Stick to the Template

"...look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged" Isaiah 51:1

Anyone familiar with basic carpentry will know that if you want to cut a series of identically lengthed pieces, instead of measuring every time you cut, you just take the first one (an exact cut of what you want), and use that as a "template" to measure successive pieces. If you were to continually take the last piece you cut to measure the new one, by the end your last piece would likely be a significant amount different than the first piece.

Our "template" for all things spiritual is contained in the Bible (anyone who does not agree with or is open to agreeing with this idea will find little benefit reading further). Specifically the template I'm thinking of is that of the church as contained in the book of Acts. Throughout the pages of that book, glimpses of the manifest power and unity of that body show us clearly and painfully how far we have gotten off the template. 

What were the characteristics of that church? One as we mentioned was unity. Another was close community. They broke bread and met much more than once a week. A third was devotion to and precise knowledge of the scriptures (which during the very early years was primarily the writings of Moses). The church was "lay led" (not even yet a concept at that time). Lastly, It was mission and spirit driven. 

There will always be those who say that that was for that specific time, and such a church is not practical today, but I respectfully disagree. All of these characteristics are essential for a church that pleases God. They are timeless, yet we have deemed ourselves smarter than God and have gotten away from them.

The first salvo lobbed at the church was the institutionalization of the church under "converted" Roman emporer Constantine*. The "Jewishness" of the church was forcibly taken out, including feast days prescribed by the law of Moses, and extemporaneous worship was replaced with dry, formal worship modes derived from Greek stoicism (mirroring emporer worship). John Wesley and others did much to recapture the movement of the early church, but Roman structures remained in place and the church for the most part relapsed into a dry institution obsessed with self-preservation. Templates were being cut that bore little resemblance to the original, and the church has drifted farther and farther off course. 

Is this a grossly simplistic representation of the church's history? Perhaps. But I strongly believe that a powerful revival is going to sweep the nation in the near future: one which will occur when we truly regain all the God-ordained elements contained in the book of Acts church. 

We need to go back to the original template. The salvation of this and future generations depends upon it.

* Constantine still worshipped the pagan sun god Mithras: he just though Christ to be a manifestation of that God. Think sun halos around artistic representations of Christ from that and succeeding periods.