’s people will do well to pursue Him, for He’s the most glorious, incredible Person in the universe. And we can know Him and live by Him.

When we don’t know an indwelling Lord, we will always resort to Law. That is, we will become legalistic and try to put laws and rules on God’s people, making them feel condemned for not fulfilling our standards of what the Christian life is. But as Paul said, “the Law kills; but the Spirit gives life.” Unless the cutting edge is Jesus Christ, it will turn into bondage.

Another core change would be the discovery that the Christian life is a corporate endeavor. It’s not the domain of the individual. In most of the sermons we hear today, the core message is aimed at you and I as individuals.  The result: we labor under the misconception that the Christian life can be lived in isolation from others. But this thinking is foreign to the Scripture.

The separatist wing of the Puritans gave us a highly individualistic view of the church and the Christian life. It defined the church as a voluntary organization formed by a group of Christians who covenanted to gather together weekly so they could be better Christians. For them, each Christian existed separately as an individual and “church” was the place to help them live better Christian lives. We in West have never recovered from this concept.

By contrast, the NT vision of church and the Christian life is highly corporate and communal. The bulk of the NT is written to corporate bodies of believers . . . authentic communities. The church herself is corporate. This opens up an entire universe. And much more can be said about it, but I’ll leave it there for now.

If I can expand those core changes to four, it would look like this:

a)     There is a danger in disconnecting the “Jesus of History” from the “Christ of faith.” The fact is, the Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same Person who indwells the church. That’s an unearthing insight that has monumental implications. Failure to embrace it will lead (and has led) to all sorts of problems.

b)    It’s possible to confuse “the cause” of Christ with the Person of Christ. Jesus isn’t a cause; He’s a real and living Person. Focusing on His cause or mission doesn’t automatically equate focusing on Him. (It’s all too possible to serve “the god” of serving Christ as opposed to serving Christ Himself out of an enraptured heart that’s been captivated by His love.)

c)     Jesus Christ is far more than a social or moral philosopher. To pitch Him that way is to drain His glory and dilute His greatness.

d)    It’s possible to confuse an academic knowledge of theology “about Jesus” with a personal knowledge of Christ Himself. Equally so, it’s possible to confuse an academic knowledge of the church with personal experience of the Body of Christ, a la, the experience of face-to-face community that’s centered on Christ.

4.     How do we define “we need Jesus” in the 21C?

Your question reminds me of a 3-year study being done by the University of Oxford. The cost of the study will be nearly 4 million dollars. The subject of that study? To find out why human beings embrace God. That’s an interesting use of 4 million dollars, eh?

To my mind, the need of us mortals is the same in every generation. And Jesus Christ is the answer to that need. He is an all-sufficient Lord.  So whatever needs people have in our day and time, Jesus Christ is all-sufficient for them. That’s not a trite religious slogan; it’s a reality. All that humans need – life, health, hope, love, peace, joy, forgiveness, mercy, caring, are not “things.” They are all embodied in this incredible Lord.  He is the personification of them all. Jesus Christ is life, He is peace, He is hope, He is love, etc.  I’m quoting the NT right now.

I find it interesting that if you look at the book of John closely, the Lord Jesus presents Himself to be everything that humankind needs to live and survive. He is Life, He is Light, He is Air (Spirit), He is Food, He is Drink, and He is our Abode.

It is only by finding Him as these things and learning to live by His indwelling life that we discover what it means to really be human. So it seems to me anyway.

5.     I love the way you share how certain realizations of who Jesus is [not was] changed your life, how do we bring that change to the world around us?

I used to know the answer to that question J I think one of the best ways is for a community of believers in a local area who are obsessed and consumed with their Lord, and who are knowing Him together, to express Him to the world in various and sundry creative ways. Ways that embody His literal presence on this earth.  A big part of that, I think, is found in the Luke 4:18 mandate. That text is not something that any individual Christian can pull off. Jesus Christ lives out His life through a community . . . through a corporate body of believers . . . a la, through local ekklesias. The ways we can express the Lord together are endless. If we take the time to pray, discuss, and plan together, without any one person dominating the show with his or her opinion, we would be surprised at how the Lord will lead us to express Him in our cities and beyond.

6.  In addition to Jesus, are there other “essentials” needed in the church?

I don’t think so. Christ is the personification of all spiritual things.  Perhaps I’d expand that by saying that He has placed various gifts in His body which are called to minister His riches to His people  and equip them to know Him, follow Him, love Him, and express Him together (Eph. 4; 1 Cor. 12). But these gifted persons are part of His Body, so in a sense, they really shouldn’t be disconnected from Jesus. They are His hands and His feet, if you will, as are the rest of His Body (1 Cor. 12).

7.     I have always loved the metaphor of “body” and “DNA” to talk about a community of faith, in seeing the church as having a “core DNA” are we at risk of being inbred?

The organic nature of the church, a la, her DNA, is no more inbred than the Trinity. The Godhead is not inbred, for built right into its very biological nature is the impulse to expand, extend, and reach out. That’s why we have a creation and a new creation. It was the design of the Trinity to expand the communion of Father, Son, and Spirit to creation.

The church flows out of the Triune God.

That said, the human side of the church . . . us fallen mortals . . . can very rapidly become elitist, sectarian, inclusive, and ingrown. But those things run against the grain of the church’s native design and expression. They aren’t part of her nature.

EXTRA QUESTION: If you wrote the article today, what would you change?

Unfortunately, I’m my own worst critic. I’m not exactly sure what I’d change, but I’m positive I’d do some re-writing. I tend to agree with John Dos Passos who said, “If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.”

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