The Holistic Church

The Holistic Church
'holistic' - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. The organic or functional relation between parts and whole.
The term "holistic" is mostly used in the field of alternative medicine. In this context it is usually defined as treating the whole person, not just the physical body.
In conventional medicine, it is usually only the specific body part that has the symptoms which is treated. The body itself is not viewed as only "part" of a bigger picture, the whole person. I believe that this is a mistake, but that is not the reason I have written this article. I believe that we, as believers, have made a similar mistake with our viewpoint and approach to the Body of Christ.
The Expression of the Whole Christ
"And He subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all." Eph. 1: 22, 23
The letter to the Ephesians probably shows us more than any other letter how the church is the Body of Christ. And that Body is to express the fullness of the Head, Jesus Christ.
Just think about your own physical body. What purpose does it serve? Does it not express in a physical, visible way the invisible person who lives within it? Your body communicates with the outside world. Your body expresses what you are thinking and feeling on the inside. When you speak you move your hands around to express your thoughts. I'm sure you have heard the term "body language." It simply means that you can express your thoughts and feelings with your physical body.
It is the same way with the Body of Christ. We are to express (visibly) the invisible Person who lives within us. We do this individually and corporately. Each part expresses Christ but the fullness of Christ can only be expressed by the Body (Eph. 1:23). Individually we can only express a small part of this wonderful Person. But together, corporately, we can express the fullness or the whole Christ. And now this gets down to my point.
As the church, are we expressing the fullness of Christ or only a part? Could it be that we have taken and chosen certain aspects of His nature, character, and mission and only chosen to express those specific aspects? I strongly believe that we have done this. In fact, I hope to prove it to you in this article. I have termed this process as "selective expression."
What is Selective Expression?
It is the process whereby we see, speak, teach, and consequentially express only a small part of Christ, and not the "Whole" Christ.
At the core of this problem is a very weak and limited revelation of Jesus Christ. We have a revelation of Him, but only in one small area. We have a small and limited Christ. We have only seen Him with limited vision. And that's okay because we are all growing in our revelation and understanding of this unlimited Christ. Revelation is progressive and eternally growing and expanding.
However, the problem comes in when we stop the process along the way. We become satisfied with what we have already seen of Him and stop pursuing and pressing into Christ. Now, our experience of Christ settles and crystallizes like hardened concrete. This is when we form "filters" over our vision of Christ. We only see Him a certain way because we are looking through the "spectacles" of our past revelation and experience.
Here is an example. There was a time in my life when the Lord was revealing to me His heart for the lost. He showed me how much He loved them and wanted to reach them. This crystallized for me and became a filter over my eyes. Then, everything I saw in the scriptures was about evangelism. It didn't matter where I went in the bible, all I saw was evangelism. I had put on the "spectacles" of evangelicalism. And now I was out to convert the non-believer and recruit the believer into becoming as evangelistic as me. Partial vision can sometimes be worse than total blindness!
The real problem came in when I went out to find others who had on the same spectacles as me. I only wanted to fellowship with Christians who were as evangelistic as me. Now we are talking corporate expression here. What I saw effected how I expressed. And now there was a group of us expressing together. The problem was that we were only expressing a very small part of Christ! He is much bigger than evangelism, miracles, healing, deliverance, feeding the poor, helping widows, spiritual gifts or spiritual warfare.
He is the All!
And His desire is to be expressed as such by His church.
First Things First - the Chicken or the Egg?
One of the first things that God had the children of Israel do after they left Egypt was to build the tabernacle (Ex. 25 - 30). When the new generation entered the Canaan land, the whole point was for God to have two things: a house (temple), and a city (Jerusalem). There was a certain piece of property that God had in mind for his house and the children of Israel would have to fight their way into the land to obtain it. The reason God wanted the land was to have a building site for his house and his city. The theme of the house and the city runs all throughout scripture. You can even see the raw materials for this building project in the garden (Gen. 2:12). Throughout all of scripture we see "the house" and "the city." Here are just a few: Ezra 6:3; 2 Sam. 6:17; Ps. 132: 3-5; Heb. 4:16; Luke 9:58; Matt. 21:13; Matt. 16: 13-18; Heb. 11:10; Rev. 21 & 22.
The House and the City
It's important that we realize that the city grows out of the house. The house must come first. Who ever heard of a city without a house? The city is the expansion of the house. But what is all of this figurative language about?
The House - a place for the Lord to rest his head
The "house" is the dwelling place of God. It is the place where he can relax, where he can be himself. It is the place where he can freely express himself. Just like we design and decorate our homes to suit and express who we are, so does the Lord with his house. It's all about the place of rest, comfort, and expression (Acts 7:44-50; Is. 66:1). The house is always the center of the city. In Old Covenant language, the temple is the center of Jerusalem. The temple was the focal point for all Jewish worship and culture. This is but a shadow or picture of the true house of God, the church (I Pet. 2_5; I pet. 4:17; I Tim. 3:15; I Cor. 3:9-16). And this house expresses who he is. This house is Jesus Christ in corporate form.
The City - all throughout scripture the city represents authority and power
The establishment of a city always depicts the establishment of conquest and authority. God has always wanted a city. In Revelation 21 and 22 we see that he gets it. The New Jerusalem is the culmination of all of God's purposes and dreams in one place. It's a heavenly city that comes down to earth (Rev. 21:10). And God gets his desire fulfilled to dwell with and in man (Rev. 21:3). The Father and the Son are the Temple (Rev. 21:22). And this city is the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:9).
The city, since it represents God's authority, also represents the kingdom of God. The throne of God is there and his people rule with him (Rev. 22:3-5). The city expresses who he is and what he does. The city is the fullness and expansion of the house. Christ is fully expressed through his church and this brings forth the kingdom. The kingdom is the expression of his mission to the world. It includes evangelism, feeding the poor, reaching the lost, healing of all sorts, deliverance -- basically Isaiah 61:1, 2. The kingdom is the city set on a hill (Matt. 5:14-16).
The Present Dichotomy
I see that there has been a polarization happening among believers involving this issue of the house and the city. Many have created a dichotomy out of the church and the kingdom. There are those who say that the kingdom is what Jesus preached, so we should be into that. Then, there are others who say that Paul wrote mostly about the church, so we should be into that.
The truth is that this is not an either/or situation. The church and the kingdom are not diametrically opposed to one another. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. They are both aspects of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The church brings the kingdom to earth because it is through the church that the nature, life, and works of God are displayed (Eph. 3:10, 11; Eph. 2:10).
Therefore, we will never see the kingdom come to this earth in any significant way until we see the church displaying the fullness of Christ. She is all about expressing her Lord. And the kingdom (his authority and works) are part of that expression.
We must remember that God has a divine order to things. The house comes before the city. Communal comes before missional. Relationship comes before good works. Identity comes before action. Being comes before doing. Who God is determines what he does. Jesus healed the sick because he is compassion. He raised the dead because he is resurrection. He fed the multitudes because he is the bread of life.
The Source and Origins of Church Life
Before anything else existed there was the fellowship and community of the Godhead (John 17). Before there was ministry, outreach, or mission, there was a divine community flowing with life. This is the model and foundation for all church life. If there is community life, and it is healthy, then the divine life of the Godhead will flow out to the world as well. Why? Because that is part of who God is. And the community of believers is all about expressing that life to one another and to the world. In other words, the community of the Godhead, in all of its fullness and glory, is to be expressed by the community of believers.
Sisters and brothers, we must begin there!
written by Milt Rodriguez

NO Fellowship? No Problem!

NO FELLOWSHIP? NO PROBLEM!
by Chip Brogden

You will never truly appreciate or benefit from fellowship until you have learned how to live without it.


There already is a fellowship of saints. It is a spiritual fellowship, and it is based on Christ having the preeminence – not the fellowship having preeminence. All this yearning for fellowship and being with others is the result of being hung-over from the religious system. You're trying to fill a void that religion used to fill.



The purpose of solitude in the spiritual desert is to get you to see that Jesus is Enough. You're not going to die from lack of fellowship, but if you don't learn that Jesus is Enough then spiritually speaking you're dead already. He's the One you need to be focused on – not starting a fellowship, not finding a home group, not making something happen with other people.



And already I can hear the "yeah buts". "Yeah, but God made us to be social beings. Yeah, but God knows we need encouragement from other believers. Yeah, but the Bible says forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. Yeah, but we're all supposed to be part of the Body of Christ. Yeah, but there's just something about gathering together with like-minded believers. Yeah, but you just don't understand what it's like." Yeah, but I do understand - I've been through that part of the desert before, and what I'm trying to tell you is God wishes to know if you love Him or if you love fellowship with others. God wishes to know if you are in love with Him or if you are in love with things about Him. God wishes to know if you seek Him or seek a meeting about Him.



There are times and seasons where He calls you to be alone and apart with Him. I’m not saying it will always be like that, but what if it is? What if He calls you to walk alone with Him for the rest of your life? Is Jesus enough for you?



I asked that question of a group of Christians once: is Jesus enough for you? Because most Christians do not believe this. They want Jesus, but they also want fellowship with others. Really, do you know what Christians want? Not fellowship with others. That sounds so spiritual. Really what they want is acceptance from other Christians. You go deep down and that's what they want. They want to feel accepted by other Christians. Well, all I can tell you is that you're setting yourself up for a huge disappointment. Eventually there will come a time when you will have to decide between the truth that God has revealed to you and the acceptance of other Christians. Now it hurts when you are not accepted by other Christians. It hurts when other Christians misunderstand you and speak all manner of evil against you falsely when you have spoken the truth to them in love.



But the bottom line is your spiritual life and walk with God does not depend upon the acceptance of other Christians. You might think it does, and it sure makes things easier, but it is not a condition of following Christ – making sure other Christians understand and accept you. The deeper you go into God the more unacceptable you will be to other Christians. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ is Himself, "Despised and rejected, a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Jesus would not be, and is not, accepted by most Christians, and do you know that does not change Him and His relationship with His Father? He is Lord whether you accept Him or not, my friend. And if you are His disciple then He accepts you whether the rest of the Christian population accepts you or not.



What I have found is that whenever I ignore the season God has me in, and I try to create fellowship, or seek fellowship, outside of the time and place appointed by My Father, it always ends in disaster. It creates problems, it becomes a disappointment, or it turns into a distraction from what He wants for my life.



And that is never more true than the period of time when you are fresh out of the religious system. You've been under a religious spirit for so many years, and don't think you can just wake up one day, stop going to church, and be set free from that religious mindset. You think you need fellowship, you think you need meetings, you think you need other people in your life, you think you need all these things, and you are in error. That's the religious habit talking. It's just like a drug.



"Oh brother Chip, I'm so lonely, I've been going to church every Sunday for twenty years and now we just sit home on Sunday and we feel so empty inside!" Well praise God, if that's where God has you right now then thank God for it. Stop looking for other people to fill a void that only Christ can fill. You've been covering up that void with a lot of religious junk and He's stripping all that away. He's trying to build something in you, so let Him do it according to the times and seasons that He has appointed. Don't rush through that process. Get comfortable with just you and God. My goodness, you don't even know what it's like to walk with God and just be hidden in Him because your whole life you've been following Him in a crowd, worshipping Him in a crowd, praying to Him in a crowd, learning about Him in a crowd.



Enoch walked with God, and he didn't have anyone else to fellowship with.



Noah walked with God and he didn't anyone but his family.



Abraham walked with God and he didn't have a house church to go to.



Moses spent forty years in the desert and it didn't hurt him a bit, he came out better than he went in.



Jesus walked with God and every single one of His friends and disciples denied Him and fled when He needed them the most.



You give people too much credit for your spiritual well-being and don't give God enough credit. I'd rather be alone with God than have a crowd of people without Him.



Now that doesn't diminish anything the Bible says about the Body of Christ. But you've got to learn how to get connected to the Head before you try to get connected to the Body. Body Life is only as good as the Body's relationship to the Head. The Body has no life in itself apart from the Head. If you read what the Bible says about the Body of Christ, you notice it doesn't say that we are supposed to seek out our place in the Body or try to insert ourselves into place. It says He sets us in the Body of Christ according to His will. His will, not ours. You try to set yourself in place and you'll get it wrong.



The Bible does not say "hold fast to the Body" or "hold fast to the members of the Body", it says "hold fast to the Head." The Bible does not say, "Seek ye first the fellowship of others", but "seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and all these things – including fellowship – will be added to you." You learn to do that and the rest will take care of itself, in the time and manner that God sees fit.



Take your hands off that whole issue of fellowship and cast that concern onto the Lord. Go to Him and say, "Lord, here I am in a desert place, it's dry, and it's lonely, and it looks like there's no fellowship. But You are My Rock, My Fortress, My Hiding Place, You lead me and direct my steps. You be My Fellowship. If you see fit to bring me into relationship and fellowship with others, fine; but if not, then I trust that You are more than Enough to meet my spiritual, emotional, and social needs. I can live without fellowship Lord, but I cannot live without You!"



Now folks, I have been in that place so many times I don't even have to pray about it anymore. I've just learned to trust God in this area, and I know He is sufficient. It's settled in me. It's not even a thing I pray about anymore. I want it to become settled in your heart as well. Let the desert do its work.

The Outdoor Church

The Outdoor Church
I love hearing the stories that come out of this creative journey into simple/organic church-without-walls (or whatever else one wants to call it).  One of the keys to what God is doing is that we are all unique and there is no cookie-cutter way to gather, grow, and reach out.  We will miss it if we seek to copy what someone else is doing.  Nevertheless, hearing each others stories can help us break out of own boxes and allow our imaginations to be engaged with God in a greater way.
With that in mind, I want to share Craig's story of "The Outdoor Church."
While still in full time traditional-church ministry, Craig recalls reading an article by Ted Stump called “Entertainment Evangelism:  The Spinning Act."  He realized that his high-octane efforts among youth were not producing spiritual growth in the young people and was surely leading him into a major burnout.
After several years of transition and recovery, he began to see the possibilities of incorporating "outdoors" into ministry:
During this time [of recovery], we bought a canoe when we moved to WV.  We spent a lot of time together canoeing and recovering from the hurts and pains of ministry.  We started talking about maybe starting a canoe livery or better yet a canoe ministry or a church using canoes as a main part of their outreach.  Then the seed started to grow, a church that uses the outdoors for outreach. 

During the recovery years, I continued to hear from God and see that while cell-based churches are good, house churches really are better.  House churches are closer to NT churches than either cell-based or program based, and God kept speaking to me about a church using the outdoors to reach the lost.

In 2007, we met a couple who had a lot of the same interests as we do and the more we got talking, we realized that we all were called to do an outdoor ministry. So in the summer of 2008 we started meeting unofficially.

The premise behind ODC [Outdoor Church] is that we will operate as a House Church and we meet on Sunday Evenings at 5:30pm 3 times a month.  On the fourth week, we call that Adventure Week.  We will go hiking, fishing, canoeing, camping or some other outdoor event.  My goal is that as we collect offerings, that we will have enough money to buy 10 canoes, and with these canoes we can offer free canoe trips.  We are hoping this will open the doors to meeting and building relationships with the people who hate a traditional church but love the outdoors.

Our normal house church meeting includes a  relaxed atmosphere with relational connecting, an opening crowdbreaker question, worship, biblical group discussion, personal ministry time, more relational connecting with food.

The Outdoor Church was started with the belief that people in our area of West Virginia love to hunt, fish, hike, camp, etc. but they may not like church.  Our goal is to speak their language, the outdoors, and hopefully be able to build a relationship with them in the outdoors and show them God’s love, and maybe they will want to be a part of what God is doing in our county.  We live in a rather rural area, maybe 20,000 in the entire county, so our target area is the entire county.  I’m hoping and praying, that as our church grows, we can start a house church network of The Outdoor Church. Multiple house churches throughout our county.

Crucified to the religious World

Crucified to the Religious World
"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14).
It is interesting to notice the particular way in which the Apostle speaks of the world here. That term is a very comprehensive term and includes a very great deal. Here Paul gets right down to the spirit of the thing. You notice the context; it is well for us to take account of it:
"For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh" (Galatians 6:13).
What does the Apostle mean? They want to say, "See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of Divine blessing resting upon us!" The Apostle says that is worldliness in principle and spirit; that is the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.
All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Galatians 4:19). Christ formed in you - that is my concern, he says that is what weighs with me... not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world, so that it is said that this is a successful ministry and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that; I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ - the measure of Christ in you.
You see how the world can creep in... and how worldly we can become almost imperceptibly by taking account of things outwardly - of how men will think and talk, what they will say, the attitude they will take; of the measure of our popularity, the talk of our success. That is all the world, says the Apostle, the spirit of the world; that is how the world talks. Those are the values in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of the risen Christ. In the new creation, on the resurrection side of the Cross, one thing alone determines value... and that is the measure of Christ in everything. Nothing else is of value at all, however big the thing may be, however popular it may be, however men talk favorably of it; on the resurrection side that does not count a little bit. What counts is how much of Christ there is.
You and I in the Cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. Ah, you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise; but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. The Lord gives us grace for that crucifixion. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God's sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the Cross: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world".
The above article was written by T. Austin-Sparks