Session 5: Tammie

Jerusalem/Antioch as it relates to the NT Church and the ECM.
The theological identity of the gospel at Jerusalem was bound to its identity as an outgrowth of the Jewish faith. It retained the laws of Moses, asking those who came into the church to also abide by those principles even to the point that those coming to the faith from the Gentiles were also expected to follow those laws. The council at Jerusalem may have come up with a list of guidelines for Gentile converts, but we know from Paul's writings that the tendency to revert to the law continued in the New Testament church at least as it practiced and preached the gospel in Jerusalem. The gospel at Antioch, however, was a Christocentric gospel offering freedom and abiding in grace. That Christ focus transcended boundaries of ethnicity, race or religion.

The theological identity of the gospel at Antioch comes closer to what is embraced by the ECM today as Christ is in all and at the center of all while the churches tend to shake off the structures of the older churches. Like movements that came before, the ECM is proclaiming the gospel of grace, but is doing it in ways that look different from the traditional, modern model of ministry. It loses its identity as an institution while gaining an identity as a Spirit-filled community, which is something that is attractive to all, but especially to the broken and hurting who may not match up to the expectations of the traditional church.

I particularly liked how Anderson referred to it on page 87, "The Christ of the gospel is not first of all a doctrinal confession but a reality we experience." It seems that over the centuries, the church loses sight of the freedom found in the grace of the gospel as it adds layers of tradition, liturgy and even law (in the form of expectations for behavior and ideals of what constitutes a "good Christian") until someone like a Luther or a Calvin or a Wesley comes along and shakes things up by rediscovering the gospel of grace that Paul pronounced at Antioch and, in the shake-up, dispatches with some of that tradition, liturgy and law. It is interesting, though, that in prior movements, there was a singular person to whom the change could be traced. I have to wonder if there is such a person in the ECM or is the ECM a grass-roots sort of movement with the restructured church coming first and leaders emerging as those churches begin to be held up as models for others searching for a new expression of the gospel.

Kingdom of God and the Church
The church is meant to be the instrument through which the kingdom of God comes to earth. It is not to be so wrapped up in its own buildings, traditions and programs that it fails to follow the lead of the Spirit to take the gospel out into the world. The kingdom of God is much larger than the church though it does encompass the church. The kingdom of God also encompasses every believer as they live as disciples of the kingdom even in their secular workplaces. Seeing the role of the church as a worker for the kingdom of God in the culture in which it finds itself would also, it would seem, work toward the breaking down of barriers between different denominations as the church works to bring that kingdom to fulfillment.

Abraham
The primary identifiers of the Jews - circumcision and the keeping of the law - were not given at the time of Abraham, so Abraham, though the father of the Jews, was not a Jew technically because the nation of Israel had yet to come into being. He was, however, the one to whom the promise had been given and the fulfillment of the promise came through the Jews which makes him, rightfully, the father of the nation. However, given his status as one declared righteous by faith, he is also the spiritual father of the Gentiles who would come to believe in Christ. As such, he is an important figure for the emerging church as it divests itself of the trappings of the church culture from which it is emerging and looks to live out the gospel fo grace in a Spirit-filled community. If the Jerusalem church and its desire to maintain the requirements of the law through Moses are a type of what we might call the traditional church today, then the Antioch church with its message of grace for all nations as first expressed in Abraham is a type of the emergent church.