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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 29 Three
Tries At Traditionalism Ending In A Home Group In August 2002 we left
the church that I spoke about in the last chapter.
In early spring of 2003 the church closed. I
was not allowed to attend the last business meeting even though I had
contributed financially for more than half of the previous fiscal year.
Only those who were in attendance at the very end were allowed to
attend this meeting to decide what to do with the church assets. I
can’t imagine the apostle Paul enjoying such a meeting, can you? From
2002 to 2005 we attended three different traditional churches.
One might think that we were “church hoppers”, but we really
weren’t. Up to that point
in my life I had only been a part of three streams within Christendom.
From birth to age twenty I was part of the church my parents
attended. From age
twenty-one to age thirty-nine my friends and I organized ourselves in
what we called Quinte Fellowship. From age forty to age fifty I was part
of the church I mentioned in the last paragraph.
I don’t consider that church hopping. In 1994 a friend invited
one of her friends named Dianne to a mid-week meeting.
To shorten this story, Jesus brought Dianne and I together in
marriage in 1995. So good
things can come about in church, even traditional churches.
From 2002 to 2005 Dianne and I first
attended a Charismatic style church that was formed a few years earlier
due to a church split. Then
we attended a non-Charismatic Evangelical church that was born from the
Holiness Movement decades earlier and had evolved into what it presently
is through a couple of church splits.
The last of the three churches we attended was a traditional
Pentecostal church that ended up going through the nastiest split I’ve
ever seen. Believe me, it
had nothing to do with me. When we first started
attending this Pentecostal church the split was already in motion. A
political style battle was raging between a group who wanted the pastor
out and another group who wanted him to stay.
I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There were back room
politics, but without the cigarette smoke.
There was lobbying for support by both sides. I was approached to
become a member so I could support one side in the upcoming vote.
I declined. Gossip
and lies abounded. People were vying for prominence as if this was a The whole thing came down
to a vote after a Sunday morning meeting. The church constitution stated
that for a pastor to be kicked out of a church,
sixty-six percent of the people had to vote him out. I
know I’m somewhat simplistic, but I can’t find “church
constitutions” in the New Testament.
Well, this pastor got voted out by about sixty-seven percent.
He almost didn’t lose, but lose he did. Since my wife and I
couldn’t because we weren’t members, we just sat back and watched
the ballots being dropped into the offering plates and waited for the
returns to come in. It took
a while to count the votes, and there was probably a recount because the
result was so close. At
least they didn’t have to go to the Supreme Court to determine a
winner. It was quite a
dramatic moment when the score was finally announced from the pulpit.
Some were enthused by the results while others were furiously
angry. One man actually
sprung from his pew and spoke out for all to hear, “enjoy the fire and
brimstone, you bastards”. I
could not believe my ears. He
was calling his brothers in Jesus “bastards”, and this was in a
Sunday morning church meeting. No,
let me rephrase that. This
was a degenerate meeting of the ecclesiastical maze that had little
resemblance to a gathering of the saints. It was a couple of years
earlier, in 2002 when I was asked to lead a weekly home group.
If I have any particular calling or placement in the Body of
Christ I would say it would be “a Bible teacher with a prophetic
edge”. By “prophetic edge” I’m
not talking about end-time prophecy. I’m talking about speaking a
relevant word from the mind of God as seen in Scripture.
I don’t teach just to dispense knowledge, although I’m
certainly not opposed to knowledge.
I teach in order to help us all, including myself, to understand
what our Lord wants for us. I
don’t consider myself to be overly important.
I’m only trying to do my little part in the Body of Christ.
As my internet brother in Christ, Joe often says, “we’re all
important in the Body of Christ. No one is more important than
another”. How right Joe
is. I told one friend that I
felt I had a “teaching ministry with a prophetic edge”.
He thought “teacher with a prophetic edge” sounded cool, and
that it would make for a catchy promotional slogan on a business card.
Now I like my friend and I
got a laugh out of his idea, but he was half serious.
We do tend to like commercializing church, don’t we. I thought if I was to
lead a small group, it would be a Bible study. I felt I could do that
fairly well, so we started out with the book of Romans.
It’s one of my favourite books in the Bible. It’s a
“thinking man’s” book. Thinking isn’t something we particularly
like doing in this “post-modern generation”.
If you’re willing to plow through each word and phrase in
Romans with serious thought, you’ll finish the book a wiser Christian.
You’ll learn the meaning of words such as, sin, repentance,
faith, justification, imparted and imputed righteousness, and
reconciliation among other words, You’ll
learn about concepts like the nature of man, the significance of faith,
the indwelling Holy Spirit, the New Covenant in relation to the Old
Covenant, the place of This Bible study is one
of the best things that has happened to me.
It has forced me to think about and study every phrase in the New
Testament in systematic fashion. As
I type these words, almost six and a half years after we began this
little group around a kitchen table, we’ve studied and thought about
every phrase in the New Testament, as well as the books of Daniel and
Joel. All this “without a
Bible study guide” with the usual few questions per Bible chapter. I
prefer pulling out my commentaries and language guides and
systematically and intelligently studying every phrase as it appears on
the page. I find this style of Bible study much more effective than just
answering a few questions from a guide that is meant to help us
understand a whole chapter but can’t because of its lack of details.
Along the way I’ve
written a commentary on every phrase we’ve studied.
In a matter of a week or two of writing
these words I will have completed a commentary on every phrase in the
New Testament, as well as the books of Daniel and Joel. This project is
almost eight hundred thousand words in length and can be found at www.stevesweetman.com.
Studying the Bible in such a way will change a life more than
most other things can. I feel we’ve devalued
the Bible in the ecclesiastical maze of today.
One of my dad’s favourite songs was entitled
“Dust On The Bible”. Well,
some of us have pretty dusty Bibles.
I’m convinced that the best way for a group of people to learn
the Bible is to sit down in a friendly atmosphere and study each phrase
of the Bible from a good hermeneutical and knowledgeable base, with lots
of interactive discussion. That’s
what we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years.
Along the way we’ve had
lots of laughs and fun as friends, and we’ve learned more of what
Jesus wants for us as well.
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