Diving a little deeper into Howard Snyder's Decoding the Church, here is the first of four posts that look at the biblical foundation for his supposition that the church's historical "marks" of one, holy, catholic, and apostolic are only half of a church's DNA.
The New Testament record of the birth of the church at Jerusalem and its spread to Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth and beyond show the rich diversity of the church. They had unity in the worship of a risen Christ, but the churches also celebrated the ethnic, socioeconomic, and class diversity of the people who made up the church.
My thanks to Pastor Sam Vassel of Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene for the following thoughts on the leaders at the church at Antioch. Acts 13 refers by name to the leaders of the church: Barnabas (a Jewish businessman), Simeon called Niger (the black one), Lucius of Cyrene (an African), Manaen - half brother to Herod the Tetrarch (the aristocrat) and Saul (the rabbi). Quite a diverse group of leaders!
This is but one example of the unity we have in Christ but also the diversity that makes this unity so miraculous. Unity in spite of great diversity is one of the most amazing things about the early church.
The "one body, many members" teachings in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 can be applied to the universal as well as the local church. The church, locally and globally, is both one and many.
Is your church DNA a balance of the two? Or does it slide more one way, or the other?
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