Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss the state of the church and its future direction. Decisions were made that will effect the lives of many here.
Last week the deacons had met for only the second time since our appointment back in November of last year. Prompted, at least for me, in part by the resignation of one of our own and my personal feelings about that, we got together to talk. No real agenda was put forth ahead of time, but it seemed we all had much on our hearts. At the forefront of each of our minds were the spiritual health of the church and the shallowness of the relationships between the members.
At the end of the night, we had decided that we could no longer sit on our hands and watch. We, along with the evangelist and campus minister, were the appointed leaders of the church. If we did not act, who would? We decided that we needed to take our place as leaders beside the ministers and work side by side with them. We would not meekly ask to be included, nor would we arrogantly demand to have our say. Rather we would, as leaders approved by the congregation last fall, assume the place we should have from the start. It was time that the church had a cohesive leadership team.
In our ICOC family of churches, our pattern had been one of top down, hierarchical leadership. There was one man at the top of the church with several levels of leaders under him. Frankly, in my view it has shown itself to be a failure, but not because of the caliber of men placed in leadership. For the most part they have been spiritual men with great hearts. No, it has failed, I believe, because God did not design man to carry such a burden. Moses learned it from his father in law in Exodus 18, the NT speaks of a variety of leadership positions, each with it’s own focus and expertise in Ephesians 4, implying that it requires a diverse group of leaders for a church to reach maturity. Even through the upheaval and awakening of the last year, the Columbus COC was still effectively operating under that old paradigm, with the evangelist in the position of making the decisions. He’s a good man, but it is not right for him to carry that burden alone nor is it good for the church to be limited to his perspective. It was time for a change.
So it was with a little trepidation that I approached Monday night. Somehow, I had been appointed spokesperson for the group (though it would not be long before the others spoke up). I feared that my words would either be too soft or be taken as an attack on his character or abilities. I prayed a lot about it before the time came.
When it did, frankly it was a bit anticlimactic. He was very open to the idea, almost relieved. He expressed that he’s felt quite alone, out there making decisions by himself. He’s longed for advisors. He was eager to work as a team, even saying that he considered himself no more than a deacon with a focus on preaching and evangelizing, much as the rest of us have our own focus on the youth, campus, administration and the poor. As far as he was concerned, he indicated, we stood on equal footing.
We left that night, adn while I felt that we were not yet completely unified, we were committed to becoming so. We acknowledged there is much to talk about and decide and much work to be done. First on our hearts, however, were the people of the church, their well being and their relationships. We made the following commitments:

• We committed to meeting every other week.
• We committed to going out in pairs and meeting with each and every member of the church to talk to them about their faith, our church and how they’re doing. We would do little talking and a lot of listening.
• We committed to making a point to talk to each other man in the group at least once a week, to deepen our relationship and build our unity.

As we left there was a feeling expressed that this could be the beginning of a new era in our fellowship, a turning point if you will. Perhaps it will amount to nothing, most, if not all, of that depends on our follow through. As of this moment I am cautiously optimistic, with the emphasis on optimistic. Honestly, it the most optimistic I’ve felt about the church in a while. May God grant us the strength and courage to follow through with what we’ve begun. He has placed His children in our hands. You might say that as leaders we are in some ways God’s teachers, babysitters and daycare workers. “These are my children.” He says, “Could you care for them and make sure that they get home safely?” It’s a humbling responsibility when you look at it that way.

Shrode at the Thinklings posted twice this month (here and indirectly here) about having daily quiet times. I agree with him on the importance of a consistent time with God, both in prayer and Bible study. Acts 2:42 says that the first Christians were devoted to 4 things, and prayer and the scriptures (if you interpret the ‘apostles teachings’ as scripture) were two of them. Frankly, it’s all too easy for me to get independent and self-reliant and start skipping or abbreviating my quiet times. Prayer time comes much easier for me. I’ve just never been a bookworm, and reading my Bible is no exception. If you visit here regularly, you know I’ve been posting my notes from my Bible studies. You can visit here and see that I’ve been less than regular in that. It’s a constant challenge for me, but one I will continue to try to rise to.
Taking Shrode’s words as a starting point, I wanted to comment here on the idea that it must be daily. I hear that from nearly every Christian who speaks of it. To challenge it seems almost sacrilege. Frankly, in my 15 years as a disciple, it caused me a bit of grief and guilt. When I’d miss a day of Bible reading, I felt less a Christian. If I didn’t pray enough, I felt less a Christian. To some degree, my Bible study was out of obligation, not desire to learn and know God.
To cut to the chase, I think we place too much emphasis on the ‘daily’. There are many of folks like me who aren’t readers. We risk damaging those folks by criticizing them for not reading daily. A commitment to the Bible isn’t a commitment to a schedule. Frankly, in recent years as I’ve realized that missing a day or too doesn’t necessarily say anything about my commitment to the scriptures. There was a time as I came to that realization that I swung the other way and didn’t read much at all. Since then, however, my desire to read has actually grown. It’s now about me learning about God not punching my spiritual time clock.
Most of the Christians of the first century (and probably many centuries after) actually couldn’t read and there was no Bible or scroll available to them. A select few had them and could read and I imagine that the others cherished every bit of time they could spend at those men’s feet listening to God’s word.
We need to resist the temptation to put quantifiable measures on one’s spirituality or commitment. (To be fair to Shrode, he wasn’t saying that we can or should do that. His main point was only that we commit to read, among other things.) Not that we shouldn’t talk about how much we read or what we’re learning, but it’s just not as simple as daily or not, it takes knowing someone to make a comment on their commitment to scripture. Some will take this freedom and abuse it, saying they don’t have to read and so don’t ask them to, but those folks aren’t really interested in a commitment to the Bible anyway. But I think there are plenty of committed, sincere disciples who just don’t read every day.

I’m finally getting back to the subject of fundamentals that I started a while back. Reading back over my two posts and the associated comments, I’ve realized that I have some explaining to do. First is to give some back ground on why I feel the need to explore this topic. There’s a several month history behind this that I ought to articulate. Although I’ve touched on it a couple of times, I’ll save the complete story for another day.
The second thing, and the subject of this post is to define ‘fundamental’. I realized that I threw the word out without really defining it in this context. I learned from radio talk show host Mark Scott in Detroit that one of the things one must do in any debate is to define your terms. (Once on 1270 AM, Mark is now heard only on the internet. If you’re going to go listen, be forewarned – Mark is well right of center, unabashedly libertarian actually. I found his reasoning ability and methods excellent.) So when I said, ” We ought to fight for unity on the essentials and let the rest fall where it may. ” how do I define ‘essential’ or ‘fundamental’ or ‘foundational’?
First some dictionary definition excerpts from dictionary.com:
Essential:

Adj.

1. Constituting or being part of the essence of something; inherent.
2. Basic or indispensable; necessary

n.

1. Something fundamental.
2. Something necessary or indispensable.

Fundamental:

Adj.

1. Of or relating to the foundation or base; elementary.
2. Forming or serving as an essential component of a system or structure; central

n.

1. Something that is an essential or necessary part of a system or object.

Foundational:

Adjective form of Foundation:
n.

1. The basis on which a thing stands, is founded, or is supported.

So the ‘foundations’ of Christianity would be, by definition, those things that make up it’s essence, that define it. They are inherent in it, indispensable and necessary. The implication is that if you take one of these things away, you may have something that looks like Christianity, but is not. It is missing part of the essence the thing. So if we’re to find the fundamentals, we need to be sure what we get is truly the essence. With out it, Christianity would be something different. They are “The basis on which [it] stands, is founded, or is supported.”
Having the definition doesn’t help us agree on what they are, although it should help us evaluate what we find. But even the search for ‘fundamentals’ can be problematic. My friend Virusdoc took minor offense (or at least displeasure) at the term ‘fundamental’, relating too closely to the fundamentalist movement in Christianity, which he is not too fond of. But I think that regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not, your Christianity is founded on something, some sort of fundamentals. So whether you choose to call yourself a ‘fundamentalist’ matters little, there is still something, some core that supports your faith.
In the comments here, he also challenged my use of the Bible as the only source for that foundation. He encouraged me to look at other sources as well. I’ll admit to a personal bias here, but that concept is hard to consider. While I’ve gotten much inspiration and knowledge from other sources – books, preachers, seminars, friends, blogs, forums – I have always compared those things to the Bible. Why is that? Part is upbringing. I was taught to do that. But there is also a principle at work here. Jesus spoke of how we build our spiritual house, He told us not to be careful of how we build the house itself, but to pay careful attention to the foundation. In Matthew 7:24-27 He says that to build your life on his words is to build on a secure foundation. To not build on his words is to build on sand. We find his words in the Bible (An interesting question that I’m not prepared to answer right now is, Should our fundamentals only come from Jesus’ words and not the rest of scripture? Perhaps so, but that’s a debate for another post.) The Bible is not subject to man’s whim. It is like bedrock: solid, secure, stable and unmovable. The opinions of men, even well thought out and agreed upon by many, are like sand, clay and dirt: they can shift and squirm. Today’s revelation or inspiration may be out of fashion tomorrow, but Jesus’ words will always be true.
Hopefully you can see the danger of adding in too much to the foundation. If everything is foundational, then you have nothing left to build the building. The Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, even your own home are mostly not foundation. In fact the foundation is the least attractive part of most buildings. Who wants to live or work in the basement? Who enjoys getting down into a crawl space? But without it, the ‘attractive’ parts of the building would be in danger of collapse.
Have you ever looked at the NYC skyline and wondered why there seems to be two ‘downtowns’ where the building heights soar, one at the tip of Manhattan and one about midway up the island? It has nothing to do with property values or social demographics and everything to do with bedrock. In these two areas the bedrock is much closer to the surface making it easier to get to and therefore easier and cheaper to build tall buildings. See, architects and civil engineers know that in order to build something great, you must look for the right foundation.