pat loughery

On Friday Apr 25 and Sat Apr 26, Jack Stapleton, Guardian of the Aidan Trust in the US, spoke at Bethany Community Church in the Greenlake neighborhood of Seattle. He spoke on the topic of “Living by a Way of Life”.

About the Church as the Body of Christ

The Corinthian church was a dysfunctional church. Paul’s writing in response to two things; He’s gotten a letter from the church, and he’s gotten a delegation from the church. There’s really only one problem, but it’s manifesting itself in lots of different ways. The problem is, they are not behaving as if they’re a body, but an odd conglomeration of individuals.

1 Cor 16 – about gathering together for communion.

Communion is about being a community, a portion of the entire body of Christ.

ref: Acts, Peter’s vision about what God calls clean.

We are members. Members for us is a technical term; Paul is speaking about a limb. A body part.

Jesus’ body was transformed by the resurrection. But had different properties.

He could pass though locked doors. He could eat. His body could be touched.

But it has one interesting limitation: It’s still in one locale, it’s limited in space and time. So, if Jesus needs to be manifested in many places at one space and time… he needs a new body. It is this reality that Paul speaks of when he discusses the Body of Christ. We are to present and re-present he risen Jesus to the community we serve.

More than this, any one church is not large/diverse/good enough to do this in our community. We need other churches. We need to encourage people in our churches to find the place they are supposed to be – including if it’s in another church.

Eph 4 – all the administrative gifts (offices) are there for the purpose if equipping/perfecting the saints for the work of the the Kingdom of God. Not for the pastors to do the work of God; but the APEPT equip the body for its own work.

Until we have a cosmic shift in our thinking from being highly individualized to being communal, we will be weak and ineffectual. Uses illustration of buying a bunch of computer parts – but by themselves, they’re only potential, but useless. They have to be put together to be functional.