Here it is, my message from Saturday's Youth Explosion Conference. Download the Podcast. Thanks to all who offered technical advice on how to stream the audio.
posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 11/30/2005 10:33:00 PM
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Visit me online at www.JeremyDelRio.com. Diana and I were married on June 21, 1997, and are the proud parents of Judah. My life mission: empowering people to achieve their dreams and transform their cultures and communities. Its primary "Xpression": co-founding and directing Generation Xcel, a holistic youth development agency built in 1996 "by youth for youth" in Lower Manhattan.
6 Comments:
the link is not working
Matt, I've got some thoughts -- a bunch actually -- but no time right now. Check back over the weekend. In the meantime, others feel free to chip in.
Rudy, yeah ... I tested it on a freebie Geocities site not realizing that after 1 download it exceeds the allowable bandwith. I'll move it over to a different website this weekend. Sorry 'bout that.
MP3 not working....
I've not heard the talk yet, but I'd think that when Jesus said that he will build his church, he didn't mean the institutional local church or institutional Catholic church either. So if church refers to the body of believers, then it can be applied to parachurch ministries and other works for God's kingdom.
As an aside, I know the Bible forbids us to covet other wives, but are Christians allowed to comment on other wives? :)
Matt and DJ, thanks for your excellent thoughts and comments.
DJ stole my thunder a bit in his response. I don't think that when Jesus used terms like "church" he had institutionalized western church forms and structures in mind. I think, based on how he modeled "the Church," that he was talking about a relational community of believers who lived together, broke bread together, shared faith together, worshipped together, and loved people unconditionally together. He modeled it for three years, then told his disciples rerpoduce with others what they experienced with him. The book of Acts shares glimpses of what that looked like. Acts 2:42-47 expresses it this way:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
The Acts church included the religious forms many western churches embrace, such as evangelism, prayer, corporate worship, as well as what has become in Amereica "parachurch" functions like fellowship and philanthropy and caring for the poor and sick. Ideally, I think, these functions go hand in hand (the great commandment is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself), but many times we in the west create artificial distinctions.
Which is why the passages on the body are such great reminders of how the various functions should relate to one another. The hands and feet are as important in the body calculus as the heart and head. And renegade ministers operating under individualized "calls" can become like cancerous cells rebelling against the rest of the body.
I've never read about church vs. parachurch in my Bible. If the parachurch is just an arm of "the church" (read institutional reality), then isnt' that what the church (read people of God) is about (see 1 Cor.12). Just 'cause I'm an arm and you aren't doesn't make you any less a part of the body or me any more of the body. If Jesus is building his church through parachurch ministries or through mainline denominations or emerging churches, great.
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