THE CHURCH I COULDN'T FIND: How a First-Century Church May Look in the Twenty-First Century

By CHARLES ALEXANDER

After a year of searching, Charles and Verna could not find a church, or a denomination, that was very meticulous in restoring some, essential, principles of first century praxis. Consequently, this book offers ways of dealing with the question, “How?” It also provides practical approaches of dealing with the theological questions ar

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Jan 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950256372

CHARLES ALEXANDER

The author was born and raised in the dockland area of Liverpool, England. Having met Verna in Canada, the result was that all intent of returning to England disappeared and, together, they raised three children and a lot more grandchildren. After ordination, Charles spent most of his ordained ministry on the Canadian prairies. He was co-founder of the Anglican Renewal Movement and spent much time of his ministry conducting conferences throughout all of Canada, throughout the United States and other parts of the world. Charles is now mostly engaged in writing and enabling churches to move in apostolic directions. His favourite activities are writing music and soccer.

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The Church I Couldn’t Find

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How a First-Century Church May

Look in the Twenty-First Century

Charles Alexander

Copyright © 2019 by Charles Alexander.

Paperback: 978-1-950256-36-5

eBook: 978-1-950256-37-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Some of the material in this book is revised substance from my former book, There Must Be Another Way.

Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture references are taken THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked NRSV taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1:    Looking for an Apostolic-Principled Church

Chapter 2:    What Are the Basics of Discipleship?

Chapter 3:    Does Your Church Have a Process for Making Disciples?

Chapter 4:    Obedience Brings Surprises

Chapter 5:    Back to the Future

Chapter 6:    Five Non–Negotiable Apostolic Principles

Chapter 7:    Does the Gospel Change in a Changing World?

Chapter 8:    Worship: Would The Twelve Apostles Recognize It In Your Church?

Chapter 9:    Home Groups: How Apostolic Are They?

Chapter 10:  The Group Event—What Really Works?

Conclusion

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to God for the prayers and support of my beautiful wife, Verna. She was wonderfully supportive in our joint search. Thank you to our fabulous GenX family, Kara, Leah, and Mark for their helpful input and suggestions regarding the latest draft of this book. Thank you to my longtime friend, the Rev. John Briscall, for his gift of encouragement and for his useful suggestions. I am also grateful to the Rev. Ron Cooker for reminding me that this book is intended for ordinary and enthusiastic church members. A deeply felt thanks to churches-especially St. James, Calgary, and St. Mary’s, Metchosin, Victoria. They enabled me to think bigger about praxis principles of the first century ch urch.

Chapter 1

Looking for an Apostolic-Principled Church

"W  here shall we go tomorrow, love?"

I don’t know anymore, Verna often replied.

It was always a Saturday night when we asked that question of each other. We spent well over a year asking the same question, pondering week after week where we were going to worship the next day. After every church service, after reading each church bulletin, and after asking a lot of questions, Verna and I offered each other the same hesitant look. We shrugged our shoulders a lot. We’d stayed loyal to our lifelong denomination all of our lives; were we really looking for another denomination of the church? For years, sure that our vision for a Second Reformation church must be found somewhere, eventually we plodded in new directions. Peter Wagner once described this growing attitude as the New Apostolic Reformation movement in which the character of these churches are developing around new paradigms.¹

Now that I have stated part of the problem, I want to share with you that this book is really the praxis (how we do it) for my more theological treatise entitled, Time and the Biblical Bang, from Perspectives of God’s Eternal Nowness. So here we go on the how to and a first century-principled presentation on how and why I was forced into building three new churches because we needed to accommodate fast-growing numbers of people.

After spending most of my working life as a pastor in the Anglican Church of Canada, I retired early. It’s not that I gave up. Indeed, much of my ministry turned out to be of an apostolic and prophetic nature. Indeed, many thousands of seasoned church-goers had been led to new life in Christ. However, the revisionist forces in mainline churches were hard at work. To make a long story short, there were a lot of people who wanted a different kind of church than the one left behind by the twelve apostles. How could it be called an Apostolic Church? Quite deliberately, I did more than my fair share in helping to remedy that situation.

Having been graciously affirmed in an apostolic ministry by the people of St. James’ Church in Calgary, Alberta, and later by St. Mary’s, Metchosin, Victoria, I had been very busy. For more than twenty years, this Liverpool lad spent about two Sundays of every month away from the church. The congregation was very happy about that! I engaged in church and clergy conferences and missions wherever I was requested.

Just before we entered the task of building a new church at the embryonic community of St. James, Calgary, I came into a further experience of God. It was something life changing, though not quite the same as John Wesley’s Second Blessing. The experience was known as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I’ll speak of it some time later.

After a few years at this rapidly growing church in suburban Calgary, and with John Vickers of Victoria, we brought together a group of western Canadian clergy. And so began the Anglican Renewal Movement in Canada. Subsequently, I began accepting invitations to conduct conferences on personal and church renewal. At my next charge in Metchosin, Victoria, the people also agreed to let me continue in this ministry. Strangely, this congregation seemed to be very happy when I worked for God- somewhere else! Previously, St. James’ Church, Calgary, had come to the point of engaging another two full-time clergymen and a youth worker. The bishop wanted to use St. James’ church in order to give wider experience to clergy. So when I was gone, nobody noticed!

I spent all those years teaching in every region of Canada, in many parts of the United States, and in a variety of places throughout the world. God was doing a new thing. (Isa. 43:18–19) He was changing many lives through this Renewal Movement. But changed people are never satisfied with the status quo—not if there are better ways to achieve kingdom purposes. As I soon found out, it’s not all about being evangelical, charismatic or whatever, it’s really all about the kingdom of God. (Matt.6:33)

In those conferences, people were challenged to see how the Holy Spirit could help us see and do new things in personal and corporate ways. People were excited; the Jesus of history was really alive! They knew Him to be the head of the church in real terms. He inspired them to re-examine how to accomplish the main purposes of His community. I didn’t know it, but in those early days of renewal, we were on the edge of a spluttering grass roots renewal.

That was all very good, of course, but I was getting frustrated. The system allowed for this burst of new spirituality, and that was all right with the hierarchical powers, provided that those people didn’t try to force open the bottleneck in the system, which had been occupied largely by clergy-at least from the early third century. The fact is the entire structures of the church needed renewal, beginning with personal encounters with the Holy Spirit, who always leads us to a personal and ongoing relationship with Jesus. (Jn.16:14) The old system actually hindered the effective renewal of the church, from top to bottom. (We began to realize that these systemic problems also existed in every other church denomination).

However, in the sixteenth century reformation, the English Church embraced a fair amount of German Lutheranism, but did not go quite so far in the areas of Ecclesiology (how we do church). Neither went very far in the area of Pneumatology. (The life and ministry of the Holy Spirit. These, and other western countries, were in protest of, what had appeared through the controlling, hierarchical Roman Church in their time. Not surprisingly, some consequent revisionists similarly saw the value of accomplishing their agendas more easily through hierarchical and institutional control in what became clergy-centered churches. Both Protestantism and the Roman Church continue in structures never encouraged by Jesus or the Apostles.

The Reformation of revisionists from mainline churches were the most vocal in their protests against what had become known as orthodoxy. Of course they were! The hierarchical positions that bottled up the free flow of God’s people also provided a perfect vehicle for controlling the church and executing their own revisionist agendas.

In protest, and looking for more, a number of mainline groups from a variety of denominations grew restless. For about thirty years, in the post, mid-twentieth century, the Renewal Movements had extended arms of love into the far reaches of the church. Not everyone understood it. Some thought renewal was all about raising hands or singing with guitars. The renewal was about much more than individual spirituality or the raising of hands to the rhythm of a guitar.

Thinking in terms of the kingdom of God, many realized that it had a lot of social implications, both within and outside of church life. At the turn of the century, and particularly in some of the mainline churches, separation from the parent bodies began to occur. Through slow and deliberate deviousness, the authority of the Bible was being eroded at institutional levels. In my time, I saw the negation of biblical teaching on creation principles. Disunity and polarization had no common focus with which to evaluate truth. Sentimentalism was winning over substance through every issue.

It’s not that many mainline members were fundamentalists—I, for one, am not—but most of us love the Scripture and would defend the Bible’s authority with our very last breath. Actually, I am able to use the word infallibility, but in a different way than my fundamentalist brethren:

The Bible records the infallible purposes of God in His work of creation, redemption, and restoration.

Unfortunately, many church members had grown up quite ignorant of the depth and importance of the Bible. Many could not defend the historical faith on the basis of substantive biblical authority. However, revisionists rarely faced issues on the basis of the historical faith, but rather on the basis of contemporary sentimentality. It was expressed in attitudes such as, How do I feel about that? or Does it make me uncomfortable? or There is no absolute truth and My truth is as good as yours. In me-centered cultures, it was, What does it do for me? And in churches where historical and biblical authority had been supplanted by the forces of perverted democracy, revisionists were slowly securing their own agendas. The egoism of eroding Eden was finding a new playing field. The historic faith was slowly being corroded by means of the democratic vote. The entire process reminded me of that interesting passage in Daniel.

He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law. (Dan.7:25 NRSV)

First of all, I, as one whose articles were sometimes censored before they were printed in my denominational newspaper, realized that revisionists controlled the information flowing to the general populace. I was not popular with some centralized authorities when I challenged them privately and publicly; particularly concerning issues that were clearly addressed in the New Testament.

Secondly, there were too many leaders who doubted Jesus Christ to be, universally, the Lord for the whole world. They didn’t seem to mind changing Greek manuscripts of the Bible. One verse was now articulated like this: I am way, I am truth, and I am life." That very unbiblical biblical quotation found its way into the Anglican service of the burial of the dead. Nevertheless, many of us tenaciously (on the basis of Greek manuscripts) defended the apostolic position that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Not only did we believe it, but we were also able, thoughtfully, to articulate that Jesus Christ is unique. He is both God and human. God Himself paid an astounding price for the love of His creation. (Jn.3:16) In revisionist thinking, Jesus was just one of many pathways on a mythical mountain leading upward to God.

Unfortunately, many of the purveyors of such apostasy appeared to be experientially ignorant of the real story. Indeed, all too many leaders appeared to lack personal experience with God’s salvation chronicle. They didn’t seem to know that the story of salvation was exactly the reverse of all religious stories concerning this mountain. For many, religion was analogous to a mountain with many pathways leading up to God. But the Christian story is precisely the reverse of this fanciful notion. It is about God seeking us and doing so from the bottom of the mountain.

Eastern Orthodox churches have a term for this; theosis. Irenaeus and Athanasius reminded us that "God became man in order that we may become divine." Divine, in the sense that we were originally made in the image of God. (Gen.1:27) It is the work of God that now enables us. The enabling is in the power of the Spirit who reflects the very life and nature of Jesus. (Jn.16:14)

It’s all about God who has come down from the mountain and has met us where we are: at the bottom! That is, humanity is in a position where God could not be reached through religious activity, through religion, through poorly directed prayer, through being nice, through the pursuit of justice, or through any self-effort.

He came down to us because we could not reach up to Him. The Christian story is not about the human search for God, but God’s search for humanity. When a religious pathway supposedly led to God, what kind of a deity were people finding up there? In reality, the deities of natural religions take their place in a long list of mutual contradictions. (For example, not all religions even include a belief in God. In Monist thought, Buddhists don’t have a God at all; everything is one; everything is naturally divine). So, in the vast array of religious thought, it is not surprising that there are many contradictions. How may all positions be right? Some say that the Real God will show up, anyway. Hasn’t He already done that!

Third, this apostasy came to a ruthless head in an arena where many did not want to be challenged or disturbed. The secular view of human sexuality widely insinuated itself in almost every branch of church life and council discussion. At a time when creation theology was almost extinct, God’s purposes for sexuality met the deaf ears of a me-centered and feely generation. Many mainline churches, including my own, obscenely courted the favor of the world by asking the culture what the church could bless next. The cry of Jeremiah was constantly bursting upon our ears.

Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. (Jer. 6:15)

Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. (Jer. 7:28)

It was no accident of so-called progress, that many apostate people found themselves in significant seats of power. Of course, the ongoing battles were conducted in predictable directions. They were very rarely engaged in debate and tested on the basis of biblical and historical substance. After all, the current values of culture were being borne on the wings of sentimental me-ism.

What I mean by sentiment is that the forces of revisionism would not be tested through historical and biblical substance. Discussion was always channeled through communal feelings; the individual sentimentalism of what is good for me. The bigotry of relaying such a message resulted in the strange logic that, if you do not agree with me, then you must be a very intolerant person. I am so inclusive in my thinking, therefore you are the one who must be bigoted. Many uninformed people, called upon to be decision-makers, were not difficult targets. Political manipulators found easy agreement to their agendas. It is often seen that the easier targets were usually middle-class, middle-aged, insecure people. It hasn’t been difficult to exploit this very large field with, How can you disagree with our very generous, unbigoted view and not see yourself as being intolerant? As for me, growing up on the docks of Liverpool, I had absolutely nothing to prove in this middle-class institution!

I began to see the earlier and more traditional seeds of intolerance in my first year at college in Canada. Through an extraordinary process of God’s revelation, I accepted His call to study for ordination in Canada. My way had been cleared to do my seminary work in England, but God had a different way for me. In September 1961, I found myself engaged in first-year studies at Emmanuel College, Saskatoon (in the Saskatchewan, Prairie region of Canada). As a young boy, I grew up in Liverpool during the 1941 and ‘42 blitzes. One night, our two cousins, further up the street, were blown to pieces in their house. On another occasion, all our neighbors in the block across the street were also blown out of existence. One morning, we opened the front door only to find an unexploded bomb in front of our doorstep! Through all of this we, my mother and brother, Allan, often found ourselves huddled together under the staircase of our battered house. Nevertheless, I count that first year in college as the worst year of my entire life. I became a victim of the reverse cultural coziness that was paralyzing the age.

Never in my entire life had I found it difficult to make friends, but that first year in Canada was probably the loneliest year of my life. I befriended a student who was a homosexual. (From clear biblical perspectives, God does not bless homosexual activity because such relationships were never in His creation plan. But He loves all people and calls all of us to forgive relationships through repentance). Actually, we had both made a very casual acquaintance while I was a student at Church Army College in London, England. That particular young man had previously been a graduate of the college. I never did graduate! I was bad for the discipline of the college! After a year of flouting too many Victorian house rules, this former street fighter was asked to leave. For the sake of the discipline of the college, please don’t come back.

It really was a pity that the Church Army could not take this rebellious, unpolished crude diamond from Liverpool, and quietly shape him into a person who could speak easily into middle–class contexts. They had guessed that I could speak easily into lower class contexts; especially with a Scouse accent! I must say that many years later, after being the guest speaker at the annual Canadian Church Army Canadian conference, Captain Walter Marshal (the head of Church Army in Canada) proposed that I be made an honorary graduate of the organization. I am grateful to God for His humor and my long-time relationship with Church Army. Proudly, I am now officially a Church Army captain; now called Threshold Ministries. Let’s get back to Emmanuel College.

By association, many of the students assumed I was also homosexual. I was stunned! For the first time in my life, I was lonely. It is interesting that many of those students who shunned friendship with me later, became advocates of the homosexual agenda. I became a leper once again! Isn’t it strange? Previously those who shunned me were being true to the culture of the day. Many years later, they had reversed their position, but remained true to the culture of a succeeding generation. In all times, hopefully, I remained true to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to love those who are different from ourselves, and particularly those who do not agree with us. (Matt. 5:43–44)

Tradition, Tradition

Many years later, in protest, I resigned from association with my growing revisionist Anglican diocese in British Columbia. By this time, many national churches from around the world were declaring Canadian Anglicanism to be apostate. However, despite the fact that I had a very deliberate association with dissenting groups of orthodox Anglicans, I couldn’t join up with any of them. It wasn’t because I couldn’t leave the denomination in which I was ordained (although I do continue to love the historical spirituality of that denomination). It was these protesting groups (Bible-centered as they were) who showed little sign of re–examining their not so old and very incomplete, sixteenth century traditions. Few people who were associated with them had not pondered how a Second Reformation might fit so well with apostolic principles of the first century church. Personally, I looked in many directions for authentic reformation only to realize that what the church needed most was a reformation of first and second century essential principles! Both old and new systems were not looking back far enough.

They were not traditional enough; they were not biblical enough!

Realignment, in the name of reformation, is not drastic enough! I believe that many of my friends had done a good thing in departing from intolerant and heretical pathways, but I believe they could have taken the opportunity to envision how many first century principles could and should be revived. (We will examine them a little later, because these principles affect the entire church of God).

This reformation required us to rethink our broad life focus and systems in the light of the principle, What is best for the kingdom of God? Assuming we had dealt with the meaning of the kingdom of God, realignment, by itself, didn’t answer the question! After all, these people, with many clergy, had courageously broken away from the church that had formed them from the cradle to the end of their ecclesial service. They could faithfully proclaim Jesus alone, while remaining under the authority of scripture. Those good old breakaway days of refreshing freedom lost their zest for further examination. But who would risk the leaps required to move into an age of Second Reformation? Verna and I began our search to find a risk-taking church. By this time, we had begun to formulate the questions.

In our daily Bible studies, we noticed how we were growing in our appreciation of the style and character of the first-century church. All the principles adopted in the first century were all that was necessary to guard apostolic belief through the future. As time went by, we also noticed that we were no longer filtering these insights through the structures and methodology of our own tradition. (That wasn’t an easy leap)! The kingdom of God has to come before any tradition or denomination in order for us to have the right models in place. (Matt.6:33) Seek ye first the kingdom of God. On our part, for the sake of the kingdom, we had to get out in order to look in. What we were learning did not compel us to fit those paradigms into our past traditions. It never dawned on us that Jesus’ quotation of Isaiah could possibly apply to us. After all, we loved Jesus, we loved the Bible, and our heart’s desire was to serve God in His world.

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commandments of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. (Mark 7:6–8)

That final addition of Jesus struck us. Could we actually be filtering our kingdom aspirations through the fiber of Anglicanism? Or were we really filtering absolutely everything through the kingdom of God? Had the officialdom of the Anglican system ceased to ask that question? Would the answer be found in forming yet another system that smelled and looked like Anglicanism? I’m not at all sure of the answer to that last question. But we don’t believe that is the direction for us. We have to move in (hopefully) Spirit–led directions with something more than agreed–upon written formularies. In the meantime, we cannot arrogantly separate ourselves from the body of Christ. There isn’t a perfect church, but we have to be accountable somewhere, somehow!

All too often there is a major difference between thinking through the filters of the denominational church and thinking in the paradigm of kingdom life. What about Lutheranism, Romanism, Methodism, Pentecostalism, Baptist, etc.? During our journey to other churches, we found that these questions were absolutely valid. But