Why Church?

23 September 2025

An acquaintance recently posted this meme:

This is a seriously dumb stance to take. It’s not an either/or thing.

But — whoever wrote the meme — let’s give him his due. I understand why church attendance feels irrelevant to a lot of people. For too many of us, church is Christian karaoke, a TED talk, and lying about how great your week was over bad coffee and stale donuts in the foyer. We don’t see those people in between Sundays, and in bigger churches, we won’t see the same people week to week even on Sunday. It’s not hard to see why that seems irrelevant.

That is irrelevant. But that’s not what church actually is.

So get a better church. Start obeying what the Bible says to do when we’re together: use your gifts to edify one another (1 Cor. 12-14), sing the Psalms to one another (Eph. 5:18-21//Col. 3:16), do good to one another and share (Gal. 6:10, Heb. 13:15-16). Can’t find a church like that? Don’t worry about it — find yourself a couple other believers who also want to obey these commands together. Get together and support one another. See where it goes.

A gathering like that isn’t irrelevant to your impact on the world; it’s where you get patched up from last week and armored up to go out into spiritual battle this week. It’s where you find answers and moral support for the hard things you face. It’s the people who pray for you when you’re headed into something tough; the people who show up at your door with a big pot of chicken soup when you’re sick; the people who will give you a ride home from the hospital after an outpatient surgery.

You need these people. If you don’t have them, you’re missing one of the great blessings of the Christian life. And not to put too fine a point on it, you’re disobeying one of the basic commands in the Christian life (Heb. 10:24-25).

Now if you’re one of four guys posted to a radar station in the Aleutians, and you’re the only Christian, then it’s not your fault you don’t have fellowship. You’ve been providentially prevented, and that’s on God. He’ll see you through it; take your time in the Cave of Adullam and turn a profit on it as best you can. But let’s be honest, that’s not most people.

Most Christians don’t have fellowship because they aren’t seeking it. They aren’t even trying to obey the instructions God clearly gave. If that’s you, there’s no better time to start obeying. Find yourself a few people and get to it!

Comments Off on Why Church? | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Parallel Revival, Shadow Ecclesiology | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

An Example They Don’t Understand

26 November 2024

Back in my days running the sound board for my church, I quickly learned that invisibility is the key attribute of a sound tech. Everybody in the house should hear everybody on stage effortlessly, and everybody on stage should hear themselves and each other effortlessly, just as if there were no electronic amplification involved at all. For a young man both interested in technical things and possessed of a young man’s ego and hunger for recognition, it was a perfect lab for character formation: if I did the job well, nobody gave me a second thought.

The only time anybody looks back at the sound booth is when something goes wrong: they can’t hear a soloist or a speaker, there’s a sudden screech of feedback, or some such. Those mistakes are obvious enough; everybody knows they’re happening. But there’s another, more subtle type of mistake.

When the mix is off just a bit—one voice a little too high, another instrument a little too low, too much reverb here, just a touch too little mids there, that sort of thing—nobody looks back at the booth. But there’s an unease in the room. They can’t consciously name what’s going on; half of them are not consciously aware that anything’s going on. But there’s a wrongness you can feel, a restlessness in the crowd.

I learned to pick up on that restlessness as a newbie. The problem was, as a newbie, I was barely half a step ahead of the crowd. I know something was wrong, because I could see them reacting to it. But I often had no idea what was wrong, or how to fix it. The one thing I had going for me was blind instinct. I’d just get my hands on the knobs and start adjusting—a little too far this way; a little too far that way; back until it felt right, then stop. Move on to the next control. I couldn’t tell you, much of the time, what the needed adjustment was. I couldn’t consciously hear it, and after dancing all over the sound board, I usually couldn’t tell you which adjustment made the difference. But I’d get done making adjustments, and it just felt right to me. I could see the difference in the room, too: people would settle back in their seats, quit fiddling with their bulletins, just sing along with the music.

My fellow sound techs, including the guys who trained me, noticed. I remember more than one of them asking me “What did you do? That sounded good!”

I would just shrug. “I adjusted it until it felt right.”

In those days, we were blessed to have members of the music group Glad as part of the church, and sometimes Ed Nalle would sing on a special occasion. I vividly remember Heidi, Ed’s wife, coming back to the sound booth on multiple occasions. “Can’t you hear that?” she would ask. No, I couldn’t. Then she’d grab a chair, turn it around backwards, and half-sit on the chair back in front of the board. She’d reach up and make a couple of adjustments. It would sound better.

Unlike me, Heidi knew exactly what she was hearing, and knew exactly what to adjust. She ought to; she’d been running sound for decades. She had words for things I wasn’t even sure I heard, and as far as I could tell, she was never wrong. Looking back, I probably could have learned a lot more from her, but it honestly never occurred to me to ask her to stick around after service and show me what she’d adjusted and why. I don’t know that I’d have had the nerve; she was a seasoned, working pro, and I was a barely-trained amateur. So I just stood at her elbow and watched. I tried (failing, half the time) to hear exactly what difference each adjustment made. But sometimes I could hear the difference, and those times made me a better sound tech, just by watching Heidi’s example.

Why am I telling you this?

Because we rub shoulders every day with people who are the moral equivalent of barely-trained me, back in the day. The world these days makes them uneasy, and they’re not sure why. They don’t quite have words for it. Of course, there’s little they can do outside their own lives to influence the mix, but even in their own lives, most of the time, they have no idea what they’re doing. A little of this…oops, that was too much; dial it back. A little of that….

Catechized by a culture that’s abandoned special revelation and at war with natural revelation, they don’t even suspect the existence of instructions that could help them. The culture has worked very hard to make them deaf. But the image of God is still within them, and a sinful, broken world hurts them even though they don’t know why they hurt.

As Christians, we hear what they don’t. Sometimes, we can explain; other times, they’re so deaf they can’t hear us anyway. What we can always do is what Heidi did for me: be an example. Half the time, they won’t be able to tell why we’re doing what we’re doing, just like half of what Heidi did was completely opaque to me. But the other half the time, they’ll be able to tell the difference. Maybe not anything they quite have words for, but it just feels better somehow. So even if you don’t know how to explain yourself, even if you know they wouldn’t get it even if you could explain well, just be an example they don’t understand. Your very existence shows them that a better way is possible.

Of course, you’re only an example if they can see you. Let the unbelievers around you into your life. In a culture that often hates us, we’re tempted to just hide. Don’t. Let them see you. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

Comments Off on An Example They Don’t Understand | Autobiography, Kingdom Parish | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Micro-Christendom in Practice

4 November 2024

I got to guest on a podcast this past week. “Micro-Christendoms and Local Government” released a few days ago. It’s episode 24 of The Civitas Podcast, hosted by Peter Leithart and James Wood.

The Civitas Project is a mostly an academic endeavor out of Theopolis Institute, focused on what they’re calling “ecclesiocentric postliberalism.” That’s a jawbreaker of a term, but it describes a very practical reality. The classical liberal order–the political and social world championed by the likes of John Locke and John Stuart Mill–is dying. The old-line secular liberals weren’t able to contend with the “anything–no, really, anything!–goes” relativism of the potsmoderns, who in turn lack the resources to contend with the dictatorial howlings of everybody from rabid feminists to woke fascists to Muslim fundamentalists. We live in a world that is rapidly abandoning relativism for a new morality hostile to anything true, good, or beautiful. That’s the “postliberal” part. The “ecclesiocentric” part argues that any sane response to the world we now live in has to begin with the church at the center. The Civitas Project exists to figure out what, exactly, that might mean. The project existed for a few years before going public with the podcast, and has also produced a book of essays, Hell Shall Not Prevail, which is well worth reading.

On the podcast, Peter and James mostly interview academics from a wide variety of fields. If you’ve been hanging out here long, Gentle Reader, you know that I’m not entirely without academic chops, but I gotta tell you, I’m nowhere near the stratospheric level of the average Civitas guest. So how’d I end up on the show? Peter and James got interested in coming down to the other end of the spectrum to chat with some practitioners. Peter was kind enough to think of me, and given his area of interest, I immediately thought of Joe Anderson. The resulting conversation was a great deal of fun, and you can hear it online or wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy it!

Comments Off on Micro-Christendom in Practice | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, News | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

All They Got Was Lunch

21 February 2023

When I talk about community pastoral work with other believers, there’s one question I get more than any other. It’s not how to prepare, what books to read, or how to evaluate seminary choices. It’s not what to say to a new widow, or how to be at the bedside when someone is in their last hours. As they hear the stories of what God is doing — the alcoholic that got sober and is working toward a senior shotput championship, the single mom that needed new tires, the felon that designed my first business card, the young lady punishing her own sins by serving as as the sexual plaything of a malevolent man, the gay man who’s frustrated by his progressive friends’ unwillingness to actually do anything to improve the city, while the Christians are working their fingers to the bone — almost every single person has the same question: “Where do you find these people?”

I never know what to say.

I know the literal answers: the severe weather shelter, a failing coffee shop, the cafe on the corner, a local massage therapy school, a church that’s focused on meeting the needs of the homeless population. But that’s not what they’re asking, is it?

They’re asking where I find this special class of people that are ready and waiting to be ministered to, as if there were some secret place to find them. And that’s absolutely the wrong question. It’s not where I’m looking; it’s how I’m looking. Lost people are everywhere; the harvest is heartbreakingly plentiful.

Jesus once taught this exact lesson. He was taking the Twelve through Samaritan country, and they had to stop to buy food. Jews have no dealings with Samaritans if they can help it; I’m sure it made a bit of a splash when an obviously diverse group of twelve Jewish men walked through town. How many people did they walk past to get to the market? Five? A dozen? Two dozen? How many merchants did they interact with to buy what they needed? How many people did they pass on their way back out to the well?

Of course, you know the story: while they’d been in town, Jesus accosted a lone woman who came out to the well to draw water in the heat of the day. She believed in Him, and when the disciples came out, she went back into the village to tell everyone about the Man she’d met by the well. As the inhabitants of the town began to come out toward the well, Jesus tells His disciples — with, it seems, some irony — that they should pray for God to sent laborers into the harvest, because the harvest is so plentiful.

Don’t miss this point: the harvest Jesus is talking about is the population of the town He’d just sent the disciples into.

Jesus had one shot at interacting with one person, and He got the whole town out to the well. The disciples walked past who knows how many people passing through town to market, interacted with the merchants, and walked back through town on their way out, and all they got was lunch. They were there, but not as harvesters. They simply weren’t on task.

Where did Jesus find all these people? They were there the whole time.

Better question: what did Jesus do differently? A little further into the story, He tells us: “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things.” (John 8:28)

The harvest is right in front of you. Listen. Listen to them. Listen to God. Say and do what He tells you. I promise you, the Lord of the Harvest knows how to send you as a harvester.

Comments Off on All They Got Was Lunch | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Mentoring/Disciple-Making, Real Ministry Training | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Washed

9 March 2021

I had occasion to finally summarize my research and teaching on baptism over the past decade or so. Here it is.

1 Comment | Baptism, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: When to Baptize?

28 June 2019

In the church we have the tendency to take certain truths about the sacraments and make applications in directions that we shouldn’t, but God has a much different view of the sacraments than we do. We’ve made the Lord’s Table something to be protected, lest some heathen get away with a wafer. No; it is the body of Jesus, and Jesus gave His body to and for the world. Of course it’s blasphemy, but it’s God’s blasphemy. Our job is to submit to what God is doing. 

Likewise, we recognize the importance of baptism, and therefore delay it in order to get all the logistical ducks in a row to make a big to-do. We want to do it in church on a Sunday morning. We want the person to invite all his unbelieving friends and relatives to the baptism so we don’t miss a recruiting opportunity. It somehow escapes our notice that there is no biblical example of delaying baptism for these reasons. A new convert is baptized in the first available body of water by whatever Christian is on hand to do it. 

3 Comments | Baptism, Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: Fencing the Table?

25 June 2019

If it is the church’s responsibility to fence the Table, to keep people away from it who aren’t going to partake in a worthy manner, then  that implies a whole authority structure to make that happen. Only certain authorized people can serve communion, only at appointed places and times, and so on.  The Roman and Eastern churches certainly took that position, and speaking broadly, so did the fathers of the Reformation. The marks of a true church, our Reformed fathers said, were word, sacrament, and discipline, and part of the function of discipline was to fence the Table. It was therefore possible in a Reformation church for a member of the church to be encouraged to come to church, but suspended from the Table as a disciplinary measure. At a commonsense level, it’s not hard to see how they got there — it’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of sending a child to bed without his supper.

The New Testament knows nothing of such a practice. There are no appointed places and times. When did the NT church gather that was *not* church? They didn’t have a church building; it was all houses. They didn’t have Sunday mornings off from work. They gathered where and when they could, and when they gathered, the church was gathering. There are no authorized servers, no one appointed to fence the table. Is it ok to serve the Lord’s Table in a private residence to a bunch of your close friends on a Thursday night? Well, WWJD? That’s how the first one happened…. The church’s role is to celebrate early and often, and invite the world to come.

There is, of course, a warning that the one who partakes in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself. (In the immediate context, the unworthy partaking is a matter of the rich shaming the poor.) But there is no suggestion that the elders should stop someone from partaking because he might be doing it unworthily. The only examination Paul commands is self-examination. Nobody else is responsible to do it for you, and God has not delegated that authority to anyone. 

An egregiously sinning, unrepentant believer may be expelled from the community entirely until he repents, but there’s no concept of allowing him to remain in the community without coming to the Table. If he is spiritually weak, then he needs strength; why would you withhold spiritual food from him?

The Table is pure grace. You want Jesus? Then come to the Table. Is it blasphemy for some spiritual tourist to come and partake of the body and blood of Christ as an act of curiosity, with no regard for what he’s really doing? Yes, of course.

But it’s not my blasphemy; it’s God’s. Jesus incarnated in the world and gave His body to and for the world; He gave His body to be abused and crucified by sinners. Some heathen getting away with a wafer is the very least of the blasphemy going on here; why would that be where we draw the line? You don’t have the right to fence the Lord’s Table because it’s not your table; it’s His.

Comments Off on Neighborhood Sacramentology: Fencing the Table? | Kingdom Parish, liturgy, The Lord's Table | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Grassroots Christendom

29 September 2013

“We’re not really Christians or anything, but will you do our wedding?”

A lot of pastors would say no. “If you just want to get married, the county courthouse is right over there. What would you want a Christian wedding for, if you don’t follow Christ?”

I had always thought I would be one of those pastors. When I was in Bible college and seminary, the arguments always seemed compelling to me. Christian weddings are for Christians. Help them build a strong foundation with some good premarital counseling, and then do the wedding. Kimberly and I did this when we got married, and it really helped — seemed like a great idea to pass it on to others. In fact, a couple of my mentors would refuse to do a wedding if the couple wouldn’t submit to fairly extensive premarital counseling first. I had another mentor that wouldn’t marry a couple that was already living together, because he felt it made a mockery of the marriage ceremony. He would have them live apart for six months before he would do the wedding. I planned to emulate these guys.

Man plans, as the wise man said, and God laughs.

I was a few years out of seminary and working in a church plant when a couple approached me and asked if I would marry them. They were already living together, and they had three kids: one his by a previous relationship, one hers by a previous relationship, and the youngest (a six-year-old) theirs.

Premarital counseling? What for — to prepare them for the hard realities of shared life together? These weren’t starry-eyed kids; they’d been together longer than Kimberly and I had. (I would have more to offer them now, but I had to make a decision based on what I had to offer them then.) Have them live apart for six months? They had a kid.

For me, it came down to something very simple. I had a six-year-old in my church whose mommy and daddy should have gotten married long since. They were willing to rectify the situation. Was I?

In that situation, all my earlier aspirations stood revealed for what they were — a kind of perfectionism. Yes, I will marry you if you’re doing everything right. Yes, I will marry you if you’re not carrying too much baggage. Yes, I will marry you if you conform closely enough to the ideal situation in my head. Yes, I will marry you if you’re good enough.

Jesus doesn’t treat people that way. Why should I?

*****

Back in the day, the 14th-century English village church was the center of the town’s social life — and usually, the literal center of the town. Everybody was a baptized Christian. Of course, some folks in town would be more devout than others, but however impious you might be, when the time came to get married, you marched down to the village church and tied the knot. Did the village priest deny you because you didn’t live up to his standards? Of course not. The priest recognized his role in maintaing a healthy society. Marriages are good for society. Blessed marriages are even better.

Are we willing to take a place at the center of the society and bless that which is good?

Sadly, too often, we are not. What we have today is boutique Christianity, with hundreds of different designer labels. Skinny jeans and obcure musical tastes? Welcome to hipster church. Upper middle class, golf and sailing? Welcome to the country-club church. Intellectual and sharp-tongued? Meet the young, restless and Reformed. Want to indulge your taste for politics? We got everything from Jesus-was-a-Republican-hawk to Jesus-was-a-hippie-before-it-was-cool. This is an infinitely customizable Christianity, a hobby religion. A Christianity that has been relegated to the sidelines of culture, and likes it that way. This is a Christianity that has forgotten how to face the issues that come with standing in the center of the town square, and is afraid to remember. A Peter Pan Christianity that doesn’t want to grow up.
This is a Christianity that believes in marriage but won’t perform a wedding unless both parties are presentable enough to join the club. A Christianity that will condemn a couple for shacking up, but refuse to marry them; condemn them for their wounds, but refuse to heal them; condemn them for staying away from church while making them absolutely unwelcome. A Christianity that blesses God, and curses men, who were made in the image of God. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.

*****

The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. What if following Jesus meant serving my community rather than demanding that they live up to my expectations? What if I chose to be a servant rather than a master? What if I chose to bless rather than curse?

Well, then I’d be an outpost of the Kingdom of God, a place where His blessing was being expressed on earth as it is in heaven. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

In my experience, the simple decision to be a blessing, and to openly and unashamedly speak God’s blessing over people — that simple thing made me a friend of people who had nothing in common with me, a leader of people I don’t have the charisma to lead. I obeyed what God said to do, and He gave me favor far beyond what I could ever have gained for myself.

In short, I found myself standing in the town square, wondering how in the world I got there. Not in any official way — I’m not running for mayor or anything — but simply as a matter of grassroots, relational reality. The influence and favor God gave me raise all kinds of issues I don’t have a clue how to handle.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear.

*****

“We’re not really Christians, but will you marry us?”

Do you know what I hear now, when someone asks that? I hear longing for the Kingdom of God. I hear people who don’t really believe that God is there for them — but they kinda hope maybe He will be. They want God’s blessing, although they don’t really know why. I hear a couple asking me if I will put just a tiny bit of leaven in the loaf that is their life together. They don’t want a lot; it’s not like they’re religious or anything. Just a little bit, right over here in the corner.

Will I do it? Sure I will. I know how leaven works.

2 Comments | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: Imaging the Reality of the Table

7 April 2013

We are considering the Lord’s Table in the context of neighborhood church and ministry. In the preceding post, we looked at the reality of what is happening at the Table. In this one, we want to consider how to incarnate that reality in a way that is fitting, both to the reality that is occurring and to the context into which we are bringing it. Along the way, we’ll hit the question of appropriate contexts as well.

In a wedding ceremony, as long as certain essentials are covered, the bride and the groom will be married at the end of the day, no matter what else goes wrong. This leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong without having to call a do-over, an emergency “get it right this time” wedding ceremony — for which all thanksgiving. But it also means that there is a lot of room for honoring or dishonoring the occasion. The groom can answer the request for an “I do” with “Why not?” The bride’s dress can be immodest to the point of whorish. The best man can make a pass at the groom. The maid of honor can get drunk and fall into the cake. A wedding ceremony is meant to both accomplish and signify the beginning of a marriage. These things signify something else, something antithetical to what the ceremony is accomplishing. None of them make the wedding invalid, but that doesn’t make them okay. That said, one of the sage pieces of wedding advice is that something will indeed go wrong, and you had best make up your mind ahead of time to laugh about it and roll with the punches.

In these occasions, the attitude we seek is attention to detail and appropriateness tempered by a sense of proportion. If somebody falls into the cake, the happy couple is still married, and it’s a day for celebration. Scrape the icing off the dance floor and carry on.

We want this same attitude in our Lord’s Table celebration.

This has been a challenge for me because I come from an ecclesiastical tradition that rarely even asked the question of how to best represent what was really happening. How to think about it correctly, sure. How to teach it well, of course. How to represent it? Not so much. We figured if we were talking about it right, the job was done.

So how do we? Well, we could do worse than do what Jesus did, I suppose. He passed one loaf and one cup from hand to hand around the table. We are one Body, partaking of one Lord — so one loaf, one cup. We are eating a meal with Jesus, so we pass the elements around the table. Makes sense.

That’s great, if you happen to be observing the Passover feast in an upper room already. But suppose you’re with 150 people in an auditorium? Do you have one loaf and one cup, and invite everybody forward to tear off a piece of bread and sip from the cup? Do you pass around one of those big offering-plate-looking things with a bunch of plastic cups, each containing a thimbleful of juice, and a tray of tasteless little wafers? Do you give everybody one of these?

I have celebrated communion in all these ways. As horrifying as I find that last option, in the service where I encountered it, it was by far the most reasonable choice. It was that or no Lord’s Table at all. The pastors who organized the service made the right call, and may God bless them for it.

When we begin to talk about how to do this in a typical “traditional” church service like this, we enter into a discussion that’s been going for a while. There are some good things to talk about there, but I’d like to talk about something else. Our subject, remember, is neighborhood sacramentology. The first question we encounter is one of simple appropriateness: may we take the Lord’s Table out of the church building and into, say, someone’s dining room on a Thursday night?

I know a good many people who would say no, or at least feel uneasy about it. I used to be among them. But then I noticed something. The original Lord’s Table was in someone’s dining room on a Thursday night! How could it not be permissible? The question is not whether it’s okay to take take communion out of the church building and into the home, but whether it’s okay to take communion out of the home and into the church building. For the first 300 years of the church’s history, we met in nothing but homes…when we were particularly blessed. Too often, we only had forests and prisons, catacombs and caves and dens in the earth for meeting places.

Though there be only two of three of us huddled together in a hole in the side of a hill, Christ is there in our midst. Wherever and whenever we gather, we are the church. And where the church is gathered, what could be more natural than to eat at Christ’s Table?

The objection that always stopped me was 1 Corinthians 11. By observing the Table in an exclusive manner that reinforced division rather than honoring the unity Christ created in His Body, the Corinthian believers heaped up judgment for themselves. For some reason, it seemed to me that the best way to avoid all this would be to reserve the Lord’s Table for an official, called meeting of the church on the Lord’s Day. In that way, there could be no exclusivity — everyone would be welcome, and everyone would know when and where to show up if they wanted to come.

I have come to understand that while that certainly is a way to obey, it is not the way to obey…and it is not, in fact, the way that Paul instructed the Corinthians to proceed. The thing that changed my mind was this: I was talking with a pastor who had originally held my position: save Communion for the church service on Sunday morning only. He spent several years working with an aging congregation, and the experience changed his mind forever. As an increasing number of his congregants were unable to make it to church regularly because of health concerns, inability to drive, or for other age-related reasons, he realized that limiting Communion to the church service did not ensure that everyone could be included — far from it! In fact, his policy effectively excluded the weakest and most helpless members of his congregation from the Table. Convicted, he began to serve the Table in houses, nursing homes, wherever he had to in order to take the Table to everyone in his congregation.

Now, the understanding this man arrived at is actually fairly common in Christendom, which is why you can find a couple of portable communion sets in the back of just about any decent-sized Christian bookstore. But that started me thinking — what better way to avoid reinforcing exclusivity and division within the Body than to observe the Table everywhere, with everyone in the Body? Nothing wrong with doing it in the Sunday service, too — we certainly should — but why only there?

Perhaps there’s a simple set of qualifying questions we could ask. Is the Father with us? He is. Is Christ among us? He is. Is the Spirit here? He is. Well then, if this is our God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and we are His people, the redeemed, then what could be more appropriate than to lift up our hearts to Him, and to partake of His gifts for His people?

I can hear my high-church friends growling — but what for? When God’s people ascend in worship before Him, we ascend to the Holy of Holies in the heavenly tabernacle, the very throne room of Yahweh — it doesn’t get any higher than that, now does it? And that glorious fact is not in any way dependent on where or when we meet. Heaven is as near to the dankest catacomb as it is to the stateliest cathedral, and glory to God for that.

Comments Off on Neighborhood Sacramentology: Imaging the Reality of the Table | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Meditations, The Lord's Table | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: What the Table Does

31 March 2013

The first Neighborhood Sacramentology post on the Table considered the priesthood and the validity of the Eucharist, which raised the question of when we ought to observe the Table. The second post enriched the question by recasting it in liturgical terms, and that left us with three questions.
1. What are we doing/representing at the Lord’s Table?
2. How can we do that effectively in a given context?
3. Are there contexts where the Table should or should not be observed?
This post will tackle that first question.

Whether in a high-church Anglican service in Canterbury Cathedral or a secret meeting of a Chinese house church in a nondescript apartment in Beijing, the Lord’s Table will be the highlight of Christian worship around the world today, and rightly so.

On this day, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

A human being died, was buried, and on the third day, and was raised to new and incorruptible life.

But so what? It was 2000 years ago, in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire, and nobody’s successfully done it since. Other than being a candidate for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, what does it have to do with me?

Nothing at all…unless somehow, I could participate in it. If the same thing could happen to me, then the resurrection of Christ is not just a historical oddity. It’s proof that new life and immortality await whoever follows in His footsteps, whoever partakes of Christ.

This is Paul’s point in Romans 6. We who believe in Christ participate with Him in His death and resurrection, and because He is raised, we also are raised to new life. Hebrews shows us Christ as our forerunner, the High Priest who leads us into the Presence behind the veil of the heavenly Tabernacle, going before us, whose ministry never fades because He always lives to intercede for us.

When we come into the Presence in worship, we find Him there ahead of us, blessing and breaking the bread and pouring the wine. “This is My body,” He says, and “This is My blood.” There in the throne room of His Father, He invites us to His victory feast: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day, for My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in Him.”

You are what you eat. We who eat and drink Christ are Christ’s Body, His hands and feet released into the world to do the works that He did, and greater works still. As the bread and wine are broken down and incorporated into our bodies, so He is incorporated into our hearts, as the Eucharistic exhortation also says: “Feed on Him in your hearts by faith, and with thanksgiving.”

This is what the Table does, and what the Table represents.

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Comments Off on Neighborhood Sacramentology: What the Table Does | Kingdom Parish, Meditations, Mystical Union, The Lord's Table, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

« Previous Entries