Author: Jonathan Dodson

What follows is a continuation (part II) of my personal, family and, Lord willing, eventual church vision statement. Not counting the insights to be incorporated from people’s comments (like Jason Kovacs):

Discipleship is the realization of missions and is the outworking of the Great Commission. Discipleship exists in order to gather in, equip, and mature worshipers from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev 5:9, 7:9). One day discipleship will no longer be necessary as the countless numbers of redeemed and glorified saints fall down on their faces, casting their crowns at the feet of King Jesus. Sanctification will be complete and sin will be no more. Discipleship is a temporary necessity; worship will last forever. However, until the last of Christ’s sheep are gathered in, according to the Great Commission, discipleship will continue among all the nations (Mt 28.18-20). Therefore, discipleship is the main work of the church and the means by which God has freely chosen to advance His kingdom and glory on the earth. We aim to do this by making disciples and not merely converts in America and beyond.

Spirit-led disciples are not a special tier of mature Christians. Every person that has called upon Christ for his or her redemption has been filled with God’s Spirit (Eph 1.13-14). As a result, every Christian is a “Spirit-filled” disciple. However, as Spirit-filled disciples we should seek a continual filling, refreshing and renewal of the power of God’s Spirit (Eph 5.18). What then, does a Spirit-led disciple look like? A Spirit-led disciple seeks this filling for Christ-imitating living. He attempts to follow the Spirit-wherever he leads, in private and in public, bearing the fruit of the Spirit- love, joy, peace, patience, etc (Gal 5.22-23). A Spirit-led disciple is fruitful not only in intangible character but in tangible life decisions. As people indwelt with the very presence of God, our lives are to be marked by a radical God-centeredness. Whatever we do, in work, witness, and leisure, we should seek to glorify God by following the Spirit. Our “Spirit-filled” character should spill over into a Spirit-led life in which we labor and leisure in a way that honors God.

Cultivating communities is like cultivating the earth. It requires regular attention, watering and protection from harmful elements. All people need love, instruction and protection whether they are eight weeks or eighty years old. People also need people but more importantly, people need God. People and creation are not the only things that need to be cultivated; cultures must also be cultivated. Attention must be shown to the developing morals, values, institutions and structures of every culture if civilization is to prosper. Communities are comprised of peoples from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures. In short, people plus culture equals community. However, not all communities are created equal. Some communities are redeemed and others are not. As a result, human cultures allow for the flowering of human creativity and debauchery. As a result, there are things in culture that need celebration, instruction, protection and condemnation.

As a redeemed community, we, the Church, are created for cultivation in a cultural, spiritual and relational sense. In the cultural sense, we should contribute to the progress of human culture as others do, through work and welfare. In addition, as products of God’s creation, our cultures have been created to be enjoyed. As a result, we should cultivate creation and culture through both our labor and our leisure. There is not one aspect of life in which we are not intended to glorify God. We are called to honor Him in everything (1 Cor 10.31; Col 3.17, 23) and to do so redemptively (2 Cor 5.18-20). Therefore, in cultivating community we should engage labor, leisure and charity redemptively, not uncritically or unlinked to our Christian worldview. With this redemptive approach to living comes the need for Christians to engage in regular worship and fellowship, promoting a shared delight in the Creator and Redeemer himself. To that end, our cultivation of community is also relational. We are relational because God is relational. The Trinity is a being-in-relation whose source of happiness is Self. Created in God’s image, humanity hungers for authentic, soul-stirring community. It is the Trinity that sets the pattern for Christian community, a community that is Christ-centered. In the context of Christ-centered community, Spirit-led disciples minister to one another, extending love and promoting faith. As the overflow of rich and regularly cultivated community, we can extend our love and compassion to those who have not experienced redemption. This can be done locally and globally, which is precisely why we talk of cultivating “communities” (plural). By following the Spirit and depending on Christ as our model and means for discipleship, we can redemptively engage a variety of peoples and cultures in order to win them to the supreme satisfaction of bringing glory to God. As a result, we participate in cultivating, contributing and redeeming the communities of the earth. We believe that planting churches is God’s primary design for cultivating communities in this world because it is the church that bears the message and meaning of true community to the world. By announcing and enacting the gospel, we promote Christ-centered community which will last forever. Therefore, we commit ourselves to this vision for the good of all peoples and the glory of God.

1. In redemptive-historical exegesis there is a tendency to see a biblical-theological forest behind every exegetical tree. Redemptive-historical interpretation, especially when sensitive to exegetical echoes and backgrounds in a given text, is prone to overinterpretation, hearing echoes where none are sounded. For instance, in his sweeping book on the temple motif (and hardly the mission of the church), Greg Beale detects the influence of temple theology in Colossians 1 and 2 (Beale, Temple, 267-68). However, the primarily metaphor used to described the church and Christ in Colossians is that of the human body (cf. 1.18; 2.9-10, 19; 3.15). Here is a case of seeing the “forest” instead of the “tree,” the biblical-theological temple instead of the exegetical body. In fact, Paul’s concern in the letter is not so much the church’s expanding mission of temple construction and expansion as it is recognition of the thoroughly human and physical nature of the church. The reason for this is that Paul wants to correct the body-belittling acetic practices of the Colossians, which is rooted in their dualistic, deficient view of creation and Christ (2.16-23). Paul selects the body metaphor to drive home the point which is made in the Christ poem, creation is good and so is the body because Christ is the agent of all creation. Therefore, enjoy freedom in what you eat and drink, treat your body with honor, and do not enforce ascetic measures on others. Consider the “body” of Christ and glorify him for his creation, ecclesiastical and literal. Therefore, we must be cautious when we import valid biblical-theological themes invalidly into a text. The influence of a given themes must be weighed carefully against the immediate context of the letter, allowing for the appropriate exegetical constraints.

1. There is a tendency to mark and meditate on the trees of the redemptive-historical forest instead of considering the exegetical tree in front of you. When detecting echoes and allusions in a given text, authorial intent is often derived by piecemealing an OT background from several disparate books. While this is certainly the case in some instances, there is a tendency to assimilate an OT composite that may not have been intended by the author. This attempt to be exegetically rigorous may in fact, be more reflective of modernist interpretive methods and not authorial intention. Moreover, the attempt to “do bibilical theology” may end up being more theology than biblical as “backgrounds” are given more wieght than the historical “foregrounds” of the given text.