In this series of posts, we explore four paradigm shifts in the way one sees the Church. Applied to ministry, these shifts can help awaken churches to a new experience of spiritual health and power. Each transformational shift can be summarized by a single word – Own, Assess, Discern and Confess.
Discern (what Jesus is saying to your church about its condition)
In our work with churches we have come to recognize that Jesus speaks to churches using symbols, spiritual gifts, and Divine discipline (pain) as messages. We refer to these types of communication as “meta-messages.” Meta-messages occur when events or interactions take on additional meaning in relational or historical contexts. Our God loves to communicate in ways other than words.
We see meta-messages in the Old Testament. When Israel broke their covenant with God, as they often did, He sent famine, or locusts, or marauding neighbors, or pestilence into their midst. These difficulties contained a deeper message about something out of sorts in their collective relationship with God. God had told them this is how He would communicate with them (Deuteronomy 28-29).
We see meta-messages in the New Testament. Jesus did not just perform miracles, He performed signs. The significance of a sign is that the event carries a message. The Gospel of John in particular gives us clarity about this. Jesus would perform a “sign” and then preach a message unpacking its meaning. He multiplied the loaves and then preached a message about “I am the bread of life.” The multiplied loaves carried a meta-message they were to discern.
Jesus letter to the church at Ephesus in Rev. 2 also contains a meta-message by its use of language. Jesus uses the singular “you” in Greek to address that local church as a whole, making it collectively responsible for losing its first love as a ministry. They had gotten off track as a church. The singular “you” binds the congregation together as a unit. They had to discern themselves as a body to know how to respond to Him.
Symbols: God uses symbols continually to speak to His people in the Bible. Like signs, these symbols are meta-messages. There are symbolic acts and objects. Think of Ezekiel preaching to a brick, the Lord’s Supper, the washing of the disciples’ feet or the golden lampstands in Rev. 1. Each symbol carried additional meaning than the object contained in itself.
We see God use such symbols today to speak to an issue that impacts the whole church. We told the story a couple years ago of the church with a rusty steeple. The steeple—the visible symbol of a church in a community—pointed to this church’s corrosive history of belligerent behavior, which included defrauding the steeple company when the church was constructed. Or there was a church with functionally obsolete architecture which they had been unable to agree to update, pointing to a 50 year-old conflict over the facility. Or, the church where a stranger(!) walked up the center isle of the church while the pastor was preaching, stood next to him with his arm around his shoulders, and silently offered a picture of protection in a church that had wounded pastor after pastor. All three of these stories of symbols are true, and all contain meta-messages from God.
Sometimes a symbol can be a confirming sign such as when Jesus said to the church in Philadelphia, “I have set an open door before you which no one can shut.” That open door symbolized a ministry opportunity which the church accepted as their unique calling and mission.
Spiritual Gifts: The church has not suffered for a lack of teaching on identifying one’s spiritual gifts, but it has overlooked how those gifts were designed to work together. God gave His people differing gifts as a meta-message of its need to work together to accomplish His purposes and hear all His heart on an issue. Often there is tension in God’s heart as His different attributes assess an issue, and He imparts that tension to us through differing gifts, (justice/prophecy vs. mercy, faith vs. administration, evangelism vs. teaching, etc.). However, this tension is healthy when exercised in a godly way and His people love each other. It’s part of God’s plan for the spiritual gifts in the body to grow stronger by working together in tension. Examples of tension between the gifts can be seen in Acts 13, Acts 15 and 1 Cor. 12.
If there is unresolved dissonance/conflict between the variously gifted people in your congregation, it functions as a meta-message that you have yet to discern the will of God. Alternatively, resonance and harmony between all the gifts in your body provides a sure sign that you’re hearing from the Lord while maintaining the unity of the body.
Divine discipline (pain): Pain functions as God’s meta-message of choice. From the repetitive cycles of pain in the book of Judges to the mishandling of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor. 11 to Jesus’ threat to remove the candlestick of the church at Ephesus in Rev. 2, the Lord disciplines groups of his people as Hebrews 12:10 says: “for our good, that we might share in His holiness.”
Jesus’ discipline of a church is love-based (Rev. 3:19). It takes many forms, most of them painful. That means the pain will impact the entire congregation and usually be ongoing until the church responds to it. Such discipline, like the famines of Israel’s day, points to a deeper problem in a church’s relationship with God and they need to hear from Him about it. It will also repeat itself through a church’s history if the issue remains unrectified. Jesus keeps the issue alive by means of the pain, hoping the church leaders will wake up and break the cycle.
We believe that churches and ministries need to discern how Christ communicates with them to affirm the principles of the Scriptures. Does your church have something symbolic happening that the Lord wants you to pay attention to as it relates to discerning what he is saying to your church?
Are you listening to all the spiritual gifts God has placed in your body? Or, have certain gifts been marginalized or driven off because tension has been misinterpreted as opposition? Jesus may have been speaking to your church through those whose voices were minimized.
Does your church have a painful history that it seems unable to escape? Jesus may be drawing your attention to issues he is unwilling to overlook.
Your ministry will fail to impact our broken and divisive culture unless you assess your church’s true condition and discern what Jesus is telling you to do about it.
Rev. Mark Barnard serves as President of Blessing Point Ministries which helps churches experience breakthrough moments in ministry that can transform their impact for the kingdom of God. Mark, together with Dr. Kenneth Quick, co-authored, The Eighth Letter – Jesus Still Speaks: What is He saying to Your Church (Churchsmart.com).