These changes were the result of a long process involving decades of intentional shepherding across a succession of one-minded leaders, each one carrying forward the work of the previous. In 2002, for a brief moment when all four of these leaders were present in the situation together, we recognized the need to move in the direction of gathering weekly in homes around a meal and discussion, even though we had not yet understood the critical nature of organizing ourselves as a network of small neighborhood-based churches who function as an extended family. That would come later.

In our efforts to avoid harming any of those who we were responsible for before Christ, we adopted a strategy to carefully shepherd the church in this direction, recognizing that making too many changes, too quickly, could result in a destabilization of the entire effort and inadvertently defund the livelihoods of the very leaders who were working to shape this church as a family.

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By the time the baton was passed to me in 2021, enough progress had been made that I was able to accelerate the process. This was due to several factors. First, by that time many in the church had embraced the ideas and had a genuine commitment to one another. Others had either retired, moved away, or were at a stage of life where they were dependent on us and willing to follow our lead. And lastly, but very significantly, my income was not tied to holding an official position in the church. All of this freed me to be more aggressive with paradigm transformation.

But even then, we were not instantly successful. Families I thought would easily grasp the value of these changes (even some families I thought would help lead the way for others) floundered, complained, disengaged and a few even left and went elsewhere. After about three years of gathering this way, we had lost two key families plus a few others on their coattails. But we stuck with it and leaned on other churches in our network to help us process these losses and keep moving forward with resolve. Also, the First Principles Series, which we had been studying as a church for two decades, began coming alive for us in ways we hadn’t anticipated. This series, which is organized around the key church-establishing concepts from Paul’s early, middle, and later letters, had been living in our heads, but we had been filtering the concepts through our old church traditions. It wasn’t until we began gathering as families, in homes, around a weekly meal and conversation that the reality of the teaching that Paul delivered became clear and meaningful.

But as we made these changes, a new set of challenges began to arise, and we realized that truly being a family together required a different level of commitment, a new set of habits, and a new leadership structure. Gone were the days where a pastor and a worship leader were sufficient to pull off a Sunday event for 150 people. Now, each gathering needed a shepherding leader and each cluster needed an elder. Fewer people required more well-trained leaders and a serious commitment from everyone in order to pull off successful gatherings in our homes; AND it required all of us to engage in meaningful dialogue around the gospel and its implications and regular “one-anothering” throughout the week. We had come to understand that this is what it looks like to truly be a family together.

We were now able to assess the remaining traces of institutionalism that were holding us back from fully functioning as a family. Many of these related to the organizational structure of our church, the framework of which had been laid in the 1940’s. Those founding documents dictated institutional oversight and management structures, meaning, we were a Senior Pastor-facilitated, congregationally led organization, rather than a well-shepherded, apostolically led church network. It was time to address this next set of issues.

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That meant overhauling our founding documents to reflect the reality we were all committing our lives to. It wasn’t just about updating these documents to fit a new leadership style, but completely reorienting them around the paradigm of The Way of Christ and His Apostles (1 Cor 4:16-17; Heb 10:1-20.) New Jersey requires churches to maintain a Constitution and Bylaws and a Board of Trustees, so I still had to work within that cultural system, but I also needed the end result to reflect Christ’s design for His church. The most revolutionary aspect of that overhaul was the elimination of a democratic hierarchy where the congregation voted on “elder” recommendations and employed pastors to perform religious services. Instead, those documents needed to reflect the two-fold leadership structure from the New Testament, made up of apostolic (sodality) leaders — so that the church could fully engage in our stewardship of becoming a hub situation like Ephesus1 in partnership with a larger North American apostolic team; and shepherding (modality) leaders who would help these churches and clusters shape every aspect of their lives around the gospel, allowing them to become a cluster of churches that function together as a kerygmatic community2, becoming a support-base for the progress of the gospel across our region, throughout our slice of the world, and from network-to-network around the globe.

What does this overlapping, sodal-modal leadership structure look like? Something like this:

Chart by Michael Vos

One question I consistently get from those outside looking in, is how we maintain accountability in a church with no senior pastor or board of trustees. My answer is that we do have trustees, but they aren’t businessmen running an organization, they are apostolic leaders setting the direction of the church and challenging our churches to fulfill our shared stewardship. And we do have shepherding (pastoral) leaders, but they aren’t professional preachers or paid administrators, they are mature couples “parenting” a household of households (cluster of churches.) These questions tend to originate from others who are still in institutional church situations, and are mainly interested in matters of fiscal accountability and preventing a single leader from having too much power. Their approach and focus are on creating financially successful institutions with a balance of power, not on maturing households and training leaders for the progress of the gospel.

Below is a continuum showing how accountability works within communities and trust networks, and how both rigid institutional settings and dynamic movements can tend toward unhelpful extremes. As you can see, Christ’s plan for building communities is not without accountability, but it also is not based on institutional hierarchies.

We are continuing the process of orienting our lives together around Christ’s grand strategy (Eph 3:8-12) and we will continue shaping our lives around Jesus’ new covenant system and working with other churches and networks to shape a one-minded movement around the way of Christ and His apostles.

Here’s a boiled-down set of steps for how leaders can restructure their traditional churches to become a genuine community.

1. If you are not part of a complex apostolic network , then find an apostolic team and attach yourselves to them. They will provide the support, direction, and assessment you will need to stick with this and make progress.

2. In your own church situation, invest heavily in couples who have stable, well-ordered households, especially those who have natural shepherding gifts. Help them become clear thinkers and confident teachers.

   [All leaders currently functioning as paid staff should begin investigating how to build a portfolio of flexible paid work options, so that they become less dependent on the church for their income. Apostolic leaders should pursue self-enterprising work as a stabilizer, but should have a base church or small network of base churches who support their work. Elders should pursue flexible income streams so that they are freed up to engage deeply in family-life alongside other households in the churches, modeling this well for others.]

3. Begin getting everyone engaged in one-anothering as a life orientation, developing a new set of community habits together.

4. Begin laying foundations by carefully teaching through the TWCA framework to develop one-mindedness. This should be approached from the desire to nurture everyone along, but you should also be ready to do battle when necessary, particularly around strong commitments to secondary traditions, which many will struggle to let go of; or emotional commitments to popular inspirational movements, which many will struggle to bring into alignment with Christ’s plan.

5. Create a prototype of a weekly gathering around a meal/conversation, using it as a case study for the entire church (utilizing your existing shepherding leaders from #2.)

6. Use that prototype alongside an ordered learning process so that households and churches are becoming equipped to fully engage in community life and in their own spheres of influence. This helps drive conversations and incremental change as everyone begins adjusting how they view and practice their gatherings, community life, commitment levels, personal life development, leadership roles, engagement in evangelism & mission, etc.

   [Address the critical role of women in pulling off this new way of gathering and being family together. You will not be successful unless everyone begins understanding the critical and strategic role of women in all of this!]

7. Eventually, begin restructuring your entire church situation around a network concept (church of churches - cluster of gatherings - family of families, etc.)

8. Focus on expansion through multiplication of church communities, rather than solely by adding converts to a single gathering. Once smaller neighborhood-based churches are living well as extended families, some of this growth will begin happening spontaneously, but leaders should also be planning and preparing for intentional, strategic expansion. This type of growth requires more well-trained leaders, but much less infrastructure and much smaller budgets. You will need well-trained leaders, host homes, and an apostolic network partnership.

9. If you plan to retain your church’s legal organizational status, then devise a plan to officially restructure in a way that simultaneously meets all legal requirements while also reflecting Christ’s household design. Then begin making the paradigm “official” in your legal documentation based on your new practices, reflecting your updated approach to how decision-making happens.

10. As consensus is gained and critical mass is reached, if necessary, bring things to a congregational vote to turn the old democratic system on its head and fully establish the new team approach, where apostolic leaders and elders regularly and transparently make strategic decisions based on the growing one-mindedness, engaging with the church clusters as true partners in their shared stewardship, while interacting with a broader leadership team of coworkers and shepherding types who have real input.

11. If the church owns property, reconsider how to utilize that property as a resource to fuel expansion of clusters of church gatherings. It could mean selling or leasing properties to generate resources, or restructuring them to function as community centers that benefit cities and become self-funding (so that they are no longer a drain or encumbrance.)

12. Engage early and often with the next two generations from the church community. Help them understand the story we are all living in, God’s Story, and its implications, and help them become familiar with the framework of the biblical collections of literature and the intent of the authors, so that they fully orient their lives around their church family within the context of Christ’s Grand Strategy, and thoroughly understand the age in which we are living. Focus on preparing them to lead their generation in the same TWCA tradition, but with a theology-in-culture3 skillfulness.

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

Photo by Dan Kiefer on Unsplash

[Stick with me for a minute as I lay some groundwork. I promise this is all leading to my thoughts on “the nativity as protest art”.]

Leveraging special interest groups to create a support base isn’t a strategy exclusive to 21^st century American politics. It’s been around for a while.

In 312 CE Constantine the Great had an epiphany which convinced him that the God of the Bible would be his ally in all future military endeavors if he would emblazon Christ’s name on all his armor and outfits. Constantine, being a forward-thinking entrepreneur, designed a line of merch, inventing the graphic tee. These promptly sold out because he hadn’t properly anticipated demand and wasn’t quite ready to go to scale. So, he pitched his idea to the Sharks, garnered some support and rolled his initial success into an Empire-wide chain of Christian gift shops, with their own line of holiday tchotchkes, and then used that success to gain the popular support of the Christian church, eventually building an entire legal infrastructure around it and voila… Christendom and capitalism were born. And they’ve been twinning it ever since.

Okay, that’s not exactly what happened, but it captures the essence of it.

Well, it at least captures some of it.

Okay, it’s embellished quite a bit.

In the early 4^th century, the Christian church was still largely a movement of believing communities who shared a common life together for the purpose of building one another up and “seeking the welfare” of their cities; relying on the apostles’ teaching as the body of teaching around which they based their lives; and who shared their resources network-to-network via the apostolic teams who moved among them, helping to create one-minded solidarity, while meeting the pressing needs across the movement… and solving crimes. (No, the apostles didn’t actually solve crimes, but what if they had? Wouldn’t that have made an awesome Netflix1 pulp series?)

Constantine seems to have recognized the potential of these Christians as a significant “special interest group”. Their numbers had gone from about 1,000 followers of Jesus in the mid-1st century, to nearly 9 million by the early 4th century, and he took advantage of that. (I can’t speak to Constantine’s motives, just to where it all led.)

Initially just a pawn in this game of thrones, Christianity eventually landed in the driver’s seat, becoming mostly identified with the “official” institutional church, which began staking its own claim for power and influence within the empire. The road that led Christianity to this point began with a slow departure from the original plan of Christ, around which the early movement of churches had been intentionally shaped by the apostles and their teams. Even before the 4^th century the churches had begun falling into the trap of trying to be “culturally relevant”.

“By falling into the trap of trying to make the churches more palatable to both the Roman and the Greek audience, the churches sold their birthright, if you will, turning in “the way of Christ and His Apostles” for a “better” way—which led us on a journey through Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism, through fundamental Protestantism to modern day liberalism—a journey eventually leading to the death of Western Christendom.”2

Hans Kung has written extensively on Christian paradigms and has outlined the major paradigms of Christianity over the centuries. Below is a summary of his thoughts.

[Chart from Why Paradigms… and How Did We Get Here by Matthew Andersen]

When Jesus arrived on the scene, he intentionally went around shaking up the old Jewish paradigm and introducing a new way of understanding all that God had been doing up to that time. Then Jesus handed off, to Paul and the other apostles, the task of making sure that his plan was fully understood and implemented by the churches so that they could continue building a commonwealth of Christian communities in every civilization (the Early Christianity paradigm.)

But by the 4th century, the ambitions of men and their incessant need to harness everything into logical systems that could be wielded by bureaucracies, became the dominant attitude toward the church and its theology, toward government, and toward society, and ended up creating an institution so powerful and expansive that it would dominate Western Civilization’s understanding of itself for the next 1,700 years.

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[And now for the dramatic conclusion where I tie it all together…]

So… that was my long introduction to explain how I arrived at my take on these “nativity protest art” displays which are popping up on the front lawns of Catholic churches across America.

It seems to me these art installation protests are just more of this same overlap of Christendom and governmental power structures. It’s the last gasp of the old paradigm, once again attempting to be relevant.

While they make a good point, I wonder if they actually accomplish anything substantial for the communities they claim to be concerned about? Or if they are really more about garnering influence for those engaging in the protests. Overall, their response amounts to a cocktail of benign political stance and public alignment with a particular ideological “team”, while giving a big middle finger to the governmental authorities against whom they are protesting. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Like many, many cultural responses to things we don’t like?

It’s sort of the “Christian” version of saying “f—ck the man”, which is not actually a Christian response, but is definitely an American one. Our impulse to tell our opponents to “f—k off”3 is largely considered to be one of our fundamental rights as Americans. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

[It’s a gift I’m given almost daily as I drive home from the train station here in the great traffic-ridden state of New Jersey. And it’s one of the reasons I stopped riding Citibikes in NYC. Because I was regularly tempted to pay that gift forward to herds of pedestrians ambling down the bike lanes as if they were their own personal bridle paths.]

However, our tendency to respond in these ways typically ends with one of two results. A “road rage” incident, where something or someone gets broken (or worse); or remaining squarely in the world of symbolic tokenism and its meaningless (but sometimes cathartic) gestures.

Perhaps the better question is how can churches engage in supporting those in their neighborhoods and communities in ways that actually address their needs, and then make the sort of sacrifices (real ones, not token ones) for the welfare of the people in their neighborhoods. Sacrifices that have appropriate, tangible results.

And what are the life patterns, habits, new sets of priorities, and the framework around which church communities should be shaping themselves in order to have the resources and capacity to make a real difference, even if it is on a small scale, locally? The type of real difference that when it is multiplied across a movement of church communities in a large city, or throughout a region, or even across a national landscape, becomes extremely significant.

Do we have to just follow along in the same institutional footsteps as our predecessors or are there grass roots opportunities that don’t necessarily engage at all with the current governmental and board room-based systems? Is it possible that Jesus’s original plan to shape a global family movement was actually designed to be effective in every era and every culture? And was never intended to be institutionalized?

Churches that are intent on remaining effective in this next paradigm of Christianity need to regain a one-minded participation in the plan and patterns that the early churches were originally shaped around (by the apostles), which created a movement of grass roots communities, who were networked together, and functioned within, across, and beyond the realm of institutional boundaries, cultural traditions, and national borders, because they understood that they were Jesus’s extended family network; and they took care of one another, and then out of that internal strength, worked together to seek the welfare of their communities, focusing on each neighborhood, one at a time, while simultaneously, rapidly expanding across the globe.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

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Author’s Note:

These stories do not represent an exhaustive account of all the conversations and experiences I had at the 2025 Latin American civilization symposium (quite the fancy name for a bunch of church network leaders eating, laughing, and talking together for five days. What can I say, we like to have fun while we contemplate the serious stuff.) Nor is it an exhaustive accounting of all the leaders I encountered there, or their situations. Instead, these essays are a smattering of some those things, mostly based on my own intuition and interest. (It’s my prerogative. After all, I am the author.)

I have organized my original essay into seven short stories about various people, situations, and circumstances I encountered.

Ready Player Juan

Butch and Sundance

Medical Missions

A Quiet Man

The Honeymooners

Street Cred

Stop Wait… Wait… Waiting… Start Becoming Faithful Leaders

I have also recorded an audio version of this post. (Which some of you are listening to right now.) With the audio recording I can add emphasis and inflection that is difficult to communicate in writing and with the written piece I can organize my thoughts and share images. Sometimes two are better than one. This is one of those times. If you hear me pause, it’s because I wanted a little dead air in between each section, not because I’m getting old and find myself falling asleep at odd times. I edited all of those out.

Introduction

Last week, in the Dallas area, I participated in a four-day gathering of leaders from church networks from across the Latin American civilization, along with leaders who are planting churches among diaspora communities in North America. James Riley, from BILD International was there to provide some training in how to use the BILD resources to shape churches and train leaders. And Mario and Amuy Monroy were there shaping the entire time into a fruitful dialogue with strategic planning, resulting in a unified network. In addition to James and the ethnic leaders, there were several of us who function as coworkers with the BILD team, basically as an extension of their team, but who fund ourselves from our own self-enterprising work and are supported by our local church communities. We joined this gathering to encourage these leaders; to reinforce the teaching and conversations that were happening; to better understand our own role in developing a global network of churches; and to deepen our relationships with one another as we work together across this network for the purpose of shaping our own church communities around the patterns and principles from the book of Acts.

What I had not anticipated, was that I would be getting a two-for-one deal. (Cue ABBA’s The Visitors, track 7.) As it happened, we created a mini-North American summit nested, as an intermittent road trip, within the Latin American summit. The quartet of us from the North American churches found ourselves engaged in a series of side conversations about our own church situations and lives, as well as in an oddly satisfying combination of screwball fun (think hanging out with your best friends in college, minus the beer pong) which together resulted in a remarkable, deepening affection for one another.

Through all of this, each of us were strengthened and built up.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

So, after all of this, you might be asking yourself, what exactly does it look like for an apostolic-type leader to engage faithfully in their calling?

In 2 Timothy Paul paints a picture for one of his young key leaders of what sort of life he needs to expect as an apostolic leader. Paul tells Timothy that he must be…

Like a Soldier – ready to jump up and go wherever needed… part of an apostolic team

Like an Athlete – highly disciplined in his life and development… mastering the scriptures

Like a Farmer – extremely hardworking and engaging in intense seasons of work… maintaining a portfolio to help remain on task

Then in 2 Corinthians Paul clarifies the difference between a true apostolic leader and the counterfeits who were bewitching the church in Corinth.

The essential components of a genuine apostolic leader are…

A full-life commitment

A clear sense of the work in front of them

A discerning approach in how they navigate forward

An ability to defend their role (confront, convince, cut off those who won’t align themselves with the teaching)

An ability to make powerful arguments (confrontational when necessary)

Apostolic planning with flexibility across dynamic situations

I could unpack these statements and write a five-page paper on each, but I’ll spare you that at the moment.

What is at stake if these leaders don’t take their calling seriously?

I saw it this week. Households sacrificing in order to be a resource to their communities in apartment complexes, laundromats, local restaurants, libraries, community centers, etc. whose homes are wide open and who are pouring their entire lives into creating stable community for those who desperately need it. But they aren’t sure how to shape their situations into a true church community and they’re not sure how to train leaders; they don’t have help or guidance, and they are wearing themselves out; and they either have no apostolic leader in their situation to challenge them and help train additional leaders or they have an apostolic-type leader who doesn’t take their role seriously and is leaving novice shepherds and fledgling churches exposed to the elements and other dangers.

Those men and women with apostolic gifting and calling who are locked into traditional church and ministry contexts must stop masquerading as traditional church leaders who play along with the game of treating the gospel as if it is a mandate for a corporate takeover of society or as if it is merely a mantra to be ceremonially rehearsed week after week, somehow convincing themselves that by running around and staying constantly busy that they are “working hard like a farmer.” A farmer doesn’t busy themselves with unnecessary tasks. That would be a waste of time and would result in a lower-yield crop or the loss of a crop entirely. Farmers must be focused and make choices, and so must we.

These leaders must free themselves from the shackles of their religious institutions that want to keep them in their employ and control their every move and decision. We have got to return to Christ’s plan which His Spirit revealed to Paul and was delivered to the churches by the apostles. We must recover apostolic authority and the apostolic function without trying to synthesize them with our existing church traditions or overemphasizing their role as capital “A” apostles.

We’ve got to reset the destination coordinates in our GPS. I’ve observed so many people that start moving toward the way of Christ and His apostles, but because they don’t have a solid understanding or a deep commitment, they never reset their destination, and so their internal GPS, guided by an almost subconscious commitment to their old tradition, keeps recalculating and taking them right back to the same spot, so that they never make any actual progress. We’ve got to break free of these “guidance system” strongholds.

As apostolic-type leaders we must recover Paul’s traditioning framework and then network together to shape church communities as a global movement around these patterns.

We must help churches return to The Way of Christ and His Apostles, fully dedicating our lives and ways of thinking around building Jesus’s family according to the “pattern of teaching” delivered by the apostles. This is the only legitimate way to worship Jesus… and that statement makes sense when you begin to comprehend what He accomplished when He upended the old reality and inaugurated a new and living way. (Check out Romans 12:1-2)

We must, once again, become what the church was for its first three-hundred years, a unified global family movement.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

One of the main reasons I chose to participate in the Latin American celebration last week (even though most of those in attendance speak only Spanish and I do not) was because of the relationship that I have developed with Cherry, a Garifuna1 leader (and for those reading along, I have dropped in a footnote about the Garifuna people) in the Bronx who is working hard to reconfigure his traditional church gathering of seventy people into a cluster of church families who meet regularly in their homes to eat the Lord’s supper and build one another up by bringing their own reflections on the gospel, and together figuring out how to process their lives through it.

Cherry brought three young men from his church to this symposium, so that they could better understand what he is trying to accomplish and can assist him in making it a reality. He is working to develop them as leaders in the church.

In one of our discussions, someone asked them what their impression was of this symposium, and they expressed that while these ideas were new to them, they were excited to continue learning together and that it was their strong desire, to shape church communities that are effective at breaking the cycle of violence and fractured relationships in the tough neighborhoods they live in and help bring healing to a broken community. Their desires were sincere and well-intended, but it adds even more questions for them to answer. What will this require of them? How will they bring the gospel to bear on their situation and truly make a difference? What will this require of Cherry? The simple answer is a total life commitment and a prioritizing of relationship with these young men, if he is going to build Jesus’s family in his context.

But now it is time for them to focus on building their own strategy around Christ’s plan that will get them moving in that direction. This will also take the input of some of us who were in the room that day, making sure we continue those conversations with Cherry, teaching, planning together, and encouraging one another.

I can’t wait to see what Jesus’ Spirit continues to do in their situation, in the midst of the significant challenges they face.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

I mentioned Michael and Jenny earlier but let me give you some of their story. I’ve known Michael and Jenny for about two years. When I met them, they weren’t married or even dating. Both were focused on ordering their lives in a way that would best help them strengthen their church community.

Michael is a high school baseball coach, a home inspector, and owns a business that does seasonal farm work in central Michigan, employing several other 20-somethings from their church community. He is an avid baseball fan. And he is a young apostolic-type leader. Jenny has co-owned a bakery and delivery service with a few other women from their church family and worked in Michael’s farming business. She has doggedly pursued her own development in understanding and engaging in Christ’s plan for establishing churches. They both intentionally designed their work scenarios to give them maximum flexibility to prioritize the families in their church community and pursue opportunities for benefitting their cities and other parts of the church network. Neither had strong aspirations for marriage when I met them, or at least they avoided making it something they obsessed over and talked about all the time. And even though they had known each other for about 10 years and had a deep affection and admiration for one another, it seemed to them, at the time, that serving their community could be done more effectively as individuals, than as a couple.

Then about six months ago, after an abundance of fruitful conversations with some trusted men and women in their church, that all changed. Michael began reflecting on his life’s calling and the things he wanted to accomplish across the church network. It quickly became apparent to both of them, that they could more effectively make a contribution as a couple, through a shared life together, which would allow them to work as a team, processing their lives together as a household, making them a stronger, more effective part of their church community and opening up new opportunities across the network of churches. They realized that by sharing in this together, they would have exponentially more resources, wisdom, and opportunities to participate in the progress of the gospel. They would become an exponentially strategic household.

In October 2025, twelve of us from my church here in New Jersey travelled to be part of Michael and Jenny’s wedding in central Michigan. In some ways it was a very typical wedding. There was an officiant. An exchange of vows. Some music. A kiss. (You gotta have a kiss.) But in other ways, their wedding was incredibly unique. When they were looking for a wedding venue, their focus was on finding a location that could accommodate several hundred people. Turns out that isn’t so hard to do in the land of corn and soybeans. You just have to locate someone who prefers to use their property for hosting events to detasseling and rogueing. The reason they wanted a venue with that sort of capacity is so that they could invite families and friends from across their various spheres of relationship, particularly those from other church communities across the network, using their wedding weekend as a strategic church network connection point, thereby strengthening the North American network of churches who all share the common purpose of shaping churches as extended families.

But Michael and Jenny didn’t accomplish this alone. They were assisted by the families from their church community, who all jumped in and made a weekend of it, serving, celebrating, and hosting various gatherings, so that the churches from across North America could engage in significant strategic conversations while they were there. (I wrote about an August 2024 trip to visit their church community here.)

Then after the wedding, Michael and Jenny did the unthinkable. They skipped the honeymoon! That’s right folks, you heard that correctly. The very thing that young couples anticipate the most about their wedding, Michael and Jenny set aside to get back to work, so that they could have the resources to participate in other network opportunities and trips. Opportunities like this gathering of church leaders from the Latin American civilization, where I was once again able to spend significant time with them, talking through our situations and planning together for how to keep multiplying and maturing our church communities; simultaneously deepening our family ties with one another in this movement that Jesus’s Spirit is building.

Their lives and their joy have not been diminished because of a postponed honeymoon. Their affection for one another is deep, their lives are authentic and oriented around Christ’s plan, and their love for others is tangible. They have chosen the both/and option, not the either/or. If anything, their lives are more full, more strategic, and more enjoyable with each solid decision they make, and the effect of those decisions then ripples out across the entire network, which is expanded and made stronger as a result, especially those of us who have the privilege of being part of their particular extended family.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

[Left to Right: Mario, Lucas, Katherina, Josiah (making the same face my son makes if we have more then three takes in the same photo op) and Amuy.]

I met Mario and his family about nine months ago at the 2024 BILD summit in Ames, Iowa, where 150 or so network leaders from around the globe gathered to represent the churches in their contexts and collaborate together on how to continue shaping a global movement of churches who are gospel-shaped extended families. (It feels like I’ve known Mario for a decade. That’s how quickly he draws you in and gets you partnering with him.) Mario’s reputation as a quiet, careful, effective leader had preceded him and my initial impression of him was that maybe he was a little too quiet.

About four months later, I had the opportunity to travel to Spain for our European leadership summit, which Mario and their church hosted. I spent five days there getting to know his family and the church and was absolutely floored by the mature families and larger church community they have carefully built in their situation on the Southern coast of Spain. (I wrote about that trip here.)

This was not always the case for them. About fifteen years ago Mario moved his family from Panama to Spain to pastor a traditional church. But the pressures and dysfunction they encountered in that church began to tear at their own family. The church was not a community. It was not a family and so instead, it functioned like any other institution, resisting change, which made it impossible for Mario to help them become mature. He spent seven years working to stabilize this church, but was continually met with institutional battles, and obstacles of immature people who refused to follow his lead. All of this was causing extreme stress on his wife and even led to his daughter becoming fed up with what she perceived as Christianity and even reaching the point of wanting nothing to do with church.

Right as things began to fall apart, Mario discovered the concepts and paradigm of Christ’s plan to build His church as a global family of families, and it made all the difference. He left the traditional church with the desire to plant a simple church community out of his home. He began to work hard at orienting his own marriage around these principles, then extended that out to his children and then together they began to sacrificially invest in a few young families and over the course of the past seven years a small cluster of simple churches have emerged who are self-sufficient, freeing him to do the same thing in other places. Mario’s field of work has continued to expand, now including both the extensive Latin American civilization around the world and various parts of Europe.

His own example, his intense, hard work, and the investment he has made in relationships with these key church leaders across Latin America paid real dividends last week, as these Latin American leaders came together, helped one another solve problems and make plans, and then departed on the other side as a one-minded network who will continue to strengthen and help one another.

One final note about Mario’s family. When I was in Spain, I got to know his 23-year-old daughter Katherina. She is an amazing woman with an amazing story, and she made such an impression on me that I now refer to her my hija adoptiva, my adopted daughter in Christ. Together with Mario’s family, we are building Jesus’s global family movement across different civilizations, regions, networks, and traditions.

One more final note (I promise this one is really final) about Mario’s leaders. I met Josue, Lidia, Alvaro and Deisy (I’m certain I’m not spelling their names correctly, which bothered me enough to make this comment, but not enough to text them as ask for the correct spellings.) I met them when I was in Spain last June, along with a few other young couples who are building their lives and households into a community and then together investing in their neighborhoods and city. I have been repeatedly impressed by their dedication and commitment to Mario, to one another, and to Christ, which is evident in the things they talk about and the way the talk about them, their focus, and their priorities. All of them have stepped up to lead in their homes and churches, freeing Mario to pursue fulfilling his calling as an apostolic leader.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

New friendships are often forged in the trenches, during intense circumstances, (like a bank robbing spree), but sometimes they develop in the in-between spaces, illuminating ordinary moments with unanticipated camaraderie that exceeds expectations. A shared way of life + some shared experiences + an vigorous dialogue of processing our lives through the gospel, creates lasting connections, which are made even sweeter when you are able to recognize them as they are happening. But there are also intangibles. The things you can’t plan for because they would never occur to you ahead of time. Those wonderful Brigadoon moments that you stumble into unexpectedly, which can be easily spoiled if you try to hold on to them too tightly.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected when I volunteered to join James Riley at the Latin American celebration last week, but it wasn’t this. I figured James would be occupied most of the time with the teaching he was doing, and I would spend my time making attempts to communicate with everyone else in my very best Spanglish, or that I might have a few moments here or there to talk with James, Michael, and Jenny about our shared ministry contexts (and try and convince James to grant me access to some much needed unpublished BILD resources.) Instead, I ended up having about 25 “road trip” hours of some of the most useful, interesting, enjoyable conversation I’ve had with another human being on this planet (my wife aside, conversations with her are constant and super helpful – love you honey!)

The best things happen when you’re punchy. Things that you would not do at home come naturally on the road. (Yes, that’s a White Christmas reference.)

Sometimes the best conversations at the end of a long day, when you’re feeling a little “dazed and confused” and decorum has already called it a night. Like our late-night run to the closest (but not quite as close as we thought) Buc-ees for pulled pork sandwiches and beaver merch at the eponymous Texas “gas station”; or while hanging out in a rental car on a warm day at the airport waiting for others to arrive; or on long drives around the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex with a vivacious young couple. James and I were already having pretty decent conversation, but it amped up considerably when we were joined by Michael and his “new wife” Jenny. (Not as opposed to his old wife… new in the sense that he is recently married to her… you know, for the first time. So, I guess I could just as easily say Michael is Jenny’s “new husband.” Okay, let’s just go with newlyweds. Michael and Jenny are newlyweds.)

I was already aware that James and I share a similar ministry context in the sense that we are both apostolic coworkers with responsibilities in leading church communities and we both prefer shorts to pants (I mean, who wouldn’t?), but I didn’t expect to meet my SIMA MAP doppelganger on this trip. (Discover your own MAP here.)

James and I are the same age. We both have a lifelong fascination with movies, television and pop culture (which has not diminished over time even as we have become “serious” church leaders.) Our SIMA MAP primary results are remarkably similar. We share much of the same motivated abilities with regards to how we learn, investigate, evaluate, oversee and communicate, and we are similar in the sort of results we hope to achieve and conditions we prefer to operate within. We have a similar approach to training and shepherding situations, and we even use similar language to explain concepts and ideas in paradigm-level conversations. We both work very hard to make complex ideas more accessible. The only notable difference is that James is a cat guy and I prefer dogs.

Since we are part of the same network and both functioning on the same global apostolic team, it seems like a sure bet that we will continue to have fun and work hard together, particularly as we have more opportunities to go on trips and engage in training together. I look forward to the next time, but until then all I can say is… “James, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

[Sorry Juan, the only pic I had of you was from this angle.]

The first night of the conference, everyone was still a bit dazed from our long journeys. We all sat around after dinner getting to know one another and not expecting much, given our current condition. Juan, a leader we had never met before, sat at the table with us and began describing his situation. He and his wife have been tasked by their supporting agency to go plant traditional churches in the St. Louis area, with the goal of forming worship services and acquiring space in a building. Juan seemed unsure and a little overwhelmed about how he was going to accomplish this. He talked to us about how he currently has two separate informal gatherings of people that get together intermittently throughout the month in non-religious spaces. (And by non-religious spaces I don’t mean that they meet in Bill Maher’s basement, I mean locations other than church buildings. Places like a garage or a community center.)

Juan shared with us that he felt like he wasn’t making much progress toward meeting these goals. All he had were two small groups of people gathering around food, fun, and conversation, and he felt discouraged about what he perceived as a lack of progress with establishing them as a local church. But when he heard us talking about how our churches meet each week to eat a meal together (bookended by the bread and the cup) and how that is essential for building true community that is rooted in the sort of gospel-shaped, selfless love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, his spirits began to lift.

For years he and his wife have been working feverishly to build these relationships and now he felt pressure to move them from simple gatherings around food to more formal church services. This, he thought, was how you establish a church. (I mean, this is what most of us grew up thinking it meant to plant a new church, isn’t it?) He has been puzzled and discouraged for some time about how to accomplish this. Imagine his genuine joy upon discovering that he has already intuitively been engaging with these families in a way that is very similar to how the early churches gathered… as small, simple gatherings, clustered together in cities and networked across regions by apostolic-type leaders who shaped them and helped them become mature communities who then became bases for further expansion of the gospel into new areas. The pure joy of this realization was irrepressibly visible on his face and expressed in his uncontainable excitement. (When Juan gets really excited, he raises his eyebrows, which makes the back of his scalp resemble a Shar Pei. This is how I knew when he was connecting with something we were talking about.) We could see the stress melting away as he came to realize that he was already on the right track to build this “church as family” model.

We spent the next couple of hours asking questions about his situation and talking through how he could begin training leaders to help him, and how he could continue infusing those situations with the gospel to help bind them together in the truth of what Jesus accomplished and what it means for churches today.

Juan was a different person after this interaction, participating with fervor and vigor and asking questions so that he could return to St. Louis empowered to begin solving problems and making progress in his situation.

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches that are families… patterned after Acts.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw

I recently listened in on a conversation with two key leaders of a significant church network, who were giving a report to their church network about some recent ministry trips. (No, I wasn’t wire tapping for an investigative journalism series. I was invited to listen.) One of those leaders is a regular guy, with a regular job, in a regular town, but he has an irregularly strong commitment to helping others in their churches become mature and understand their role in fulfilling Christ’s plan. He doesn’t go on ministry trips to far away places, but he is just as invested in that work as the leaders who do. I’ll refer to him as a shepherding leader.

The other leader, although he engages in significant seasonal, paid work of his own, spends the majority of his time and energy, and nearly all of his focus, on equipping a global network of similar leaders, most of whom have influence across dozens or hundreds of other local church networks in regions of Europe, Asia, North America, and the Global South. I’ll refer to him an apostolic leader.

Together these leaders are helping the churches in their Midwest network to grasp the stewardship they all share, which is rooting the way of Christ and His apostles1 across this global network of churches and leaders so that Jesus’s prayer in John 17 can become a reality “…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.” (It is no secret that the global church from 325 AD until today is not fulfilling this prayer. This isn’t meant to be an end goal, it is supposed to be the constant task of Jesus’s global family.)

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This apostolic leader’s role is a sometimes infuriating, sometimes depressing, often exciting, always overwhelming lifework that has come to be shared by hundreds of other similar leaders around the world (including me) who see our calling and stewardship as either directly or indirectly related to the work that was initiated by these leaders in the Midwestern church 50-60 years ago, but even more substantially tied to the traditioning process that Paul, led by Jesus’s Spirit, initiated in the first-century, which we believe is Christ’s perpetual plan for His church. Over those 50-or-so-years our churches and networks have all begun to share in this stewardship as well, as they all work hard at reorienting their lives to see this accomplished and to pass on that vision to the next generation, helping equip them for the work that will remain until Christ returns.

An important thing to note about this network is that there is no centralized organization. No institutional government. No authoritarian hierarchy. None of us are on the payroll of any central organization. However, when one of those key leaders says something with authority or speaks into our lives and situation, we all take it seriously and spend significant time processing their input, likely resulting in some adjustment to our strategy and work. If this team of leaders in the Midwest indicate that another part of that global family movement needs our help, we mobilize to provide leaders, teaching or other resources to help strengthen one another and remain a unified family. We are all working together toward the same purpose, but in extremely varied situations and cultures.

Why do we engage so meaningfully with one another? If there is no institutional hierarchy, no monetary payoff, then what would make the rest of us (particularly those of us in global cities such as Paris and NYC) engage so deeply and take seriously the provocations of a bunch of folksy, tailgating cornhuskers? (I say that with love.) It’s because they have stuck with a very difficult work for decades now. A work that has required tremendous sacrifice on the part of their entire church community. This demands our attention and has resulted in our respect, so that when they behave in ways that are unreasonable, we cannot ignore them. We are forced to reconcile their unreasonableness with their sound thinking and well-formed representations of Christ’s strategy and how that is worked out in large scale church networks; and with the fact that they have successfully implemented those concepts in their own situation and helped hundreds of other network leaders around the world do the same.

Now, getting back to the conversation I listened in on, this apostolic-type leader had just returned from a trip across Asia and met up with one of his colleagues in France, for a visit with a key leader there who had recently received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. As they reflected on the decades of ministry together, this aging leader, who has been part of this movement for more than forty years, said to these two leaders, “You are unreasonable men. You have been unreasonable with me over these forty years… and I am grateful.” What this leader meant is tied to the George Bernard Shaw quote I started with. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This French leader was saying to them that they had pushed him, challenged him, and sometimes even been unreasonable with him and by doing so, they had helped him find the focus, clarity and commitment to accomplish abundantly more than he ever would have or could have, if he had been left on his own. His situation has given him clarity as he reflects back on his life and he is now able to express this to them with honesty and gratitude.

Obviously I am not talking about being difficult simply because it’s convenient. Or being unreasonable in an attempt to manipulate others. (Our culture already has plenty of examples of that type of behavior.) I am talking about the willingness, the drive, the inability on the part of gifted leaders to cease challenging those around them to step up and make the commitment necessary to move from a life of good things and nice gestures, to a life of overwhelming difficulty (conflicts without and fears within) which results in the transformation of others. It’s a “gifted leaders can’t stop” type situation. There is a drive within them to equip and establish others to create mature, stable communities and networks. It is Romans 12:1-2, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” It is 2 Corinthians, where Paul makes it clear that the role of apostolic leaders is one of constant, lifelong sacrifice on behalf of the churches.. a full-life commitment, a clear sense of their work, a discerning approach, and ability to defend their role, and powerful arguments (not rhetorical one-liners that end a debate, but arguments that are comprehensive, robust, and driven by the priorities of the New Testament writers themselves) all of which lead to exponential results in the lives of the churches.

The church needs these sort of leaders. Even the unreasonable ones. Especially the unreasonable ones.

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches as families… patterned after Acts.

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Introduction:

Once again I am sharing an equipping tool that we are using in our church gatherings to create a conversation (and help set our life priorities around) how to be a church family, a kerygmatic community.1

Let me clarify a couple of things, which might help those reading this to better understand why I have organized it in this way.

First, we have to start thinking about the gospel differently.

For centuries, Christian traditions have buried the dramatic announcement of the gospel under a set of doctrinal statements. Those traditions approached the gospel the same way they approached the Scriptures . Namely, look at every place where a word/concept is mentioned, collect them into piles and then see which piles are the biggest. (An oversimplification, but you get the point.) This propositional version of the gospel mainly exists to allow those traditions to claim the a superficial level of Christian unity. By extracting and abstracting doctrinal “truths” which must be accepted for someone to be “saved” and boiling those down to the lowest common denominator, they have achieved a fragile, superficial unity, which neither promotes shared purpose and partnership, nor expresses the gospel in a way that carries weight or power. It’s basically a way for all the thousands of Christian traditions to agree on paper, so that they can have “fellowship” together. Although, what fellowship means remains ambiguous and diluted.

Here is a summary of the gospel presentations I grew up with:

• Everyone is a sinner (original sin)

• Jesus died for your sins (substitutionary atonement)

• Believing these things means a.) you no longer have to feel condemned, and b.) you avoid eternal punishment (penal substition)

• You should stop what you are doing and BELIEVE these things right now so you can have a good life on earth, and a good afterlife in heaven (a disembodied utopia in a spiritual dimension)

That is not the gospel the apostles preached, which is recorded over and over in the book of Acts. Their gospel goes something like this:

• The plan that God began through his promises to Abraham, Moses, and David has now begun to be substantially fulfilled by what Jesus did

• This promised One (Jesus) has arrived (in the middle of the story) and inaugurated a "new and living way" according to a "new covenant" with a new global family

• That new family (the church) is Jesus's own "body" here on earth and is how He is accomplishing His work of embedding His redemptive kingdom in this world, in anticipation of His eventual return to make all things new and fully establish His kingdom on earth

In light of all that, Jesus’s Spirit worked through the apostles to give us the rest of Jesus’s teaching2, and we should completely reshape our lives around being this family together, according to the principles and traditioning process delivered to the apostles, which all the early churches were shaped around.

Secondly, we need to understand that the New Testament is actually organized around Christ’s plan, and how that plan was unfolded by the apostles in the first century.

Jesus intentionally held back and veiled His teaching while He was here, and then His Spirit fully revealed His plan to the apostles so that they could implement it throughout all the churches. This gives new insight and understanding of the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. That “New Testament” is the collection of the founding documents of the New Covenant, and they contain a unity and coherence through which they set forth the traditioning model (particularly through Paul’s writings) for the church for all time, until Jesus returns.

That unity can be understood by viewing the New Testament as a collection of writings organized around three key apostles and the church networks they were addressing.

Paul’s role was central to establishing the tradition for all the churches, and the other apostles thought of Paul’s work and writings as authoritative3 and shaped their own work around Paul’s traditioning process and principles, in flexible ways across various networks of churches.

Below is the equipping tool it has taken me so long to introduce.4

This tool is not a comprehensive look at the entire New Testament, but I have taken the 59 One Another passages from Carl George’s book and set them within their New Testament context, so that, rather than existing as a random list of how we should treat one another, you can actually see how they are part of the larger plan of Christ to shape His global family as networks of church families.

[This tool is adapted from Carl F. George, Prepare Your Church for the Future, The 59 One Anothers of the New Testament.]

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a coalition of leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.

4

Foreword:

“They were kerygmatic in their meeting design.”1

This narrative is written in the style of Robert Banks’ 1985 book Going to Church in the First Century, a short account of what a first century church gathering might have looked like. His brief book was based on his earlier, longer work, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting. Both of Bank’s books have been influential on my thinking and practice, along with a number of other scholars, writers, theologians and mentors who have made significant contributions to my understanding of how the early church followed “the way of Christ and His Apostles.” This phrase, “the way of Christ and His Apostles” was coined by Roland Allen in the early 20th century, after his time as a missionary in China, and based on his careful work in the New Testament and his observations and critiques of the state of the missionary movement as basically exporting Western church models around the globe. In his book, Missionary Methods, St. Paul’s or Ours, Allen commented that many pastors and missionaries of his time “have adopted fragments of St. Paul’s method and have tried to incorporate them into alien systems” assuming that in doing so, they had sufficiently followed Paul’s method and found it “unsuited to the condition of present-day missions”, when in fact, according to Allen, they had actually “neither understood nor practiced the Apostle’s method at all.” ““St. Paul‘s method is not in harmony with the modern Western spirit.… We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented.”2

Allen’s phrase clarifies that he understood that “the way”3, which Jesus himself referred to, is the same as, and can only be understood within the context of, the traditioning and patterns implemented by Paul and the other Apostles.

My stalwart, albeit less accomplished contemporary narrative, is born out of decades of my own study, my 20-year journeyman-type apprenticeship with other leaders in the context a large network of local churches, and my emerging mastercraftsman-like understanding of how we can shape 21^st Century churches around “the way of Christ and His Apostles”. My journey began by shaping my own household around those patterns, and then the churches I was working with, and lately by participating with other churches and leaders to reshape their own situations around these patterns. All these situations are still in progress and will take substantial work to remain stable and growing, even as I continue to expand the fields the Lord has given me.

In this narrative, I have combined many stories and situations from across the years and have attempted to frame them in a way that accurately reflects how we have implemented those 1^st Century patterns in various contemporary church situations. It is a synthesis of gatherings I have participated in, or have been given first-hand reports of, from the Northeastern United States, the Midwest, Spain and several places in India and other large Asian countries. It is not meant to exhaustively address every possibility, nor to provide a comprehensive biblical framework for the churches’ meeting design, but to be a snapshot of an authentically represented gathering of churches who are working together to function as extended family networks and hermeneutical communities, while processing their own lives and situations through the framework of the gospel and the Apostle’s Teaching in order to address the issues of the culture around them, and to create a “vernacular theology”4 for their particular time and situation, rather than relying on the static propositional theologies and dogmatics of previous generations.

This narrative is written in first-person prose from the perspective of someone who is experiencing this type of church gathering for the first time, and is then reflecting on that gathering and the circumstances that led up to their participation in it.

Scott Canion

…vigorous for the work

Going To Church In The 21st Century

Actually, my full name is Gerald Jonathan Baker. And as of last Thursday, I am officially 70 years old.

It’s a little hard for me to believe, since in my mind I don’t feel a day over forty, but I wake up every morning and my body quickly reminds me, in not-so-subtle ways, that forty was a long time ago. I was born in Flushing, Queens, but when I was three years old my family moved to Kearny, New Jersey and I grew up in that part of northern New Jersey which, although it has its own suburban cultural identity (Taylor ham, not pork roll!), also exists in the shadow of New York City. Many adults from my parents’ generation, and many from my own, made the daily trek into NYC for the better part of their lives.

I was one of those folks. But I retired about seven years ago, from my role as an investigative reporter at the New York Times, so that my wife, Cheryl, and I could travel and enjoy our home and retirement together. Those plans did not work out as we had hoped. Shortly before retiring, we sold our home and moved to a smaller place in the Albion neighborhood of Clifton, NJ. Then within three short months of my retirement, my wife was diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer. We did our best to get her good treatment and good doctors, but I lost her about two years later. So, I found myself alone, in a new neighborhood, with few friends. Our move had dislodged us from our network of friends, so when Cheryl got sick, we figured we’d be dealing with it mostly on our own. This felt overwhelming, but I had always been good at managing crises, so I threw myself into all the administrative details of her illness and medical care. Staying busy had always been cathartic for me in times of crisis.

However, an unexpected source of help materialized in the form of a neighbor couple that lived a few blocks away, whom my wife and I met a few times during our evening walks. For some reason, this couple made special efforts to keep in touch with us, bring us food during some of the more difficult days and help with rides to some of my wife’s treatment appointments. They regularly mentioned to us that they prayed for us every day. And they even arranged to have meals brought to us by others in the neighborhood during the last few weeks, when Cheryl was in hospice and we had family members staying with us. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. People in the neighborhood knowing our personal business? Were they talking about us with others in the neighborhood? At the time, it made me feel a little uncomfortable, but I gave in because it was helpful having the meals ready for us. Time was so precious during those days that I had no desire to think about making food or even eating it, but I knew I needed to keep my strength up. It was obvious that this couple had a deep concern for us and wanted to help us, and we needed the help. They were around right until the end and even helped me figure out some of the funeral arrangements that we hadn’t yet made.

After Cheryl passed, the husband of this couple kept reaching out to me and stopping by to check on me. He and I had played golf once or twice before the cancer arrived, but I didn’t feel much like playing golf in those days. Honestly, I didn’t feel much like leaving the house. But he kept in touch and eventually he convinced me to get out and play a round with him. Over time that became more of a habit and before I knew it, it became a regular habit scheduled for every second and fourth Thursdays of the month. Soon he invited a couple of his friends join us and in short order we were a regular foursome with a standing tee time.

Since then, I’ve become a regular at their summer BBQ’s and neighborhood holiday celebrations. They’re a very generous couple who do quite a bit for a number of folks in the neighborhood. I particularly enjoy helping out with the grilling. Last summer they bought me a “Grilling Meat Softly With His Tongs” apron to wear when I’m manning the grill. It was an inside joke, as my wife was a huge fan of the Roberta Flack song, although I was always more partial to Miles Davis myself. All this together gave me a real sense of belonging. Somehow they had turned my love of grilling into an opportunity to include me in their “neighborhood family.” I remember that as one of the first times I felt truly normal again.

This couple are Christians. Not that they do the sort of things I associate with other Christian people I’ve known. They were never loud about their faith or caught up in any sort of political activism, (that I know of.) They lived pretty quiet lives, like mine, and seemed to split their time between the people in their church and those of us in the neighborhood. There seemed to be quite a bit of overlap between those two groups, and I have met a number of their church friends at various social gatherings.

Then, last week, after almost a year of them inviting me, I decided to attend one of their weekly Sunday afternoon church gatherings. I have been a few times before, but in the past I always left after the meal time, because I knew that this is their version of a Sunday church service, and I had sworn off going to church when I was much younger after having some very negative experiences. I was a little nervous this time, not exactly sure what to expect. I had no idea what sort of rituals or traditions they might have, and I didn’t want to get caught up in any of that. But after getting to know them well, I felt like it was unlikely to be too strange. And at this point, my curiosity was starting to get the better of me. So, this week I decided to stay for the entire meeting and see what it was all about, mainly because I was curious why these people that I had become close to, felt they needed to host some sort of non-traditional church service in their home each week. Do they really need that in order to add meaning to their lives?

It had always seemed odd to me that their church service was held at a house on Sunday afternoons. My experience with church services is that they are intentionally held on Sunday mornings in a church building, so that everyone can conveniently fit them into their life and then get on with the rest of their day. At least that’s how I remember it when I was younger. However, it had been my habit, for years now, to spend Sunday mornings doing yardwork and the afternoons watching sports, like most other men I knew. And from my experience, most wives spent their Sundays performing a range of tasks, to prepare for the work week, so it seemed like their church service was poorly timed if they were trying to attract more people.

Their house was typical for our neighborhood. A 1920’s Modern English home with a gabled roof. It was a nice sized house, considering its age, and it seems that someone had added a couple of rooms to it over the years, but it wasn’t a large house by any modern standards. Yet somehow, they were able to host this weekly church gathering with about thirty people.

Since I like helping out with grilling, I decided to show up a little early. When I arrived, there were already seven or eight other people there, including a teenage boy who had come on his own to help get things organized and set up tables and chairs in the back yard. My experience was that there was usually a fair amount of arm twisting involved to get a teenager to attend church and usually they were only there to socialize with their peers. But this young man greeted me right away and asked if he could help bring me the meat for grilling. It seemed like my grillmaster reputation had preceded me. I made a mental note to watch for other young people and see who else showed up and how they interacted with everyone else. Maybe I was just out of touch with the young people in our community. I had read in the local paper about how our area was one of the most diverse in the country. The article mentioned that there were eighty-six different languages represented in the student body. Maybe all that immigration had made a positive change on the next generation that I didn’t realize.

Even though I knew about the diversity of the high school, I didn’t expect to see that sort of diversity at this meeting, but as more people started arriving, there was an odd mix of people that didn’t quite make sense to me. First, I noticed several “white” families who I assumed were native New Jersians, but then I heard them speaking with thick Eastern European accents. I couldn’t tell if they were from some former Soviet bloc country or somewhere in the Balkans. Whichever it was, only the teenage kids spoke perfect English. The parents had difficulty communicating but still seemed genuinely interested in being there. The wife of one of the families had two large bags of laundry, and she promptly went down to the basement and started doing her wash. That should have clued me in to the fact that this church service was a horse of a different color. Then a middle-aged Asian woman showed up with a couple of other women. They seemed to arrive as a group. It was obvious this woman had cognitive challenges, but everyone greeted her like she was a regular part of the group and didn’t seem to make any distinction between her and the others who were there.

Soon it was time to eat, and a man I had never met before called everyone together. It seemed strange to me that my friend, whose home we were at, wasn’t the one taking charge. This man got everyone’s attention and then announced that it was time to eat and asked if some of the teenagers could make sure the elderly women got served first since it was difficult for them to make their way up to the food table. Once they had their food, about ten minutes later, everyone sat down and began eating. Then the same man from earlier stood up and asked everyone to pause, and together, take a bite of food, and then he explained that at the beginning of the meal each week, they pause to “break bread” and remember that “Jesus’ body was broken to make us whole… to make us a family.” I guessed that this must be their version of Communion but then right away, he asked someone to pray and then everyone just went right back to eating and talking across the table. I wondered what happened to drinking the wine or the juice, but maybe that isn’t part of their tradition.

At the table where I was sitting, there was a young couple who were also here for the first time. The husband was quiet and not participating much in the conversation. From what I could tell, they were invited by another family who regularly attends this meeting. It seemed there are three or four young families who live in this neighborhood, whose kids all attend the same school. I heard them talking about recently spending the day together at a T-ball game, at which point the quiet dad perked up and talked about an exciting play that one of the kids had made in the game. It sounded like they spend quite a bit of time together.

The young family that was visiting seemed to know a few of the others as well. It seemed as if one of the single women had babysat for them before. They seemed comfortable with the people, but I got the sense they were still trying to figure out what this whole thing was about. I heard them ask a question about why they stop and talk about Jesus’ death at the beginning of the meal, but I didn’t hear the response. It seemed to me like maybe that couple wasn’t familiar with church services, or Communion or any of the religious things I had grown up with. Although, I wondered whether my past church experiences made it easier or more difficult for me to fit in here. At least they asked questions. I didn’t feel comfortable doing that yet. I wondered what they must be making of this whole gathering, coming from a non-religious background.

Most of the conversation during the meal seemed to be lighthearted. Except for the one conversation that started at the next table, when two people had a sharp disagreement about a situation with a young woman who was living with another family from their community (that family and the young woman weren’t there that week). It seemed like this young woman was new to their group and had some serious life issues. She had been recently released from county jail (I couldn’t discern why she had been incarcerated, but it seemed like maybe it had to do with drug use) and had been coming to their meetings most of that time and had just recently been taken in by one of the families from this group who were trying to help get her life back on track. The disagreement was over how quickly that family had brought the young woman into their home, and whether enough time had passed for them to feel sure that it was safe for their kids. “What if she goes back to some of her old behaviors?” one middle-aged woman, with a possibly French African accent asked. This woman was making the argument that they all needed to be cautious about how they go about helping people in difficult life circumstances, particularly with regards to how quickly they might invite someone like that to live in one of their homes. Another person was saying that this other family had taken precautions and involved others in their church in a conversation about it (particularly in a conversation with some others who they said were “shepherding” them. Shepherding?? All I could picture was Charlton Heston as Moses, out leading sheep in the desert.) This person also mentioned that there were others from their community who were also involved in providing some assistance and accountability, having this young woman over for dinner and making sure her schedule was filled with purposeful work, (some of them were helping her process her thoughts in light of the things their community believes about their worldview, or something they kept referring to as “the story”) and one of the older women was meeting with her weekly, and it sounded like they had given her a series of assignments to work on in some sort of portfolio that they said was “in the cloud.” It seemed like everyone in the room was familiar with this sort of portfolio and that quite a few of them were working on other assignments themselves. (Not sure what to make of this?) One of them reminded the French African woman that she, herself, had become part of this community through a similar process, and that one of the older couples from their group had spent a lot of time helping her.

It was difficult for me to figure out all the details of what they were referring to or tell whose side of the argument I felt more sympathetic with, but I remember being both impressed that a family with younger kids would be willing to take in someone with so many deep problems and a little concerned about whether this family had taken proper precautions to protect their kids. The woman who brought up the subject stood out because her ethnicity and language was so different from most of the others, but she seemed to feel right at home bringing this up and no one acted like she was out of order to make such a strong point. There was something different in this conversation. Something intangible. The groups response to her was more than just an effort to appease her, there was obviously some deep, long-term relationship they all had where they related to one another as equals. And yet there were certain people whose contributions seemed to carry more weight than others. All of this felt very out of place for a religious gathering… at least from my experience with them.

This sort of “relief work” they were discussing, seems to be a part of something these people do regularly, using their own homes and families to help broken people rebuild their lives, and apparently in the process, become part of this community. That’s what felt the strangest to me. I mean, aren’t there plenty of organizations out there that help people in these sorts of life circumstances? Why put your own household through something like that by inviting an unpredictable situation into your home? And yet, it seemed obvious that it had made a significant difference for the French-African woman, because she now seemed like an integral part of this community. By comparison, the circumstances I had recently endured seemed less significant and that stung a little. It appears this group of people look out for all sorts of other people in their neighborhoods. Whatever else these religious people were, they were at the very least sincere and had committed their whole lives to this. They seemed to be willing to share anything they had in order to help others in their neighborhoods.

I also remember feeling stunned that they could have this sort of serious, pointed discussion, but that it didn’t get out of hand, and no one seemed to take any serious offense, or resorted to insults and yet they all felt free to bring up difficult subjects and talk about them openly. It seemed like their conversation was all centered around trying to help one another have stable, productive lives; and the one time it did start to get heated, one of the older folks at the table reminded the two who were arguing that that it was perfectly reasonable to debate these things, but that they should speak to one another “in love” because they were “family”. Both of the people seemed to take that to heart and cooled off, and then the discussion continued frankly, but respectfully.

After about an hour or so of eating, the leader stood up and asked everyone to make sure they had something to drink. I sort of wondered if he was going to make a toast to something, but I couldn’t imagine what we would be toasting outside in the back yard of this quasi-religious gathering. Then I realized this must be the other half of their Communion ceremony. The leader asked everyone to lift their cups and remember that “Jesus had allowed his blood to be spilled out, to give us a new life together” and then he told everyone to drink a toast to the “new covenant that Jesus had inaugurated.” Somehow remembering Jesus death seemed to be tangible for them in a way that I had never experienced, something that actually influenced their decisions and life choices, not just a mystical ritual.

It seemed odd to have the Communion elements separated like that at the beginning and end of the meal. And I wasn’t sure what to make of the talk of “covenants” and “inaugurations”. That must be part of their religious terminology. It seemed like they thought some new thing had started with Jesus, but that it was somehow connected to the history of Israel and all the Old Testament history. I really couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I think I’ll ask my friend about it, and see if he can help explain what this part was all about. I didn’t feel comfortable asking about it in front of everyone there.

After the meal, everyone dove right in and helped get things cleared away and brought all the dishes and leftover food back inside the kitchen. Two of the men spent about 15 minutes washing up dishes, while some of the women and two young girls helped put away leftovers. I noticed others were packing up some of the food in takeout containers. (I assumed they must divide up the leftovers among themselves.)

Then everyone began making their way into the living room where a number of extra chairs had been set up. It was crowded, but no one seemed to mind. That same teenage boy, with a couple of his friends, grabbed a few more chairs, since there were extra visitors. The man who had performed the Communion ceremony now addressed the room and acknowledged the visitors, asking us to introduce ourselves. Then he asked if anyone had anything to share from their week; if anyone wanted to share about any struggles, opportunities or blessings. At first there was some awkward silence. Then one of the young people volunteered and said they had been listening to a song that week and wanted us all to sing it. It seemed like it was a song that everyone was familiar with, but the leader asked the young person to summarize (for us visitors in the room), what the song was about what why it was meaningful to them. The young person said that even though they have been learning and talking about something called “the way of Christ and his Apostles” for several years now, that this song had helped them be able to understand it in a way they hadn’t before. They specifically mentioned a line from the song that was about something called “parresia” which the leaders stopped to explain (maybe for my benefit?) that it is a Greek work that refers to having confidence and boldness when speaking to one another in this meeting. (I had already witnessed some of that earlier!) This young person shared how this made them realize they needed to make a bigger time commitment to understanding or “mastering” the Scriptures so that they could be more confident and bold, rather than feeling timid and unsure. They indicated they had some ambition to become a leader in this group, and they realized that meant they needed to commit a significant portion of their time and their life to pursuing understanding those sorts of things. This all seemed fine to me, but I wasn’t sure how some extra Bible reading was going to accomplish this. Or maybe they were talking about something more than just Bible reading. It just seemed unlikely to me that a church leader could learn everything they need to in an informal situation like this. Isn’t that what seminaries are for?

After that explanation we all sang the song together. They said it was a song that someone else in another house church in the Midwest had written, and that they pass songs like this around among the churches. I guess there are other churches in other parts of the United States that have these types of meetings in homes? Or maybe the other churches weren’t in homes? I couldn’t tell for sure.

At this point I glanced over at the other visitors in the room. They gave me a sort of knowing look, but I couldn’t tell whether they understood more about this than I did, or if we were in the same boat. It made me wonder what they were thinking and wish I could read their thoughts. It felt a little like there was an unspoken solidarity among us outliers, even though we don’t know each other, and we exchanged a couple more glances over the remaining time.

One of those glances occurred after we finished singing, and a middle-aged woman shared a deeply personal story about how her ex-husband is trying to gain influence over her again by pressuring her into letting him move back into the house they still both own. She seemed to be struggling with some decisions. The leader asked her if she felt like she was stuck and needed help thinking things through. He pointed out that she has been talking about her frustrations for some time now and asked her if she had made any adjustments in her weekly habits connected to her home life. At first, she looked defensive, but then her posture changed, and tears welled up in her eyes. She admitted that she didn’t know how to move forward. She just felt completely stuck in her situation and wasn’t sure how to get out of it. He asked if her if this was more related to a lack of clarity about how to make changes, or if it was more about being afraid to take the first steps to make changes. There was a bit of an awkward silence while she contemplated his questions. I had not expected such a direct line of questioning aimed at someone who was obviously in some emotional distress. (I don’t think I would’ve been comfortable being questioned so frankly in front of all these people). Then she spent about fifteen minutes talking about the details of her situation and explaining the struggle she was having. She is basically overwhelmed at this moment in her life. The group spent nearly an hour talking with her about this, encouraging her, and this leader kept on asking her questions, sometimes clarifying questions and sometimes probing questions, which she struggled to answer. One of the women in the room went and sat next to her and put an arm around her while this conversation was happening. Afterward, it did seem like she had a little more direction about how to make some progress in her situation.

The group paused to pray for the woman, and at that point a few others mentioned things they wanted to pray about. One of the women asked for prayer for her nephew who was having trouble figuring out next steps in his relationship with a girl he was seeing. The leader asked someone to pray for this, but suggested to the woman that she talk to her nephew and help him think through those issues, and if the problems were beyond her capability, that she should talk with one of the older men in the group who seemed to already have some sort of connection with her nephew. The group spent about 15-20 minutes praying about these things and a few others. Then the leader mentioned something about an ongoing conversation they had been having about how to continue making adjustments to their community life so that their lives together would be “the gospel on display.” As if the way they live as a community and interact with others in their neighborhoods is somehow like “reenacting” the story of Jesus dying and being resurrected. Anyway, the leader said they would return to that conversation next week, so maybe I’ll be able to get a better understanding of what that means then.

The leader officially ended this part of the meeting and soon several people began collecting their things and I thought it was time for us to all leave. But then I noticed several others congregating in a smaller group, continuing some of their discussion. They were talking about their schedules for the week and how they were going to make sure to spend time with each other throughout the week by participating in each other’s scheduled events for the week. Eventually this group of people sat back down on the sofas, and someone pulled a bottle of wine from the rack in the kitchen, opened it, and poured glasses for several of them. It seemed like they weren’t planning to leave anytime soon, and I remember feeling anxious for my friends who were hosting this meeting, concerned it would be an inconvenience to them, but then they came in and sat down with the others and jumped right into the conversation that was happening. This was another odd moment. The only time I had ever seen wine in church was for Communion, and that was just a sip of wine. And I had certainly never seen a guest walk up to the wine rack in someone else’s home and just take out a bottle and open it up. The truly odd thing was that they didn’t drink wine at all for their version of Communion, but then afterward they all sat down with full glasses of wine and continued talking about other aspects of their lives.

Just then two of the younger kids came into the living room and one of the adults asked them about a play they were in at school and the two kids acted out a short scene from the play while the adults smiled and clapped. And then one of the adults asked them about a particular part of the story of the play and pointed out how it had a similar meaning to part of something he called “the story.” As soon as he mentioned “the story” the two kids went into acting out a whole history of the Old Testament (including some details I had never heard before.) In the middle of that, my friend’s dog came barreling into the room, moving from person to person until he had received attention from everyone. It wasn’t clear to me if church was finished or still going on. Also, it was impressive that children so young understood Bible history well enough to articulate it better than most church-going adults. And I remember thinking to myself that nowhere else would you ever pet a dog “at church.”

In one corner I saw an older couple talking with the woman that had shared earlier and they invited her to come over for dinner so they could talk through details of her situation and help her come up with a practical plan to make measurable progress. I even heard them ask her what her monthly income is because they wanted to help her establish a budget and figure out a plan for getting out on her own. I am still not sure how I feel about all of this. Part of me feels like people in a church should not be prying into the details of someone else’s life like that, but it was clear from her responses, that as difficult as this conversation was, it brought some level of relief to her to know that there were others who were going to help her figure it out, and they clearly had talked about some of these things before, because there was a familiarity with one another that I’ve never seen in a church meeting, or really even among close friends. It was something more. Almost like they considered one another to actually be family.

Since I had seen several people leave, I decided it was a good time for me to head out and I started collected my grilling tools. As I was putting on my shoes in the mud room, the wife of the leader asked me to wait a moment. Then she returned with two of the takeout containers of food and said it should be enough for four meals “so long as you don’t have the appetite of my 17-year old son”, she said. I thanked her and headed home.

I think I will plan to join this gathering a few more times, even if it’s just to get a better understanding of what makes them tick and whether they are really as sincere and determined as they appear to be.

Afterword:

This narrative is intended to be used alongside Robert Banks’ Going to Church in the First Century; and in conjunction with the three Church Multiplication Movement Encyclicals from BILD International. (These resources can help deepen discussion around the questions above, and indeed the CMM encyclicals were the source for some of my questions and contain many additional questions to help churches process these concepts and consider their own situations.)

Together, these resources are meant to help followers of Jesus envision ways in which the church can return to a set of practices that reflect the patterns and tradition of the early church in ways that are relevant and effective today; and help reinforce the conviction that the apostolic tradition delivered to the churches is Jesus’ plan, which He designed to function in any time or culture, and that each situation in each culture must remain tied to those patterns and principles from generation to generation, so that they are able to shape theologies and design fresh processes and practices to address the issues of their time.

My main goal in writing this story was to provide a narrative model for churches to envision how they can shape themselves as clusters and networks of small simple gatherings who engage in one-anothering, with qualified non-vocational shepherding leaders who lead them week in and week out, and bi-vocational coworkers and apostolic-type leaders who move among them while fulfilling their own lifelong stewardships, expanding into new fields of work to initiate and strengthen other churches and networks.

I encourage all who read this to take time as leadership teams; as households and churches; as cell groups and small groups; to talk through these ideas and then, together, write your own stories for how you imagine and envision gathering in a way that aligns with “the way of Christ and His Apostles” and “adds to your numbers” via your own community life and the work of apostolic-type leaders, so that Jesus’ global family is strengthened in a one-minded way around the framework and patterns implemented by the Apostles.

Scott Canion

… vigorous for the work

Discussion Questions5:

These issues and their questions are specifically designed to spur discussion around the story you’ve just read. Some of the questions will push the boundaries of what you can confidently answer from this resource alone. If there are question you are struggling with, or concepts that weren’t made clear in this story, I recommend that you interact with the BILD Church Multiplication Movement encyclicals and then continue this discussion further.

Issue 1: This Gathering

1. What is the tone set by the nature of the gathering taking place in this story? Why is this important?

2. How does this narrative reflect the core purpose of the gathering, namely, to build one another up in love?6

3. Based on this narrative, would you make any adjustments to the way you currently gather? Can you envision a path to seeing those adjustments become reality? Are there any adjustments you would recommend for the church community reflected in this gathering?

Issue 2: The 1st Century Gatherings

1. How well does this narrative reflect the 1 Corinthians 11:17-14:40 passage about the gathering’s emphasis and structure? Which elements are present? Are any missing?

2. How are gatherings like this the true heart of a network of simple churches (a complex apostolic network)?

3. What sort of effect might a cluster of gatherings like this one (or a network of clusters) have in their neighborhoods and across a key city or region?

4. How does the meal portion of these gatherings tie together the story of this age, by bridging from the last supper all the way to the “big feast” that will happen when Christ returns?

5. Why is it important that the gatherings across all of Jesus’ global family share the same basic framework laid out in 1 Cor 11:17-14:40?

Issue 3: The Gathering, Gifts, and the Role of the Spirit

1. Where in this story can you see Jesus’ Spirit involved “in their midst”7 at any point in the gathering?

2. How do you see the Spirit working through the gifts of various believers in this story?

3. In this story, were people sharing from Scripture passages (psalms), pulling from collections from church history (hymns), and/or sharing inspired words of encouragement/exhortation (spiritual songs) as part of this church’s weekly experience together?

4. What conclusions might you draw about how the Spirit is using leaders to shape the gathering in this story?

Issue 4: Leaders in the Gathering

1. What various types of leaders seem to be present in this gathering? How are their roles reflected in this narrative?

2. Why are shepherding-type leaders, such as elders, and leading women essential with this more open form of meeting, where everyone is participating, using their gifts, and sharing spontaneously?

3. How is it possible to guard the teaching (the faith, the deposit, sound doctrine) in the duly constituted assembly with such an open style of meeting? How should this church go about preserving that teaching and tradition for future generations?

Issue 5: Reimagining the Entire Worship Paradigm

1. How is the gathering in this story distinct from the contemporary Western worship service paradigm? How does this gathering recover and reunify the fragmented pieces that usually structure a contemporary church service? (a.k.a. a worship experience following by a preaching event)

2. How is the gathering in this narrative more than just the sum of its parts? How does it become a truly transcendent worship experience?

3. Can a home really be an appropriate venue for this week-by-week experience with Jesus’s Spirit?

4. In what way is the meal directly at the heart of the entire gathering experience?

Issue 6: Toward Building Complex Apostolic Networks who Multiply Gatherings

1. What might be a starting point for traditional Western churches who want to change to Christ’s design of practicing duly authorized gatherings? What are the options?

2. How does Christ’s design for His churches create new opportunities exponentially for reaching unreached communities and cultures, as well as those in post-Christian Western societies with little interest in traditional churches?

3. How do we go about building a complex apostolic network with these kinds of gatherings as the heart of its existence?

4. Why is the meal so important in reaching people from all cultures? Why is it so central to the progress of the gospel and to multiplying churches?

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APPENDIX A

Writing Your Own Gathering Story

As I mentioned previously, this narrative is not meant to replace your church community’s process of thinking through your own situation. Quite the opposite, it is meant to get you thinking, so that you can take your thoughts, ideas, and reflections and process them together as a church community and then sketch out your own narrative.

As you do that, make sure you are reflecting the New Testament patterns for the gathering and weaving those into your unique situation. To that end, I am including a simple guide for how to do this. By a guide, I mean a way of “steering or pointing in a direction”, which you then travel down together. This guide is one way that you might approach creating a narrative, within the context of your church communities, which can help you to better process your situations through the apostolic teaching, resulting in more clarity of mind and efficacy of practice around those first-century patterns.

One caution I would add, is do not try to fit too much into your narrative. You want it to feel authentic and real for your situation and be readable and understandable. My version is intentionally a little crowded. I was overstuffing the narrative to provide several examples for others to consider when writing their own. I was not intending for each situation to mimic the jam-packed nature of my narrative.

Select a protagonist.

By this, I mean think through your spheres of relationships. Who is someone that you are intentionally building relationship with to invest in their lives in a deep and genuine way which could result in them becoming familiar with some in your church community and possibly visiting one of your gatherings? Talk through your options and select someone. Then write how you would envision engaging with that person leading up to that gathering and what their impressions and participation might look like.

Decide where to begin your story.

How much history do you want to give about the protagonist’s connection to some in your church community? Do you begin the story with the beginning of the relationship, or just jump right into their participation in a gathering? This likely has to do with the context of the relationship you have to the actual person you are using as your protagonist.

Decide which elements of the pattern to include in your story.8

Below is a quick summary of the key elements of the gathering, laid out according to its design. Some of these are prescribed practices that should be included in every gathering, others are representative of the processes that should be reflected in every gathering. Be selective in how you represent specific practices which reflect those processes. For your particular story, some will be a better fit than others. No two stories will look exactly the same, yet all of our stories can be written in a way that reflects the essential nature of “dining together with Christ.”

The Meal Elements

• Talking and communicating throughout the week. Dividing up the responsibilities of bringing food.

• The hosting situation. Flexibility, hospitality, arrangement of home, an “our house is your house” reality.

• Day of the gathering. Arrivals and preparation. Noisy, busy, informal prep time.

• Multiple conversations happening as folks arrive. Some laughing and joking. Some serious.

• Pace and Timing. Before the meal, through the meal, to the symposium.

• Atmosphere and Tone. Casual, flexible, filled with one-anothering.

• Beginning the meal. (Bread). Introduce visitors. New life in Christ explained. (With questions? Multiple participants? By leader? Not formulaic!)

• Sharing food and conversation around the table. Casual, but targeted, intentional one-anothering as everyone continues processing their lives through the gospel in a variety of conversations.

• Finishing the Meal (Cup). Toasting the New Covenant we are now part of.

The Symposium Elements

• A variety of gifts. Everyone participating. Numerous contributions.

• A leader preparing the context. Maintaining an inviting posture. Patiently shepherding.

Listening

Listening & seeking to understand through questioning. Preparing the context & environment. Fully engaging with everyone. Recognizing stressors.

Influencing

Influencing by focusing the conversation. Reflecting back what is said, reframing it for clarity and alignment with the apostles’ teaching (or lack thereof). Confronting with empathy. Getting people to respond. Personalizing responses back to them.

Equipping others

Equipping others to renew their minds by helping them take ownership of their internal narratives, envisioning a new way forward, & putting off external blame. Getting them to commit to putting on new selves. Assisting with new habit building.

• Intentionally including “weaker” folks in the conversation. Everyone has a contribution to make.

• Religious activities or spiritual experiences are to be avoided. If someone must have those, then save that for your own homes. In the gathering, building one another up and growing deeper by processing your lives together through the teaching is the emphasis.

• Maintain order is critical. Gently correct those who interrupt. Don’t allow folks to talk over each other. Everyone should wait for one another.

• Things shouldn’t be left unclear or in a state of confusion. Talk things through until everyone understands.

• Strong statements and prophetic utterances should be backed up from the textual arguments and discussed thoroughly.

• Showing love by being interested in and engaging in the details of one another’s lives, with frankness and sincerity.

• There could be sharing from OT passages (psalms), sharing from collections from the church and its history (hymns), sharing an inspired word of encouragement (spiritual song), sharing a lesson/teaching or sharing insights (prophetic word) are all part of the gathering, when done in an orderly fashion with leaders shepherding and everything being tied back to the gospel and apostles’ teaching and explained thoroughly.

Avoid long-windedness.

Unless you have a gifted writer in your church network who is itching to take this assignment and run with it, don’t worry about trying to make your story too long. Keep it to just a couple of pages and lengthen it only as needed to include additional elements that come up during your community dialogue around the story. Take time to address things in your conversations with one another and let the story develop over time, using those conversations to address your own situation.

Make it a community process.

Talk about it together. You might split up the writing between several people and then have someone synthesize it, or you might have one person responsible for putting everything in writing or you might have several people write versions for their own spheres of relationships, etc. No matter how you choose to do it, make sure you talk through it together, making edits and adjustments as you go. Help one another out with this. Choose relevant details to highlight. And use it as an opportunity to get everyone involved in thinking and talking about it. The goal is to build one another up in the process.

Potentiate growth & progress.

While you want your story to reflect the reality of your situation, you also want it to challenge you to continue making progress in shaping your churches more closely around this pattern and envisioning their potential. Remember that although the gathering is the heart of a kerygmatic community, ongoing, careful shepherding and plenty of regular one-anothering are critical for shaping households, so that the weekly gathering becomes that reenactment of the gospel in concentrated form, which continues throughout the rest of your lives together. Is everyone grasping the full implications of the Gospel? Do they have well-ordered households that work together as an extended family (church)? Are households functioning together as “mission central”? Are households building habits that reorient themselves to this way of life?

Create questions to generate discussion.

After you complete your story, try and identify what the key issues are for your church and situation. What aspects are causing frustration or confusion? Does everyone understand the big picture? How does this all tie back to the gospel and didache? What are the least understood elements? Does everyone have a sense of how to mature and grow in these practices? Has this process surfaced any shepherding issues that need to be addressed? What are the next steps?

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches as families… patterned after Acts.

[This is shared from an ongoing conversation our church community is having about how to shape our lives together around Christ’s plan so that the very nature of our community life is a visible reenactment and reflection of the gospel (a kerygmatic community). We began our conversation with the topic of the meeting design of the early church, and quickly started bumping up against various traditions many of us have grown up with. The first of these is our concept of prayer. So we stopped to sidebar for a bit and explore how the early church engaged in prayer and what patterns were modeled for them as networks of churches were expanding across the Roman Empire in the first 35-40 years of Christianity and then how the gospel writers, near the end of the first century, paused to reflect on and record their understanding of their time with Jesus, in light of all that His Spirit continued to do through the Apostles, in the churches.]

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Before we specifically focus in on the concept of prayer, let me set some context.

We must be able to hold the following framework in our heads to properly understand the New Testament.

Paul’s work was so important for Christ’s plan that Jesus made an “encore appearance” (Acts 9:1-19) to select him, commission him, and give him the specific stewardship to reveal and implement Christ’s Grand Strategy for all the churches throughout the Gentile world (Ephesians 3:8-12), while working to unite the Gentile and Jewish churches as one family (Eph 2; John 17:20-23).

“It is a totally different thing then, when you see the letters in the New Testament as abstract documents that are used to support existing systematic theological constructs [various religious traditions] versus understanding them as tools for establishing churches.” – Jeff Reed

The Letters of Paul as Establishing Tools

Early Letters:

Strong in the gospel. Organizing Center = Rom 16:25-27 “fully established in the gospel (Paul’s gospel), which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Middle Letters:

Strong in the mission and vision of the church. Organizing Center = Eph 3:8-10 “bring to light what is the plan (grand strategy)”

Later Letters:

Strong mature households and leaders. Organizing Center = 1 Tim 3:14-15 “how people should behave in God’s household (family of families), which is the assembly of the living God”1

Prayer in Paul’s Middle Letters

The two passages below, bookend the first half of the book of Ephesians, giving shape to its content and emphasis.

Ephesians 1:15-23

“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might ²⁰ that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. ²² And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

Ephesians 3:14-21

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

What falls between these two prayers in Ephesians?

In between the two prayers, Paul explains the significance of what Jesus has accomplished for God’s eternal plan (the joining together of Jews and Gentiles into one new family) and then explains that Jesus specifically selected him (Paul) as the one to reveal and implement His Grand Strategy in a way that would continue perpetually until Jesus returns (chapter 3).

Prayer #1: (Eph 1:15-23)

Paul prays that Jesus’ Spirit would help them continue to gain His perspective on the new paradigm Christ inaugurated and how His power is endlessly scalable in relationship to churches who pattern their lives around His plan (which Paul had spent three years teaching and modeling for them)… so they would come to fully grasp their strategic role in that plan as a key hub church in the region.

• They need to recognize that they are simultaneously part of God’s growing masterpiece and also His partners in expanding its scope. (Eph 2:1-10)

• They need to understand that Jesus is building a global family “the assembly of the living God” (1 Tim 3:14-15). He himself is the cornerstone and His Apostles laid the foundation, which they are now to build on according to His blueprint. (Eph 2:11-22)

• This global family movement (initiated by Jesus and implemented by Paul) is Christ’s Grand Strategy and they need to work hard to build it out according to His implementation plan, following the patterns and principles Paul had taught them. (Eph 3:1-13)

Prayer #2: (Eph 3:14-21)

Paul prays that Jesus’ Spirit would help them become fully established and rooted in Christ’s plan (Jesus’ new paradigm), coming to fully comprehend the scope of it and engage in fulfilling their calling within it, as a key hub church in the region.

A Key Principle Emerges:

Prayer is about alignment. It’s about aligning our hearts with Jesus’s plan and the patterns and principles of that plan, which His Spirit revealed to the Apostles. As we work hard at this, in community, we will begin to comprehend the full scope and significance of His plan (Christ’s grand strategy.) However, making progress in it demands a focused, whole-life commitment.

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The Prayer of Jesus included in Matthew’s Gospel

In Matthew’s gospel (written near the end of the first century after Paul & his team had established the Empire-wide network of churches) he records a prayer of Jesus which he (Matthew) now clarifies for us, having finally, himself, understood what Jesus meant at the time He prayed it. Namely, that what Jesus was praying for, was what had been taking place in the churches over the last 35 years and what Jesus expected to continue until He returned to complete things.

What is the essence of Jesus’ prayer (a.ka. the Lord’s prayer) that Matthew records in his gospel?

Another key prayer in the New Testament is the model prayer of Jesus that Matthew records in chapter 6 of his gospel. Let’s take a look at that in its context. I’ll break it down below.

'“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”

Acknowledging that God is the father of an extended family, which He is building according to His own plan and strategy. [“I will build my assembly and nothing will prevent it; and my Spirit will provide you with the keys for to how to accomplish this kingdom building work.” (Matthew 16:18; John 14:26)]

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven…”

Desiring and living within the economy of His new kingdom, within the tension of the current overlap of heaven and earth and the eventual joining of both in new creation; and ordering our lives according to this reality even now.

Accurately bearing the image of our Father as we carry out the task He has given us (the task which is made clear through the apostolic tradition), so that we are participating with Him in building His kingdom… His global family movement, while recognizing that ultimately, He sits in the control center of His creation.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors…”

Humbly and repentantly loving God with all we have by extending the sacrificial love and provision He has given us, to one another, our neighborhoods, and our cities.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”

Asking for help to count the cost and faithfully engage in Christ’s plan (traditioned in the apostles’ teaching), working hard to develop complex states of mind, so that we don’t become captivated by the “ways of thinking” that define our cultures and/or religious traditions and thereby end up distracted from, or in unwitting opposition to, His plan.

Narratively, Jesus’ prayer in Matthew’s gospel anticipates Paul’s prayers in Ephesians, but historically Paul’s prayer informs Matthew’s gospel writing and helps make clear for him what Jesus was saying. Matthew records it in a way that helps us make the connection between the new kingdom plan Jesus inaugurated when he was here, and the plan that Paul implemented. In other words… they are the same plan.

Matthew is including this prayer after reflecting on it for several decades in light of what Jesus’ Spirit had revealed and accomplished through Paul and his team, who established an Empire-wide network of churches.

It is about being rooted and grounded in love for one another and fully participating in building His global family movement… His kingdom; it’s about churches figuring out their calling in that plan and then counting the cost and pouring their entire lives into fulfilling it… together.

The purpose of prayer is alignment. It is about reorienting our hearts to God’s plan so that we can become mature, confident, unshakable communities who are able to solve problems in our own situations; it’s not about asking Him to remove or smooth over the difficulties we encounter along the way.

Nowhere in the New Testament is prayer described as a means for requesting that God “deliver us from difficulty”, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Paul and Peter both spend a significant amount of ink telling the churches to remain steadfast in the midst of adversity, to become mature so they know how to process and respond to difficulty, and to help one another solve problems and find a way through them together. Nowhere does the New Testament teach that we should think of God as the “fixer” of our problems, but rather, as the One who has established a new community who endure them along with us. In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Paul goes so far as to say that without difficulty, we cannot make progress. It is by enduring trials together that we learn and become strong, solid communities. We know that Jesus will eventually abolish sickness and pain, but that comes at the end… at New Creation.

Let me be clear, remaining at a level of prayer which assumes that prayer is mainly about asking for problems to go away or get “fixed” is not what it means to show them love to others. It can actually be disorienting and cause them to misconceive of who God is. To paraphrase a portion of 1 Corinthians 13…

Love willingly takes on the burdens of others, and holds up through any frustrating or difficult circumstances those burdens might bring; it recognizes the potential in everyone and envisions them becoming mature, then it patiently engages and endures that process with them. Love doesn’t give up at the halfway point, it remains faithful to the end. Love is about helping others process their difficulties through the gospel, and becoming a stronger community because of that process.

Again, the point of all of this is to build strong church communities that share and learn together, making progress in their one-minded confidence and maturity, and becoming unshakable contenders for the faith in cities, across regions, and around the world.

[We spent a significant amount of time earlier this year focusing on the Sermon on the Mount and I did quite a bit of writing and teaching about it. That work provides a significant context for this conversation.]

Discussion Questions

1. What is the New Testament model for prayer according to Paul’s example and Matthew’s reflections on the prayer of Jesus? Why are there no instructions in the New Testament to ask God to remove suffering or difficulty (and only two brief examples)? What sort of things are we supposed to be praying for? How is this different from the “prayer tradition” most of us grew up practicing?

2. What is the role of prayer in fulfilling Christ’s Grand Strategy? Have we begun to fully comprehend Christ’s Grand Strategy, its scope, and our place in expanding that scope? How does prayer help accomplish this? What else is necessary to fully comprehend and accomplish it?

3. Based on your answers to the previous questions and the teaching above, how should we be practicing prayer in our homes? In our extended church families? In our gatherings? How can we practice prayer in a way that will deepen our understanding of and commitment to Christ’s plan?

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a coalition of leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts

[I just returned from a trip to Spain where I met up with a few other key leaders from Europe to discusss and strategize about how to plant and multiply churches as extended family networks across their regions. The church there on the southern coast of Spain hosted us and participated with us in the four days together. This is a quick report that I wrote to my churches in New Jersey/NYC area about my time there.]

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I thought it was worth pausing to reflect and write about the trip I just made to visit a church on the southern coast of Spain. Only a few times have I experienced a church community who shares their lives together as an extended family (sharing them with one another, with their cities, and with other churches around the world) that it is worth pausing to reflect on and write about. Please do not misunderstand me, I have seen many churches along the way talk about being a family, use familial language and add specific programs and ministries to their agendas to try and emphasize the concept of family, but very few who actually live as extended family networks as a way of life. Some make valiant attempts in that direction, but many of those churches give up along the way, arriving at the conclusion that it is not possible (or maybe is unnecessary?) in our day and age. Roland Allen spoke to this over a century ago when, as a missionary to China with NCM, he observed it among the missionary efforts and churches of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"When these false and partial attempts at imitating the Apostle’s [Paul’s] method have failed, men have declared that the apostolic method was at fault and was quite unsuited to the condition and circumstances of present-day missions. The truth is that they have neither understood nor practised the Apostle’s method at all.” - Roland Allen

While I am grateful to Allen for recognizing this and articulating it in his writings, I have seen little evidence that he did anything in his time to reshape the practice of churches or the missionary enterprise. Perhaps it was too great a task to accomplish in his lifetime. However, our time is ripe for this sort of change. We are living in the middle of the sort of macro-paradigm change that occurs only every few centuries. Christendom is waning and while some face anxiety over what comes next, and others are turning away in disillusionment from its remaining vestiges, a few have begun to recover the tradition of the early churches which remained the dominant Christian tradition for nearly three centuries. These small communities of believers recognize the importance of ordering their lives and addressing their situations according to Christ’s household plan in order to build a solid base of expansion for the gospel in their neighborhoods and cities while simultaneously working with key leaders (and their teams) to help shape a unified movement of churches in The Way of Christ and His Apostles, via plans that include a focus on global cities, investing deeply within and across civilizations, and throughout diaspora communities around the world.

I have begun encountering these type of church communities (similar to the one I wrote about last summer1), made up of people who are sincerely dedicated to reshaping their hearts around a deep devotion to one another as Jesus’ family; fully committed to reshaping their lives around Christ’s plan and household order; and they have understood that the key to doing this is to work hard together at reshaping their thinking around the Apostles’ teaching. A common theme I have noticed is that wherever these sorts of communities are thriving, there is always a key apostolic-type leader who is driving this work among them, connecting them to a network of other churches with the same commitment, and there are also numerous shepherding leaders being trained to continue that work in the lives of the churches that are established.

In the West today, particularly in the United States, we live in a “call-out” culture which leads many to assume that life is a zero-sum game where we can empower ourselves and our “affinity groups” by publicly exposing the shortcomings of “outsiders” rather than addressing them in constructive, useful ways to help create stability and maturity, in the churches and in our cities. Others assume a strategy of duck-and-cover, waiting for the difficult season to pass them by. The problem there is that we know from the Scriptures that we can expect things to become more difficult, not less.

These responses do not reflect the plan of Christ.

In Spain, I saw a group of 10 or so families (regular people with regular jobs and regular lives) who have done more to embody Christ’s plan and Paul’s methods in their community, than many churches with 100x the people and resources.

I like to say…

Give a man a fish, and you make him dependent on you.

Teach a man to fish and you make him independent.

But teach a man how to teach others to fish, and you create exponential interdependence.

This is what Paul is doing with Timothy in 2 Tim 2:1-2. Paul spent 20 years investing in life-on-life training of Timothy to continue the work of establishing churches around Christ’s plan. Now, Timothy is to do the same across two additional generations of leaders so that Christ’s plan is passed on perpetually, along with the multiplication of churches, until Jesus returns.

This small group of people on the southern coast of Spain have reordered their entire lives around a set of patterns so that they are able to naturally help stabilize and strengthen those in their communities, and to engage in a plan to send gifted leaders to other key cities in Spain and Europe to plant new churches or help other churches become better prepared to do the same thing in their own contexts. (Including releasing the gifted leadership couple who has spent the last 10 years of their lives investing in building this church family) Over the course of our time together, I watched as that key leader came to understand his role as not only to Latin/Spanish speaking cultures, but as being key to the work across Europe. This was evidenced even in our time together, as their influence went well beyond Spain to help other leaders across Europe, and even beyond the European field by helping shape my own understanding and plans for our small cluster of churches in Northern New Jersey.

I walked away with a clearer understanding of what is required of apostolic-type leaders in the early stages of establishing a cluster of churches who will live as an extended family network. And this has helped me in thinking about how to shape our churches here in New Jersey.

• Apostolic-type leaders, and their wives, must be heavily invested in the regular family life of their key leaders in daily, weekly and monthly patterns, in intentional planned and spontaneous ways. This is the context for life-on-life apprenticeship.

• Everyone must make the space for and be committed to ordered learning, so that the content of the New Testament (a.k.a. the documents of Jesus’ New Covenant) is being seriously considered, accurately understood, processed and integrated into their lives and habits, with leaders setting the example. This is the context for discovery, clarity and implementation.

• There must be assessment and addressing of any cracks or issues in the lives of the key leadership families and those issues must be corrected and brought into alignment with Christ’s plan first. You cannot successfully lead a church family, if you have not figured out how to lead your own household.

• All the leaders must build a new set of habits for personal development, leading their families, and shepherding churches, built around a set of convictions, and a clearly articulated plan, and those must then be put into one another’s calendars, otherwise this will only live at the level of good intentions.

• Apostolic-type leaders must balance pushing young leaders to learn, adjust, and mature while being patient with them throughout the process; developing a skill to measure and assess their progress.

Aside from a new understanding of my own situation, I also walked away with a new branch added to my extended family (and by extension, to those in my local church situation as well.) By inviting us into their homes and lives for four days of meals around the table, and both structured and informal discussions (not to a conference in a church building), we simultaneously achieved clarity in our thinking, planning for our situations, and meaningful, lasting relationship. Here is the text I sent to this church as I was waiting at the airport for my return flight home.

It is easy to underestimate, and difficult to put into words the significance of a small group of believers who understand Christ’s plan and who are committed to shaping their entire lives around it… together… and are committed to sharing it with those in their cities, with other churches around the world, and with other cities and civilizations, but that is exactly what I see in all of you there in the [southern coast of Spain]. What I experienced with all of you was so much more than a “missionary trip”, it was a visit with extended family to encourage one another, embolden one another and strengthen one another. You were not just ‘like’ family for the few days we were together, but we are now truly one another’s extended family from now on.

The effect you all have is well beyond your own homes and lives, but that is only possible because you have ordered your homes and lives around Jesus’ plan.

Thank you for hosting and sharing that with us, and for being a model for us. I love you all. Until the next time we see one another, continue to strengthen one another, and make the most of your opportunities.

It would be easy to assume that I wrote this from an emotional state of mind at the end of a long trip to an exciting new location… fair enough. If that is your initial impulse, it is not entirely wrong. I was tired and emotional. I get your point. We can feel all the feels and share all the hugs and tears, but unless we also make all the changes that need to be made, those hugs, tears and emotions will not amount to anything more than a satisfying release. But this was more than just an emotional moment. The things we discussed, the commitments and plans we made to continue on and to see one another again, the depth of the transparency we shared about our lives and situations, the clarity of mind that came to each of us during our conversations, and the excitement and passion that was generated to continue the work in each of our own situations is something that will last and will continue to carry our relationships, and the progress of the gospel forward, together. Those of you who know me well, know that I will continue my discussions with their church via emails, Zoom meetings, and texts, and will continue to use that new understanding to help our churches become mature and begin to expand in our own neighborhoods.

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So far, all the things I have mentioned were things I expected to happen on this trip. I expected to become a part of one another’s extended families. I expected to have new insight and understanding about how to shape the churches here in New Jersey. I expected us to encourage one another, embolden one another, and strengthen one another. What I didn’t expect was Katherina.

Katherina is the daughter of the key couple who moved from Guatemala to Spain to plant churches more than ten years ago. I met her briefly a few months ago at the Summit in Ames, Iowa, but didn’t have the opportunity to spend much time with her. However, while I was in Spain, she repeatedly engaged me in conversation about the ideas we were all discussing and about my own life and family. She also spent a significant amount of time telling me the stories of their church, and carefully explaining Spanish culture and language. She worked tirelessly, alongside her mother, to interpret between English and Spanish so everyone in the room could understand one another.

During one of our conversations, Katherina shared a bit of her own story with me.

When their family moved from Guatemala to Spain, she was young and initially her dad became a pastor in an existing traditional church there. Her experience in that church completely turned her off to continuing in the faith. At 15 she told her parents that when she turned 18, she was planning to leave Spain and leave the church. Nothing she had experienced there made her want to continue with either. However, after her father discovered and began to understand and implement the Apostles’ teaching, shaped around the patterns of the early church found in Acts, things began to slowly change for their family. Her parents intentionally invested in shaping their own household around Christ’s design, her dad left his job as a pastor, and as a family they began investing themselves in one another, in the lives of other key young families around them, and in the lives of their neighbors. Over time, their efforts and commitment turned into a cluster of three simple churches that gather weekly around a meal and discussion so that they can work together to better understand the Apostles’ teaching and implement it in their own lives. There have been challenges along the way, but they have weathered those and worked hard to become fully established churches. Now, they are so well established that her father is looking to move to a new area and do a similar work because he knows the churches here on the southern coast will continue to grow and multiply functioning as a base for his expansion work, and that he will have the opportunity to continue speaking into their lives from wherever he is. Because of her parent’s faithfulness and hard work, and because of the faithful community that has developed around them, Katherina is now fully committed to being part of the church family there and helping them in the work that needs to be done in the area. She would also would like to stay in Spain and work toward influencing their public education system, which will be no easy task.

As I told Katherina before we left, I now consider her my “adopted daughter” in the Lord… mi hija adoptiva. Her family will come to visit us here at some point in the next year or so, and she may even come on her own before that. I look forward to introducing her to our churches in the NYC area so that they can enjoy the blessing of conversation with this remarkable young woman.

I have many other stories and other details to go into, but this is the summary of my time in Spain.

So… as I said to the church in Spain, I say this to our churches in the NYC region…

I love you all. Continue to strengthen one another in patterning your lives around the Apostles’ teaching, and make the most of your opportunities.

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[The purpose of this short paper is to help stabilize the churches that I oversee, helping them develop the ability to “contend for the faith” by fully understanding Christ’s Grand Strategy and practicing The Way of Christ and His Apostles in light of the pervasive “religion of the day”, which deceptively presents itself as various “enlightened pathways” but which ultimately lead believers toward Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) or an emphasis on the emotional payoff of “doing the right thing” or being “on the right side of history”. Christians who don’t yet have a solid understanding of the entire Scriptures or a confident ability to use them to solve complex problems, can find it difficult to discern the subtle heresies of this “religion of the day”, because of the complex way it weaves bits of truth into its philosophies and agendas. It is Gnostic at its roots, meaning its premise is… unquestionable exclusivity, cosmic mystery and hidden truths. Those who subscribe to its various forms pride themselves on being an enlightened minority and often behave in misanthropic ways toward the rest of society. These religions of the day are powerless to help us accomplish Christ’s plan. They create a distraction and have the potential to destabilize whole families and churches if not addressed quickly, thoroughly, and frankly. – Titus 1:7-16.

A note on contending for the faith. While the word contending can include a reference to “contention” or arguing, I am mainly focused on the idea of “competing to win”, like one who is a contender amidst stiff competition. The reference is more about the hard work, training and full-life commitment it takes to win the arguments in our shifting cultural and theological paradigms.]

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What do I mean by the “religion of the day”?

I am referring to a concept highlighted in a recent book of the same name. The Religion of the Day, by James P. Shea, which critically examines the prevailing secular ideologies that function as quasi-religious systems in contemporary society. The book urges Christians to recognize and resist the subtle encroachments of these modern belief systems.

The book argues that contrary to the assumption of a secular age devoid of religion, we are immersed in a highly religious era where secular "gospels" and dogmatic faiths abound. These belief systems—centered on ideologies such as radical individualism, materialism, and relativism—offer their own narratives of salvation and purpose, effectively displacing traditional Christian narratives. They promise fulfillment and meaning but often lead to disillusionment, as they lack the depth and transcendence found in the Christian faith. In other words, they are telling and promoting other overarching stories, other metanarratives.

In his 2024 end-of-year letter, sent to Mars Hill Audio Journal subscribers, Ken Myers quotes the theologian Simon Oliver:

The secular is not simply the rolling back of a theological consensus to reveal a neutral territory where we all become equal players, but the replacement of a certain view of God and creation with a different view which still makes claims, that is, claims about origins, purpose, and transcendence. The problem is that this ‘mock-theology’ or ‘pseudo-theology’ is a bad theology. Secularism is, quite literally, a Christian heresy - an ideological distortion of theology. - Ken Myers

Another helpful way of thinking about this is…

Attractive gospel messages abound and many Christians find their identity and purpose by aligning themselves with things like health, diet, gender, materialism, politics, policy, race, financial concerns, their nation, their candidate, etc., with all of this flooding people’s minds every single day.

Every individual is constantly telling themselves things. Your mind is actively building a narrative that speaks deeply into your soul. A key part of building a complex mental state is to discipline your mind to consistently recognize the lies you will tell yourself, and then replace those thoughts with the truth of the Bible, and then from others around you. - Michael Vos

It is critical that we understand God’s overarching story as the true story that gives meaning to human existence, a story based in actual human history, not in inventive, fictional nonsense or skeptical, jaded narratives. Christians must rediscover and internalize this narrative to effectively counter the false promises of the "religion of the day." This involves a deep personal conversion and a commitment to living out the truths of the gospel in daily life as part of a simple church family, who is in turn are part of a larger family network, a family of families.

Christian households and kerygmatic communities1 should be engaging with the culture not retreating into nostalgia or despair but confidently bearing witness to the transformative power of the Spirit’s work, which we understand happens when we follow The Way of Christ and His Apostles2 (TWCA) and live together as simple church families. The author draws inspiration from the early Christian communities, who, despite being a minority in a pagan society, lived with conviction and hope, believing in their role within God's salvific plan.

In conclusion, The Religion of the Day serves as a call to action for Christians to recognize the pervasive secular ideologies that wear religious clothing, presenting subtle, enticing alternatives to genuine Christian faith; and a call for Christians to respond with a renewed commitment to the gospel (kerygma). By embracing their identity as part of Jesus’ global family movement and living out the Christian narrative authentically in community, believers can offer a compelling alternative to the empty promises of contemporary “religious secularism”.

Four Contemporary Examples of “the religion of the day”

The “religion of the day” can take many forms, even forms that seemingly stem from opposing ideologies. However, they all attribute aspects of transcendent meaning to various cultural values systems and then attempt to shape communities and movements around those systems, some of which also hybridize with existing religious traditions. Others attempt to retain a strictly “secular” set of priorities. However, all of them function as religions in the sense that they attempt to provide moral purpose, identity, a sense of community and a mission.

Example #1: Jonathan Cahn and Hope of the World End-Time Ministries

It is difficult to discern Jonathan Cahn’s motives simply by reading a couple of his books, but my overall take is that Cahn started out as a sincere follower of Jesus, who was trying to reconcile the significance of Israel in the story of the Bible against the seeming insignificance afforded it by Christendom (Western churches and theological institutions). However, it seems that somewhere along the way, Cahn has become enamored by his own ideas and successes, and now functions with a dual-purpose of delivering his message of warning and driving his personal (financial and institutional) success by constantly raising the stakes of the narrative he is constructing, connecting specific Old Testament events and prophecies to specific current events, people, and politics. He relies heavily on rhetorical skill and personal charisma, both of which are cultural currency in America. All this together affords him the ability to explain, or explain away, without giving a robust, hermeneutical basis for his teaching.

In particular, Cahn seems confused about the role of the gospel in God’s overarching story. He often stretches and tugs at biblical passages to make them fit over the story he is telling.3 His effective use of storytelling, evocative descriptions and inventive metaphors feel fresh and exciting to those who are not solidly grounded in God’s overarching story and the full text of Scripture. Cahn is an effective communicator, and likely a sodality-type, but not true apostolic leader. Paul warns the Corinthian church about such teachers in 2 Cor 11-12, and he clarifies that the signs of a true apostolic leader are careful teaching, powerful hermeneutically-sound arguments, life-on-life modeling, significant personal sacrifice and the resulting community transformation that takes place over an extended period of time, which is achieved only with the utmost patience and depth of relationship.4 Cahn is not engaged in the sort of work Paul described here. Instead, his work is built around sensationalism, personal charisma, and tapping into the anxieties of his audience, leading them to believe those anxieties can only be relieved by following his teaching and engaging in certain civil or political behaviors.

Because Cahn has misunderstood God’s Story, particularly the turning point of the gospel, he then has no basis for understanding Christ’s Grand Strategy5 or The Way of Christ and His Apostles, which if understood properly could undo much of Cahn’s confusion about the overlap of the transcendent and the immanent. Because of this, Cahn also misunderstands the role of the Spirit today. He doesn’t understand that in this age, Jesus’ Spirit primarily works via networks of simple churches who live as extended families and gather weekly in homes for a meal and discussion, who invest sacrificially in their neighborhoods and cities; and that the Spirit also works to spontaneously shape these sorts of simple churches in places where none yet exist or where there are no true apostolic-type leaders to initiate those networks.

Cahn’s Nostradamus-like approach is attractive to those who resonate with hidden meanings, secret knowledge, and conspiracy theories. Secret knowledge is attractive because it makes a person feel like they are part of a special group who are “in the know”, but it is especially dangerous because it can’t be easily refuted, since it is based on secret ideas and meanings thereby avoiding interaction with rational logic or reason. Those that attempt to refute it are generally dismissed as “unenlightened”. Secret knowledge relies on a superstitious metaphysic; a misconstrued understanding of how certain things transcend the material world. Strong beliefs are then formed by assigning transcendent meaning to specific events or people and all those disparate ideas and bits of random information are then pieced together into a mosaic, which supposedly reveals some grand scheme that must be adhered to or opposed. Secret knowledge has no overarching framework or organizing center, so there is nothing to keep someone from constantly rearranging its pieces, morphing into a grander, higher stakes situation; there is no larger concept that organizes all the bits of knowledge in a cohesive and orderly way.

[Cahn is not the only outlet for this sort of religiously-cloaked ideological fervor, sensationalism, or loose, freewheeling “hermeneutics”. These type of media outlets, are too numerous to count, but one that stands out, based on its popularity, longevity, and name recognition, is CBN and its entire catalog of media products (700 Club, CBN News, etc.) Ad Fontes Media6 produces and regularly updates an online media bias chart (placing CBN well outside of the sphere of unbiased reliability), which is helpful for determining reliable news sources, but it does not account for what I call the “red letter effect”. That by using religious jargon in a headline or at the beginning of an article, a writer can activate an automatic response of trust from certain individuals making them more susceptible to false ideas; or that by tying the ideas in an article to religious terms or phrases, a writer can lower the defenses and capture the trust of certain religious people who intuitively believe that if an author is using familiar religious terms, then they must be reliable.]

To summarize, Cahn misunderstands key elements of Christian theology, particularly God’s overarching story, the kerygma, and the role of the Holy Spirit. He promotes a blend of sensationalism, conspiracy thinking, and pseudo-Jewish Christian practices drawn from movements like the Hebrew Roots7, New Apostolic Reformation8 and Dominionism9, all of which he has used to build his own following made of converts who generally come from one of these three philosophies. (All three philosophies were birthed out of the 1980’s “late, great planet earth” prophecy panic.) Cahn seems to be taking a page out of that 1980’s conspiracy/prophecy playbook (e.g. Hal Lindsey, Frank Peretti, etc.) His books alternate between novels and non-fiction style messages that are self-reinforcing but never transparently lay out a clear framework for his message. Acting as if he is a human “Rosetta stone” for biblical prophecy, his appeal lies in his claim that he can explain the hidden meanings of the Scriptures, which can be dangerous because his explanations resist rational critique and lack a coherent theological framework.

Cahn's works play on existing anxieties, stir up urgency and stoke dissatisfaction and frustration with the state of society, culture and politics, rather than focusing on Christ’s actual strategy—simple churches living in community and multiplying organically via kerygmatic communities who both contribute to and are birthed out of the intense work of apostolic leaders. Cahn operates by manipulating emotions through dramatic language and misleading believers into civic religion and political action rather than faithfulness to Christ’s plan.

Example #2: Falun Gong, The Epoch Times, and Shen Yun

Falun Gong is a spiritualistic movement begun in the early 1990’s and controls both The Epoch Times and Shen Yun, using those outlets as its public voice, to create a cultural identity, and fund its organization.

The relationship between Falun Gong, the Epoch Times and Shen Yun.

1. Falun Gong (Falun Dafa):

   • Founded by Li Hongzhi in China in the 1990s, Falun Gong is a spiritualistic movement combining meditation, qigong exercises, and a moral philosophy rooted in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

   • Though it incorporates some traditional Chinese religious and cosmological elements, Falun Gong also includes unorthodox beliefs and promotes Li Hongzhi as a messianic figure.

   • The Chinese government banned Falun Gong in 1999, labeling it a dangerous cult.

2. The Epoch Times:

   • The Epoch Times is a media outlet founded by Falun Gong practitioners in 2000.

   • Though it presents itself as an independent news organization, it promotes Falun Gong ideology and often publishes conspiracy-laden or far-right-leaning content.

   • It played a major role in spreading pro-Trump and QAnon-related narratives, especially during the 2020 U.S. election and COVID-19 pandemic.

3. Shen Yun Performing Arts:

   • Shen Yun is a dance and music company created by Falun Gong adherents.

   • It markets itself as a celebration of traditional Chinese culture, but performances often include underlying religious and political messages aligned with Falun Gong’s worldview, including anti-Communist and apocalyptic themes.

   • Its marketing is extensive and global, often criticized as misleading because the show is advertised as purely cultural while it is actually ideological.

How Falun Gong acts as a Secularized Religion of the Day:

1. Cultic Characteristics:

   • Leader Adoration & Reverence: Li Hongzhi is treated as an enlightened being with near-divine status. His teachings are considered infallible, and followers believe he can save humanity.

   • Us-vs-Them Mentality: The movement frames itself as persecuted by evil forces (primarily the Chinese Communist Party), encouraging a siege-mentality among followers.

   • Secrecy and Indoctrination: While Falun Gong presents itself as a benign spiritual practice, deeper teachings are often revealed gradually, and outsiders are not given the full picture upfront.

2. Modern Appeal as a “Religion of the Day”:

   • Falun Gong’s media arms and performance arts exploit secular aesthetics (e.g., journalism, entertainment, wellness) to spread spiritual ideology, making it appealing in a time when traditional religion is in decline.

   • This positions Falun Gong as a pseudo-secular faith: it offers meaning, purpose, and an identity to adherents, while often cloaking itself in non-religious or even scientific terms (especially in its health and meditation claims).

   • It capitalizes on Western disenchantment with materialism, modernity, and government overreach, but replaces religion with a mythologized anti-modernity that has its own orthodoxy, enemies, and eschatology.

3. Danger in Secular Trappings:

   • Movements like Falun Gong can masquerade as cultural or health-based, avoiding the scrutiny typically applied to organized religion or cults.

   • The conflation of political activism, spiritual salvation, and conspiratorial thinking creates an emotionally charged but intellectually shallow system—a secular cult in religious clothing, a perfect example of the “religion of the day”.

   • The media and entertainment arms (Epoch Times and Shen Yun) blur the lines between truth and propaganda, contributing to the post-truth landscape under the guise of “spiritual revival” or “cultural restoration.”

In conclusion, Falun Gong, through its subsidiaries like The Epoch Times and Shen Yun, presents a hybrid of spirituality, political activism, and media manipulation that reflects the modern craving for meaning and identity. It mirrors institutional religion’s structure but trades theological depth for ideological fervor. This makes it less a traditional religion and more a response to secular disillusionment, cloaked in the aesthetics of culture, reason and spirituality.

Example #3: Critical Social Justice (CSJ) and Unitarian Universalism

Beyond formal religion, many critics (John McWhorter) argue that Critical Social Justice (CSJ)—an ideology rooted in intersectionality10 (theory of discrimination), critical theory11, and postmodernism12—functions as a secular religion.

Whether it's Unitarian Universalism as an organized religion, or Critical Social Justice as a cultural belief system, both demonstrate how progressivism can become a form of spiritual identity—complete with its own theology, rituals, and moral absolutes. While it is often rooted in noble aims (justice, dignity, inclusion), the danger lies in replacing transcendence with ideology, and grace with guilt or performance.

Critical Social Justice (CSJ), while presented as a secular sociopolitical movement, increasingly functions like a religious framework—complete with its own moral code, dogma, liturgy, and vision of salvation. Under the banner of equity and justice, CSJ offers a totalizing worldview that defines identity, sin, righteousness, and redemption in explicitly moral—and often metaphysical—terms, despite lacking any transcendent foundation. This cloaked religiosity makes CSJ both persuasive and dangerous, especially when it supplants traditional religious beliefs while denying its own religious nature.

At the heart of CSJ lies a redefinition of religion around the categories of Christian systematic theology, such as sin, salvation, evangelism, etc. Traditional religion identifies sin as rebellion against divine authority or a violation of moral law. CSJ reframes sin as participation in oppressive systems, especially those defined by race, gender, sexuality, and class. “Original sin” becomes whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, or cisgender identity—conditions a person is born into and cannot shed, only “acknowledge.” Likewise, “salvation” is no longer personal transformation or reconciliation with God, but the continual work of anti-racism, allyship, and deconstruction of privilege. This salvation is never complete; adherents must constantly confess, self-examine, and engage in activism to maintain moral standing.

“Progressive religion, on the other hand, claims to be able to divide the human race between the good and the evil in the present, and it places the authority to make such judgments in the hands of other (enlightened) humans.” – The Religion of the Day, pg. 41

Like religious orthodoxy, CSJ enforces doctrinal purity. Dissenting views are heretical, regardless of intent or reasoning. Those who question its tenets—whether from within or outside the movement—are often labeled as bigoted, ignorant, or complicit in oppression. “Silence is violence,” a common CSJ mantra, serves as both theological accusation and moral compulsion. In this sense, CSJ is not merely a social theory but a belief system that demands conformity and punishes apostasy.

Moreover, CSJ offers its own clergy and sacraments. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) officers function as modern-day priests, guiding institutions through rituals of self-purification and ideological compliance. Terms like “safe spaces,” “lived experience,” and “microaggressions” form a shared language—a kind of liturgy—that binds the community together. Canonical texts such as White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist are treated as sacred writings, while public apologies and statements of solidarity act as confessions and penance.

What makes CSJ particularly troubling is its lack of an overarching framework rooted in objective truth or grace. It demands absolute adherence without offering a coherent metaphysical basis for why its moral claims should be universally binding. It replaces forgiveness with perpetual guilt, and grace with performance. There is no possibility of redemption outside the system—only endless striving. Furthermore, its framework flattens individuals into identity groups, reducing human beings to power categories rather than seeing them as morally complex individuals, communities and civilizations.

Ultimately, CSJ disguises itself as a secular effort for justice while performing the functions of a rigid and moralistic religion. It fills a spiritual void in our post-Christian culture but offers no transcendent hope or true reconciliation. Its justice lacks mercy, and its gospel lacks grace. Without acknowledging its religious nature, CSJ can quietly usurp genuine faith communities, replacing the gospel of Christ with a gospel of activism, identity, and unending penance. Recognizing this substitution is the first step toward resisting its influence and reclaiming the fullness of a faith rooted in truth, love, and redemptive grace.

Example #4: Prosperity Theology, Healing Ministry, Extreme Fitness and Naturopathy Understood as Direct Implications of the Gospel

The early church suffered constantly at the hands of cruel leaders and governments, and sometimes even at the hands of their “friends and neighbors,” but the Apostles encouraged them to endure those trials together, not fantasize about escaping them, or personify them as an enemy to be overcome, or even to expect anything different.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes his ministry perspective as “conflicts without and fears within” and explains that while his outer self is decaying, his inner self is being renewed day-by-day toward a future renewed body, and that as decay happens and cracks form, it is the light of the gospel, via his renewing inner self, that shines out.

If Paul and the early churches had no expectation that difficulty would or should be removed, why should we expect that for us today? Jesus is building a family of strong, determined warriors that will shepherd and support one another through all measure of trials and difficulties; not a bunch of upright citizens expecting magical relief from difficulty or straining toward self-betterment while they wait to be beamed into heaven one day.

Prosperity Theology and Healing Ministry look for God to “magic” betterment onto us. Extreme Fitness and Naturopathy expect we can better ourselves through rigorous behavior modification involving fitness and nutrition. Neither of these reflect Paul’s understanding, nor the early churches’ experience.

More to come on this with two future essays on Paul’s ministry perspectives (2 Corinthians 2:12 – 7:5):

1. Cracked Pots, Broken Bones, and a Bright Shining Gospel

2. Outer Decay, Inner Renewal, and Our Future New Bodies

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A Closing Challenge to the Churches I Oversee

We are constantly bombarded with the pressures and priorities of the various forms of the “religion of the day”. In order to resist them we must develop a robust apologetic based on God’s overarching story and we must become skilled across the Scriptures, so we can refute false ideas and solve cultural problems. We must remember that while Israel is still included in God’s plan and will be the recipients of the promises to Abraham, they are also currently under God’s curse and will not respond as a people and nation until Jesus returns. Jesus himself came as the Faithful Israelite and completed, on their behalf, what they were unable to do on their own. Of course, individual Jewish people can come to Christ and follow Him at any time by becoming part of His new family.

There are historical events that reveal we are moving closer to the time when Christ will return, but we should not be taking specific historic events in our time and tying them to specific events or prophecies in the Old Testament. We need to be able to read the signs of the times, without becoming too enamored with the signs themselves. If we aren’t careful, we can end up becoming spiritualists, reading signs like an astrologer reads the stars, leading us to misappropriate words and events in Scripture, either interpreting them via some secret knowledge or enslaving them to contemporary philosophy, in order to give our lives meaning or to feel like we are “enlightened” or “on the right side of history”.

However, our lives already have meaning, and we already have Christ’s plan. Don’t be led astray by exciting ideas, charismatic personalities or your own individual passions. Continue pressing on in the things the leaders from the last 30 years have taught you and that you yourself have become convinced of, knowing that other churches and networks are relying on us to remain faithful, become mature churches, and begin building a network throughout our region, so that we can become a prototype to help fuel the expansion of Jesus’ global family in other key cities across North America and around the world.

Understanding God’s overarching story, allows us to see His plan and purposes being carried out across human history, from Abraham, until our time and beyond. It helps clarify the gospel as the proclamation that all God had been doing through Israel was always intended to be concentrated into one man, the Faithful Israelite, who introduced a new and living way (a whole new family, a new reality, a new paradigm) which Israel had not anticipated. Seeing how this new plan was initiated, took shape, and was set in motion, gives us the model for Christ’s Grand Strategy, which He put into effect and remains as His singular plan, until the time He returns and makes all things new.

Once you understand the promises made to Abraham, Moses and David, and how the aspects of each of those promises have both already-and-not-yet components, it becomes clear how God’s story reveals the narrowing down of human faithfulness to one man, Jesus, who died and was planted in the ground, and out of which a whole new family sprung up and is growing, filling the whole earth. This sets a timeline for when the promises will be fully brought to completion, and it reveals the social structure of the church… household, family, commonwealth. Jesus’ Spirit is shaping a global family movement around a specific plan, and a specific set of patterns, principles and processes.

We are living in the middle of a macro-paradigm change in Western civilization (which basically means the entire world, since Western civilization has influenced nearly every place on earth over the past 500 years.) In 1991, David Bosch, the insightful missiologist, wrote in his seminal, prophetic book, Transforming Mission:

“There is growing awareness that we live in an era of change from one way of understanding reality to another… macro-paradigms go through a period of fundamental change every three to five-hundred years. It is abundantly clear that the twentieth-century… shows evidence of such a major shift in perceiving reality. Since the seventeenth-century the Enlightenment paradigm has reigned supreme in all disciplines, including theology. Today there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the enlightenment and a quest for a new approach to understanding reality. There is, on the one hand, a search under way for a new paradigm; on the other hand, such a new paradigm is already presenting itself.”

Below is my take on how multiple macro-paradigm shifts over the past seventeen-hundred years have shaped Jesus’ church (not always positively), and what we must do today to ensure that the next paradigm of the church aligns with the patterns and principles of Jesus’ teachings (a.k.a. the apostles’ teaching, the deposit, sound doctrine, the didache, etc.)

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1. In its first 250 years the church thrived and rapidly expanded as communities that lived sincerely together as extended families (Acts 2:42-47) and were supported and strengthened by apostolic teams who shaped them as hubs, clusters, and nodes for the express purpose of accelerating spontaneous expansion among and beyond those church networks.

2. By the 4^th Century, in an effort to influence the legal and philosophical systems of the surrounding culture, Christianity began to slowly merge with these systems obscuring the apostolic tradition, and eventually replacing it with a cultural hybrid (Christendom) that remained dominant for 1,700 years.

3. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, there has been a growing recognition of the ineffectiveness of Christendom institutions and paradigms to fulfill Jesus’ mission of producing transformed communities (coinciding with the waning influence of Enlightenment ideas).

4. Christendom has now run its course and no longer provides the “singular narrative and imaginative vision”1 for the institutional church or Western Civilization

5. The church has now entered a New Apostolic Age much like the first few centuries of its existence

6. The challenge laid before our generation is to avoid simply “remaining zealous for the traditions of our fathers”2 and instead to vigorously “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”,3 by recovering the patterns, principles, and processes from Acts and Paul’s letters (around which the entire New Testament is structured)

7. Although the 20^th Century has seen a strong return to large scale church planting models, including both house church and cell church models, the approach to these is largely still based on institutional models, missing the key patterns, processes and principles of Christ’s plan.

8. Because of the stewardship Jesus’ gave to Paul, we understand that Jesus’ expectation was that His churches would follow these patterns perpetually

   • Jesus’ focus during His time on earth was busting up the existing Jewish traditions through veiled teaching and insinuating He was Messiah, then intentionally disorienting His followers around their old paradigm, all as He marched toward His death and resurrection.

   • Jesus tells His followers that His Spirit will teach them everything else after He is gone (John 14:26) giving them the keys for how to carry out His kingdom-building work (Matt 16:18)

   • Acts contains the framework and patterns for everything else – “all that Jesus continued to do and teach” by His Spirit, through the Apostles, in His church (Acts 1:1-4)

   • Acts also emphasizes the role of Paul, by highlighting how Jesus makes an “encore appearance”, specifically to commission Paul and give him a unique stewardship (Acts 9:1-16)

   • Later, in one of his middle letters, Paul clarifies the content of that stewardship, which was to reveal and implement Christ’s Grand Strategy for the churches (“the plan of the mystery”) throughout the Gentile world, thereby building Jesus’ one unified global family (Eph 3:7-12)

9. Paul understood his stewardship in terms of expanding his own sphere and multiplying local churches across an Empire-wide movement by constantly engaging in a cycle of4:

   • Evangelizing strategic cities

   • Establishing local churches

   • Entrusting them to faithful men

10. Paul was a coherent thinker whose circular letters were shaped around central organizing statements (topos) whose implications he would apply situationally to the recipients, while expecting the other churches in his field to engage with those letters and do the same theology-in-culture process, applying the gospel flexibly in their situations

11. Paul understood the function of his apostolic role to be critical for the ongoing stability and spontaneous expansion of church networks, and engaged in training other young, gifted leaders to continue those functions, instructing them to train others in the next generation who would train those after them. (2 Tim 2:2; John 17:20-23)

12. The conclusion being… there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one “way”… to participate in the expansion of His global family according to the plan revealed to Paul (Eph 4:1-16)

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[Note: This essay is written as a sort of FAQ to address the key questions regarding Matthew’s gospel and the Sermon on the Mount.]

Question #1

Isn’t Matthew’s gospel (and the other gospels for that matter) a collection of the life and teachings of Jesus? Shouldn’t we pattern our lives around Jesus’ example and teaching? Consequently, shouldn’t we use the gospels as the model for Christian life and practice?

Let’s look at the context of what Jesus was doing when He was here, and how Matthew perceived Jesus’ teaching after 30 years of participation in, and theological reflection on, all that Jesus’ Spirit accomplished in the churches through the Apostles. (Matthew was written around 65AD.)

What Was the Primary Focus of Jesus’ Ministry?

• Upending Jewish traditions, challenging Jewish authorities, insinuating His Messiahship

• Carefully veiling His teaching (which would later be plainly taught by the Apostles – Jn. 14:25-26)

• Disorienting His followers, detaching them from their old paradigm

• Marching toward His death & resurrection

What is the Primary Focus of the Gospels?

Stabilizing existing church networks near the end of the first century as the apostles were preparing to leave the scene:

• Jewish Churches… exhorting them to hold fast. (Do not give in and return to prior traditions!!)

• Gentile Churches… helping them fully grasp their vast Old Testament heritage through apostolic eyes

What is the Primary Focus of Matthew’s Gospel?

Stabilizing Peter’s ethnic diaspora network (Jewish diaspora churches) by showing clear continuity between the OT and Jesus’ global family movement through five discourses that call Israel to repent, leave their religious traditions behind, and follow Messiah into His kingdom, while predicting their rejection1

• The narrow path into the kingdom (contains Sermon on the Mount)

• Spreading the message throughout Israel

• Future growth of the kingdom among the Gentiles

• Prediction of the rejection of Messiah and death on the cross

• The coming judgment on Israel is predicted

What is the Primary Focus of the Sermon on the Mount?

A call for the churches to forsake old, rules-based religious traditions and recognize that Jesus has inaugurated His kingdom, as a new global family, who are to live together according to a new and better way

• John the Baptist’s call to Israel to “repent for the kingdom of God is here…”

• The five discourses of Matthew’s gospel are messages arguing for Israel’s repentance from ignoring the trajectory and true meaning of the OT traditions and tabernacle system

• The Sermon on the Mount is showing Israel what it looks like to repent from the Old Testament paradigm2 and become part of the new family Jesus is building (highlighting the priorities that characterize community-life in Jesus’ family)

Conclusions for this section were drawn heavily from Matthew: I Will Build My Church by Jeff Reed

Conclusion #1

The gospels, and particularly the acts and teachings of Jesus contained in them, were never intended by Jesus to be the biblical model for Christian life and discipleship, or for mission strategy. Jesus intentionally left those teachings and that strategy to be delivered by the Apostles and He promised that after the Apostles delivered the rest of His teaching, His disciples would one day look back and fully understand the veiled teaching He brought while on earth (Jn 14:26.) This is precisely what Matthew is doing in his gospel.

The organizing center of the New Testament and the framework for Christ’s plan are found in Acts and Paul’s letters. This is emphasized by Jesus making an “encore appearance” to specifically choose Paul (Acts 9) for the unique role of taking the gospel to the Gentiles (Jesus’ global family) and revealing and implementing Christ’s strategy (His model for all the churches), ensuring it was followed in all the churches (1 Cor 11:163) and that it was understood and adhered to by the other apostles (Gal. 2:11-13.) The other apostles recognized Paul’s role and aligned their work with this plan, as seen in their writings, which reinforce this shared vision across church networks. (2 Pet. 3:16)4

“The sermon [on the mount] – to take it for the moment as a whole – is not a mere miscellany of ethical instruction. It cannot be generalized into a set of suggestions, or even commands, on how to be ‘good.’ Nor can it be turned into a guide map for how to go to ‘heaven’ after death. It is rather, as it stands, a challenge for Israel to be Israel.” – N. T. Wright

… or more accurately, a challenge for how Israel should repent and follow Jesus into His new community.

Question #2

If Matthew is writing his gospel with ”the way of Christ and His Apostles” paradigm in mind, shouldn’t we see some evidence of that in his gospel, or in the other letters written to the scattered Jewish believers and their churches?

Where is the evidence for “the way of Christ and His Apostles”?

Matthew describes how Jesus was introducing and laying the foundation for His new global family.

While the rest of the New Testament flows forward from the narrative of Matthew, the entire New Testament is actually organized around the concepts in Acts & Paul’s letters. If those are not understsood first, it is nearly impossible to grasp what Matthew is doing.

• “Repent from your distorted Judaism and become part of Jesus’ new global family” – Matt 3:2; 4:17

• “I will build my gatherings” – Matt 16:18

• “Go build my gatherings” – Matt 28:18-20

• How to build His gatherings as interconnected gatherings (complex networks) who live as gospel-shaped (kerygmatic) communities – Acts (overall framework)

• How to plant, root, build up and stabilize these gatherings (families of families) in any situation, culture, region or time of history – Paul’s early letters

• How to engage these churches in fulfilling their calling within Christ’s grand strategy – Paul's middle letters

• How to recognize, train and maintain solid leadership across Jesus’ household (apostolic-types, elders, leading women, one-anothering) – Paul’s later letters

• How to address issues/conflicts across networks of ethnic churches – Petrine circle of writings

• How to shape and stabilize small regional networks of gatherings and created one-minded solidarity across Jesus’ global family movement – John’s writings

• How to live the abundant life amid difficulty, conflict and the coming “end of the age” – Revelation

  

All the churches were established around “the way of Christ and His Apostles” paradigm5 and they continued expanding6 for the next 200 years due to their faithfulness. So, when the late first-century churches read Matthew 5-7 they weren’t simply hearing Jesus’ talking to a crowd sitting on a hill, they were hearing His voice filtered through decades of their own participation in all that He continued to accomplish by His Spirit through the apostles in the churches. Finally they were able to clearly understand what Jesus meant when he delivered that veiled teaching all those years ago.

Matthew is referring to “the way of Christ and His Apostles” when he uses the way of righteousness in the passage we refer to as the Beatitudes.7 Why do I bring this up? Because righteousness is a paradigm term that Matthew is using to connect the dots for the scattered Jewish believers near the end of the first century. When he uses the term righteousness, he is not referring to personal morality or the status Christians have in Christ. Instead, he is referring to Jesus’ “kingdom justice system”, through which He brings order and justice to the world. The Greek word for righteousness, dikaiosyne (di-kah-i-oh-sooh-nay), has a range of meaning that includes justice, judgment, vindication, and punishment. The idea is this… living in Jesus’ New Covenant means embracing His new justice system—a.k.a. His global family paradigm, as understood from Acts and Paul’s letters. This new family, living according to His new way, is His framework for restoring order to the world and shaping the New Creation.

Are there other writings to these scattered Jewish believers that can help make things clearer?

The book of Hebrews also clarifies this concept, as it predates Matthew’s gospel and exhorts the scattered Jewish believers to hold fast to Jesus’ “new and living way”, clarifying that it does not abolish the Old Testament Law but completes it, bringing it to an end (Matt 5:17), and then taking it further up and further into God’s plan. The Law was not a failed plan—it was always meant to be Phase One of God’s eternal purpose, like booster rockets on a space shuttle. Once their job is done, they fall away. Not because they failed, but because they completed the fulfilled their purpose, successfully launching God’s plan into its next stage.8

In Hebrews 8:1-7, the author describes Jesus’ New Covenant using Greek words whose meanings range across the concepts of pattern, prototype, and model. One of these words, hypodiegma, (deigma being the root for the word 'paradigm'), reinforces the idea that the old tabernacle system was just a shadow of what was to come. But now, believers have received Jesus’ new paradigm with a new set of patterns to follow (the didache.)

The Jewish believers were under immense pressure from all sides and were not well-grounded in the first principles (Heb 5:12). The writer of Hebrews urges them to hold fast to their commitments to their new church families and master these foundational principles, even when it feels like everything is against them. If they do not remain firm, they risk rejecting Jesus’ “new and living way” and returning to outdated, outmoded traditions. And if they turn back, they will likely end up “wandering the wilderness” for the rest of their lives, missing out on God’s plan and facing judgment along with the rest of Israel—just like their ancestors.

All the New Testament authors shared a common plan and strategy but adapted their descriptions of it to different ethnic and geographic contexts. They shaped their ministries around it, writing letters and documents to strengthen churches within Jesus’ new paradigm. While they used similar terms to describe this new way, their words were later translated into English in ways that obscured their connections. Over time, the meanings of those English words evolved even further, making them seem completely unrelated. To grasp their original relationships, we must examine the original Greek words.

(The following chart is meant to provide a very basic description of how the paradigm ideas are referred to and developed across the first century.)

Conclusion #2

So, if Jesus was guardedly introducing a new paradigm, and Matthew structured his gospel around its announcement—emphasizing John the Baptist’s call for Israel to repent from their corrupted version of the rules & rituals based tabernacle system (old paradigm) and turn to Jesus’ principle-based global family movement (new paradigm)—then this call remains relevant for churches today insofar as our contemporary Christian traditions have wandered from that paradigm, either mixing in cultural practices, or even abandoning it altogether.

The Roll-Out of Jesus’ New Paradigm Across the First Century:

“It is a totally different thing then, when you view the letters in the New Testament as abstract documents that are used to support existing systematic theological constructs versus understanding them as tools for establishing churches.” – Jeff Reed

… in other words, much of Christianity looks at the New Testament letters and sees scattered bits of irrelevant information and therefore assumes that our task is to organize those bits into logical systems of topical categories that make sense by today’s standards, rather than seeing Paul’s unified, coherent strategy and arguments, which drove his work and organized his approach with the churches (centered on the stewardship he was given by Jesus).

Since the time of Constantine in the 4th Century, the trajectory of the Spirit’s work has been leading his church across numerous reformations to rediscover and follow Jesus’ new paradigm — what Roland Allen refers to as “the way of Christ and His Apostles”. Hebrews urges us to remain committed to this “new and living way” rather than retreating to familiar institutional systems that reduce faith to attending church, being moral, doing good deeds, and acknowledging God. Jesus’ plan cannot be reduced to such a checklist9 —since it is about building a global family movement. Jesus calls us to draw strength from one another, shaping our lives around His paradigm so we can withstand life’s pressures, face opposition, and respond wisely to those who do not understand our commitment. His plan is for us to process this journey together, engaging in ongoing dialogue, refining our understanding, and developing new expressions of faith in our church communities. As we do this, we will strengthen one another, mature in our faith, and become unshakable in His “new and living way.”

Is there an example where we can see this clearly in Matthew’s gospel? In the Sermon on the Mount?

I have paraphrased a few verses from this passage to help us hear it the same way Matthew’s audience would’ve heard it, after having lived out the Apostolic teaching for several decades within the context of their churches and networks. First, I will include the ESV version, then my paraphrase.

Matthew 5:46-48 ESV

“⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 10

Matthew 5:46-48 – Paraphrase incorporating late first century apostolic context

“If you approach your new way of life by just dutifully meeting minimum requirements, such as maintaining arms-length relationships that don’t require much of you, does that really build God’s kingdom (His new family)? Can that sort of behavior actually produce the outcome of true maturity (unshakable church families who contend for the faith)? Aren’t you just being average citizens? Many of the pagan people around you already know how to be good citizens. But your life together is supposed to be much more than that. You are supposed to make any necessary sacrifice to become strong, mature communities, so that you flourish as God’s family right here, right now… even in the midst of difficult circumstances.” – Matt 5:46-48

Matthew’s “narrow path into the kingdom” idea is not a reference for our 21^st century situation about Christians who won’t make it into heaven. He is talking about first century Jewish people most of whom will reject Jesus’ (and John the Baptist’s) message to repent and therefore, will not become part of Jesus’ global family. They will remain in the wilderness until they die. They simply could not grasp or would not accept that there was a Phase 2 to God’s plan.

Conclusion #3

In other words, when we interact with Matthew’s gospel today, we need to hear the same message he was giving to his original audience, which was, give up on the old rules-based traditions, and the various ways they had distorted God’s plan, and turn and become a part of Jesus’ new family paradigm, completely reshaping their lives around it. Today, churches must take stock of all the ways that we have, in effect, gone back to the old “rules & rituals” paradigm as the structure for shaping our lives and practice. Then we need to turn and follow Christ’s plan.

Time to Change the System

“In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church, after Constantine in the 4th century AD, adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of "church" remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.” – Wolfgang Simson

… in other words, beginning in the 4^th century AD the church began moving away from Jesus’ new paradigm (which the apostles gave their lives to shape the churches around), and instead incorporated itself around elements of the old paradigm.

Even with all the reform that has taken place through the centuries, much of what still constitutes the church’s life, practice, and gathering has remained largely untouched.

The Spirit has now brought us to the point in history where He is addressing this by awakening the church to a.) the failure of our institutions to maintain or produce mature churches and households, b.) the waning of Christendom’s influence on Western civilzation, and c.) our unsuccessful attempts to pass on a substantial faith to subsequent generations.

Now is the time to return to “the way of Christ and His Apostles.”

Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a coalition of leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.

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See my summary of God’s unfolding Story

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See my summary of 1 Corinthians

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The continued expansion of the church in the first three centuries.

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In case you missed it, here is the series I did last year on the gatherings of the early church and what they understood Jesus’ new paradigm to mean.

The Early Church Gathering - Part 1

The Early Church Gathering - Part 2

The Early Church Gathering - Part 3

The Heartbeat of Christian Missions - Part 4

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of global leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.

Today, instead of understanding what Paul was saying, we've used his words of "faith" and "works" to describe the tensions of a medieval theological issue, and they've never recovered from that. So we end up repeating the same mistakes the Galatians made. Thinking that somehow our being "justified by faith" guarantees our inclusion in Jesus' kingdom, and then once we have that guarantee, everything else is secondary. We've fragmented the gospel from the didache and Christ's plan in a way that is unnatural, defining the gospel as a set of logical, theological concepts, rather than as the hinge-point of God's story. Paul is not trying to answer questions about the inception point or the mechanics of a salvation that acts as a golden ticket to heaven, but rather faith as an entirely new way of life that is distinct and unique from ALL rules-based religious traditions, whether they be of Jewish origin (which would certainly seem to have more gravitas than gentile-conceived traditions, due to its origins in the OT tradition of the people of God) or those of a more recent "Christian" vintage. (Gal 2:15-21)

Paul is telling the Galatians not to mix-in their old traditions with the way of Christ and His apostles, and not to be tempted to return to those old traditions, which, although they feel safe and comfortable (like going home for the holidays) they actually do nothing to build Christ’s kingdom and will not shield them from or prepare them for what is coming in the days ahead.

As Christians today, we like to say we are “justified by faith”, but many staunchly cling to the old traditions passed on to us by our fathers, or we attempt to freshen them up a bit to feel like they fit the times (Gal 2:18). These are the same types of rules-based traditions that Jesus did away with when He gave his life, was resurrected, and then provided a set of patterns, principles and processes that His global family movement was to be shaped around, via the apostles teaching (specifically Paul – Acts 9:1-30; Gal 1:11-18; 1 Cor 15:3-10; Eph 3:7-12).

We need to focus our energies on recovering those patterns and shaping our lives and churches around them.

Others think of peace on earth as global peace between all peoples and nations, brought about from within, as incremental progress is made through good ideas and strong community. And while, as part of God’s household, we are called to be His loving family, with one another and to the world, the scriptures are clear that this is not how peace on earth is brought to full completion.

When we read in 1 Cor 6, where Paul tells the church they will judge the world and angels, we tend to conjure up images of courtrooms and black robes. But that's not what Paul meant. When Jesus returns He will establish his rule on earth, not with a gavel, but with a sword, ready to battle evil and live up to the phrase inked on his leg, "King of Kings and Lord of Lords". (Rev. 19:16) It is difficult for us to envision this powerful transition of the ages.

We tend to think of Jesus' return more like a scene from a Marvel movie, where he shows up, snaps his fingers and everything is instantly made right. But that concept ignores implications of the incarnation (God becoming human) and the resurrection (God remaining human, but in a glorified physical body). God has always chosen to work within the context of his creation to bring about his plan (the unfolding covenants with Abraham, Israel, David, reoriented around Jesus and his new family made of all peoples). This “snapture” idea ignores much of the imagery from the book of Revelation (Rev 19) about what Jesus’ final judgment will look like. God isn’t going to just suddenly diverge from that plan right at the end. He’s not going to just skip over the context of the world he created and set us on task within.

Jesus will finally rule on this earth, bringing about peace. But the way he will achieve that, when he returns as Judge and King, is by going to battle with evil. Did we really think evil was going to look at him and just roll over? No, it will raise up its head and resist him with everything it has, right to the end, but he will win the long battle. 

The film The Return of the King communicates this idea a scene where some of the Kings of Middle Earth have finally trapped one of the evil rulers in his tower, and suddenly the voice of this evil ruler becomes sweet and inviting, asking why we can’t just have peace. Then the King who has just watched the armies of this evil person decimate his people, gives his answer.

“We shall have peace… We shall have peace, when you answer for the burning of the Westfold, and the children that lie dead there! We shall have peace when the lives of the soldiers whose bodies were hewn even as they died against the gates of the Hornberg are avenged! When you hang from a gibbit for the sport of your own crows…! We shall have peace.” - From the film, The Return of the King based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien

So as we sing about peace on earth this season, let's not get carried completely away by the warm nostalgia of mangers, young livestock and calmn nights, but let’s remember that he has placed us here with a task to be carried out before he will return. Living our lives together as family, out in the midst of our neighborhoods, cities and cultures, helping to create authentic, stable community where none exists, which reflects God’s eternal wisdom to all who are watching. Let’s remain on task and get to the work, together.

Because someday at Christmas… Jesus will not lie in a manger, but sit on a throne. Ruling with power. Once and for all, bringing peace on earth.