I’ve Studied and Practiced Ekklesia More Than Most People Have

Daily writing promptOn what subject(s) are you an authority?View all responses

I’ve studied, personally experienced, and practiced ekklesia (the ancient Greek participatory town hall meeting that Jesus said He would build) more than most people have but doesn’t make me “an authority.” I’m more of an exhorter and encourager of that kind of radical Christianity. Christ, Himself, is the authority and I try to continually listen to and obey Him regardless of the consequences. Here’s some of what has come to my heart and mind this morning.

Pastors who are not willing to be run out of town because of what they preach are dangerous. They train Christians to follow their example of image-management, appeasement strategies, self-protection, and casual Christianity. They encourage people in the congregation to believe that pleasing people is more important than radical obedience to Jesus. They promote routine religion that is based on mere (one time) verbal acknowledgement of Christ rather than on daily trusting in and relying on the grace, power, and presence of the risen Jesus.

Some early Christ-followers are quoted as saying, “We must obey God rather than men!” That statement cost them. They paid by being rejected, run out of town, tortured, imprisoned, and murdered for their refusal to abandon (or tone down) their daily reliance, love for, and obedience to the living, resurrected Jesus.

Their example of putting and keeping Jesus first (above all other claims on their loyalty), at the cost of extreme suffering, demonstrated their sold-out daily dependence on the reality and presence of the living Jesus. People who saw how they blessed those who cursed them and prayed for those who despitefully used them, were convinced that they couldn’t have responded that way to such cruelty and abuse without the supernatural reality of Jesus. Their example of depending on Jesus despite their suffering caused so many people to begin to surrender to and rely on Jesus that this phrase became well known in the Roman Empire: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the ekklesia (Christ’s participatory town hall meeting).”

If you know how to listen to, obey, and daily rely on the risen Jesus, train a few other people to do it so that you can follow Jesus together as His participatory town hall meeting. We need many multitudes of mini meetings of the body of Christ where Christians encourage and train one another to fully embrace and live out the grace that gives them supernatural power to obey God instead of men.

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