Marginal Theology

To the angel of the church in… (Revelation 2:1,8,12,18; 3:1,7,14)

Over the past fifty years, tens of thousands of people have come together at Scottsdale Bible Church to hear a message from the Lord. What began as a small gathering has developed into a large assembly in the heartbeat of Scottsdale.

In that time, God has faithfully spoken through dozens of messengers to share timely, timeless messages to bring life, provide hope, and rescue souls. Specifically, God has graciously appointed six men over Scottsdale Bible Church’s fifty years to serve as chief messengers as the senior pastor. Despite distinct personalities and individual qualities that make each of these pastors special, they have in common a deep love for Jesus, a commitment to communicating God’s messages with integrity, and a pastor’s shepherding heart for the congregation.

When Jesus delivered the timely and timeless messages to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, He first instructed His beloved disciple John to deliver these important messages to the churches’ pastors.

This intentionality was not a matter of formal protocol or of honoring a dogmatic hierarchy. Rather, God loves His church so much that He made sure His messages would be communicated through their loving, caring, shepherding pastor. Each church receives an important message. Each church would be surprised, encouraged, or challenged by the message that God had for them. Every church had a promise from God to consider through the message. The magnitude of the message was so important that God determined to deliver it through a protective, thoughtful, servant-minded messenger.

So it is today. God continues to deliver messages of significance and magnitude to the assemblies of His children, using His chief messengers. Many times weekly, pastors stand before crowds and deliver messages from heaven’s King. Sometimes those messages are surprising, usually encouraging, and often challenging. The faithfulness of Scottsdale Bible’s chief messengers, and of countless pastors in countless churches across the world over the years, points to the loving initiative of Jesus Christ to continually maintain vital communication with you, His church.

PRAYER STARTER

Thank You Lord for our Godly pastors. This is Your church. Work through us.

(This is a devotional that I wrote as part of Scottsdale Bible’s book Renew: Daily Devotionals for our 50th Year)

Yesterday, our pastor taught out from the second chapter of Revelation. It was a special message that reflected on God’s faithfulness over the first fifty years of Scottsdale Bible Church. Something caught my attention amidst his sharing this great message of encouragement to the church…

Christ’s epistles to the seven churches are especially meaningful because they offer a very cool mostly-consistent pattern:

• He offers a self-revelation that qualifies him as a rightful judge of the church
• He offers a commendation
• He offers a criticism or a correction
• He offers an exhortation with a warning
• He gives a promise of reward for obedience (to the individual & the church)

There are a couple exceptions to this pattern (and they are important exceptions), but that’s subject for another conversation.

There are no exceptions to the pattern established in Christ’s epistle to the Ephesian chruch:

• He reveals himself as “him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven lamp stands.” He is the Keeper of the church and the One who assesses it on an ongoing basis.
• He acknowledges the church’s toil and perseverance. He credits their intolerance for wickedness and praises their testing of doctrine.
• He reveals that they have forgotten their first love, and have fallen.
• He warns them to repent (of their offense), lest he remove their lamp stand from its place.
• He promises the over-comers will eat from the Tree of LIfe.

To illustrate the message, Jamie shared some photos from his recent tour of the sites of the seven churches…specifically Ephesus. These aren’t the exact photos he shared, but here’s a couple “representatively similar photos” that I have culled from the Web. See if you notice what caught my attention:

Here’s what I noticed about the streets, the stadium, the open market (agora), and the public toilets of Ephesus….

They’re empty.

Ephesus is in ruins.

The city is long dead.

The Ephesian church has had its lamp stand removed.

God has given a real world, historically undeniable example that He says what He means and means what He says.

I don’t view Christ’s actions as punitive nearly as much as I view them as consequential. At the time of the birth of the church, Ephesus was already a well-established, even ancient city. Population was estimated at 400-500K in 100 AD, making it a megaopolis. Yet, by 263, the city was destroyed by Goths, and it struggled out a shadowy existence of its former self until the city was ultimately abandoned in the 15th century.

Today, the testimony of the Ephesian church to the world is one told in ruins and ashes. There is no modern tales of a Christian witness, no contemporary stories of miracles and spiritual transformation issuing forth from Ephesus. Sadly, it is an empty lamp stand that humbly declares that God’s warnings are not empty words, and that He will do as He says.

There is a consequence for continuing in religion that has abandoned its love for God. Jesus does assess the work of the church…not just the “what” it does, but the “why” it does it, too. He’s under no obligation to continue to “prop up” any church, any congregation, or even any individual that/who has forgotten the primacy of the love of Christ as the cause for its deeds.

I rejoice that I’m part of a church that loves God so much that it keeps finding new ways to share that love with other people. I pray for the church at large and for the Christ followers who are the “living stones” of it…

• That we not forget our first love
• That those congregations and individuals who have forgotten of their first love, that they would repent.

He is a good God who offers the opportunity to His children to change direction and return to the love God offers. 

From Shannon O’Dell, author of Transforming Church for Rural America

• Leadership. Leadership is something that is qualified through the call of God and also through, obviously, the Word of God. That’s 1 Timothy 3. 
• Accurate structure. The church has got to be structured accurately, because if it has midget structure, it’s only going to grow to be a midget, but if it has Goliath structure, then it’s going to be able to grow and exponentially experience God’s best. But most churches are structured like the Moose Lodge in their local community, and not like the Word of God teaches. 
• Emphasis on the next generation. It has to be there, and many churches are not advocates for the next generation.
• They’ve got to be reaching out to the last, lost and the least. They’ve got to be community-minded: buying shoes for all the P.E. kids in schools, taking care of local missions needs, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, taking care of backpack programs in schools for kids who don’t have nutritious meals on the weekends.