Daily writing prompt

What are you passionate about?

View all responses

I am passionate about the ancient Greek concept of “ekklesia.” It’s an incredible people-connecting, community-building idea that has been lost for many centuries.

I feel called to be an Acts 18:13 person — to persuade people to worship God in ways contrary to institutional church tradition. That tradition says that people should gather as spectators for a prearranged program and hear the same man speak week after week. Where did that tradition originate?

In 1517 a priest named Martin Luther persuaded people to worship God contrary to Roman Catholic tradition. He shifted people’s attention away from religious rituals and on to the proclamation of the Bible — away from the bread and wine and on to the pulpit. Few people could read in those days, and they needed someone who could explain the Scriptures to them more than they needed solemn ceremonies.

Ever since then almost 100% of Protestant (and non-denominational churches) have had a one-man sermon as the center of their Sunday morning service. However, you may have noticed that things have changed. Today almost everybody can read. People also have access on their phone to more sermons than they can hear in a lifetime. So, there’s really no longer a need for a church service to be focused on a sermon.

What we need today in a world full of human isolation and loneliness is Christ-centered community. We need heart-to-heart, Spirit-led interaction. Paul, the first century Christ-follower who brought Christianity to much of the non-Jewish world, was accused of disrupting religious tradition in Acts 18:13: “‘This man,’ they charged, ‘is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.”

Paul was turning people’s attention away from formalism and human control to the presence and active Headship (control) of the living, resurrected Jesus. He taught: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Romans 8:14.) And: “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” (1 Corinthians 14:26.) (Free open sharing by anyone present was the way the city council, called the “ekklesia,” met in ancient Greek cities. When Jesus said He would build His followers together, He is quoted as using the word “ekklesia.”) Christ-followers are called to be bonded heart to heart with the risen Jesus and with His followers, not to be bound to a religious institution.

Nowadays gatherings of the body of Christ in the Western world seem to be like savorless salt — bland and ineffective at radically changing people’s life by intimately connecting them with an ongoing, fully surrendered relationship with the risen Jesus, the way the first century Christians did. It’s time to let Jesus be the active, direct Head of His body again. If churches truly want to help people heal, they need to let the risen Jesus take the wheel. We need to make church “ekklesia” again! (I’ve written a book that can help: Google: Beyond Church Ekklesia.)

There’s no clergy/laity system in the New Testament. It’s time for the body of Christ to become a Spirit-led community instead of trying to be a religious hierarchy. You’re free to go beyond Christian institutionalism and to begin to continually follow the supernatural presence of “Christ in you, the hope of glory”!