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    The Church: What It Really Is and How It Works
    The Church: What It Really Is and How It Works
    The Church: What It Really Is and How It Works
    Ebook159 pages2 hours

    The Church: What It Really Is and How It Works

    By Brenton Williams

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    About this ebook

    This book was written because of a question: 'What is the church?' And the answer 'The church is a person and she is female.'

    You might not have known that because over the last 2000 years the church has become a Pyramid-shaped organisation like any other worldly entity with leaders and followers.

    This Pyramid has stifled the vibrant and living being the church was meant to be.

    She was not meant to have earthly leaders and followers.

    This book tries to undo those 2000 years of misunderstanding.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrenton Williams
    Release dateJan 5, 2015
    ISBN9780473293628
    The Church: What It Really Is and How It Works
    Author

    Brenton Williams

    Brenton Williams was born in 1947 to non-christian parents and, apart from attending a local Sunday School, had no Christian faith or beliefs.He met his wife, Coral, in 1970 who was a member of The Salvation Army and converted that year. He joined The Salvation Army as a member and in 1975 felt a call from God to full-time ministry. He and his wife trained and became Salvation Army Officers for 11 years moving around New Zealand to various posts.His search for truth led him to question some of the tenets of the Army and in 1984 he left The Salvation Army to start a small charismatic group where he still ministers today.The truths in his books are based on first-hand experience and a desire to discover a real and true faith. Central to that is a close and intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His heart desire is to help other believers come to know Jesus as a friend and lover and thereby prepare them for an eternity of wedded bliss with their chosen bridegroom.

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      Book preview

      The Church - Brenton Williams

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Foreword

      1. What is the church?

      2. The early church

      3. What went wrong?

      — A The temple mentality

      4. What went wrong?

      — B A worldly structure

      5. Heavenly structure

      6. Body structure

      7. Functions

      8. The purpose of spiritual

      functions

      9. The spiritual functions

      10. Revision

      11. God’s great Plan

      12. Fitting into the plan — maturity

      13. Fitting into the plan — functions

      14. The head and the body

      15. Playing our part — inspiration

      16. Playing our part — spontaneity

      17. A great mystery

      18. The relationship

      19. The husband’s responsibilities

      20. The wife’s responsibilities

      21. Final thoughts

      22. Elders and deacons

      23. Church meetings

      24. Bread and wine

      25. Giving and finances

      26. Hospitality

      27. Using the Scriptures

      Other books by Brenton Williams

      Copyright

      Foreword

      This book is not written for those in a traditional, structured church. It is meant for those in a church that is yet to be.

      2000 years of religious church life have obscured what the church was meant to be — a companion, friend, and lover for God’s only son. The church is meant to be a person, not an organisation structured along worldly lines. When all we know of the church is buildings and a priesthood, trying to think of the church as a person is almost impossible.

      That’s the reason for this book. It is not intended to challenge or undermine the church that already exists — although it might do that. Rather it seeks to explain what the church is and how it works from a heavenly viewpoint.

      This book is about the church as Jesus sees it and longs for it to become. As such it is of no use to the traditional, structured church as we know it today. It will be useful to new churches born outside the parameters of the organised and denominational church.

      I hope that its contents will bring life to new church groups full of new believers. Let’s get a church ready that Jesus will want to come and collect for his wedding day.

      Chapter 1 What is the church?

      What is the Church? I asked Jesus that quite some time ago. It might seem a strange question. After all, I had been in the church for the greater part of my life. Attending Sunday School in one of the traditional churches as a child, I was confirmed as a communicant member in my teenage years. I grew disillusioned with the hypocrisy and selfishness I saw around me, left in my late teens, and gave up all interest in church membership. In my early twenties I underwent a conversion after meeting the woman who would become my wife. After a hesitant beginning as a believer I settled into her church, eventually becoming a fully active member.

      Several years later I was surprised to receive a call to full-time service and trained to become a minister. I graduated, was ordained, and served 11 years in various towns throughout our home country of New Zealand. I was ‘Baptised in the Spirit’ and became a part of the charismatic renewal that swept the world then. Eventually becoming disillusioned with the traditional flavour of our church, I followed another call to leave and start a new charismatic group where I still minister today.

      Our new church followed the pattern of most charismatic groups at the time and today. We met in a school hall, had worship times, preaching, house groups, and the other things that are part of an independent, charismatic church. I was installed as an elder, but fulfilled the role of the full-time pastor and was assisted by two men who were also elders. Although we were much happier and rejoicing in a new-found freedom from traditional church ways, it wasn’t long before this new model of a church didn’t seem quite right, either. We experimented with other forms of structure and practice, becoming a house church for a while and leaving school halls behind. That was novel. But it still didn’t do the trick. Nothing seemed to make much difference. Any changes were cosmetic.

      Hence my question. After many years of church membership and life, I decided to ask Jesus what he thought the Church was. By then I had discovered he often saw things differently from me, and that he was always right. Could it be that his view of the church was radically different from what I thought I knew?

      As often happens, it took some time before I received the answer. I never worry when that happens. I have learned that he answers in his own time and own way. Some months later I attended a house church conference in the United States. For some reason I had felt that this particular conference was important for me to attend. The two men who assisted me with the church agreed, and so I set out to see what I could learn. This was during the house church phase of our group, and I wondered if there could be something important for me to learn about house churches.

      I have long since forgotten anything I heard at that conference apart from one thing. Almost as an aside, one speaker casually remarked: ‘The church is a person and she is female.’ That statement struck me like a literal bolt from the blue. I sat transfixed as I realised that I was hearing my answer to the question: ‘what is the church?’ This was how Jesus viewed the church. He wasn’t interested in all the things I had thought were important about the church. To him the church is a living being of the female variety.

      I knew that the church’s destiny was to join Jesus in marriage at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Every believer knows that and looks forward to that wonderful event. But it had never occurred to me that it would be between two people. The church that I had known over the years did not resemble any person.

      I had puzzled many times over the change needed for the church to become one with him in eternity. After all, a church made up of many different denominations [all with their particular lists of doctrines and practices], as well as many independent groups, just didn’t fit the picture of a bride. How could this great mishmash of Christianity become one cohesive whole by the wedding day? How would all the differences disappear and everyone become one? I know that there are no magic wands or fairy dust that can take care of those problems. Perhaps there would be separate parts of eternity reserved for each group but that didn’t seem right, either. I put this whole issue on my ‘too hard’ list and figured that Jesus would somehow work it all out. I couldn’t see a church made up of Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Charismatics and others ever becoming one church and ready for Jesus to come and get it. Beyond my comprehension, although I had tried many times to piece it all together I had spent hours in Bible study trying to understand the incomprehensible. I didn’t realise that every time I approached the subject I did so with a pair of blinkers that coloured everything I thought. Now the blinkers were off and I had to change my whole approach to discover what Jesus meant by saying that the church is a person and that she is female.

      So, we come to the purpose of this book. In its pages I will try to make some sense out of that statement heard so long ago in a house church conference. I hope to perhaps discover some things about the church that will help us understand Jesus’ perspective. I also hope to create a better understanding of how the church is meant to work. Most of what will be written will not fit into the traditional pattern of the church. Much will be controversial and cause reactions, but truth is rarely discovered without difficulties.

      Ready for an adventure? All right, let’s go.

      Chapter 2 The early church

      Is there any support for the idea that the church is a person? Of course there is. We know that the Father’s great plan is to fashion a counterpart for his son with whom he will spend eternity in wedded bliss. Just as he formed Eve out of Adam to be a companion and helpmate, so he works in all generations to fashion a bride for his son. All true believers are a part of that bride. When the time is right, Jesus will come in response to the bride’s call, pluck her out of the world, and take her to be with him permanently. That is a central tenet of Christian belief.

      If that is the church’s destiny, how could she be anything other than a person? Surely it is inconceivable that Jesus would marry anything but another person, just as we would never marry unless it was to another human. No-one in their right mind would want to marry an animal, or a tree, or any other thing. Marriage happens between people. Jesus is a person. He exists in spirit form rather than flesh, but even ascended into Heaven he remains a person. He must be joined with someone of his own kind — a living, vibrant being just like him. She, too, will be a spiritual being. Physical life will be left behind in the earthly realm. Heaven is where spiritual beings dwell.

      In Ephesians 5: 21-33 Paul outlines the responsibilities of husbands and wives in a marriage. At the end he says: ‘This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.’ [Ephesians 5:32] Paul knew that the pattern for the relationship between Christ and the church was that of a husband and wife. Two people, one male and the other female, joined in a special kind of relationship in which they become one is how Christ and the church are meant to relate to each other. Neither will that happen only in eternity. Paul is speaking of the physical realm when he addresses husbands and wives. This special relationship between Christ and the church starts in the physical realm and is completed

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