Winning the World

Session 3 Alternative Forms of Spirituality and Church

An Ecclesiology Rooted in Messiah and Not the Latest Fad The essential relationship between Christ and His work on the cross is proclaimed by Paul in His farewell speech to the Ephesian elders: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). Here Paul strikes on a theme that is everywhere present in the New Testament. It is the idea that in the old covenant God acquired a people for Himself by delivering them from Egypt. Now God acquires a new people for Himself in a new covenant ratified by His blood. Now all who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ have become God’s own people so that Paul can refer to them as churches that are “in Christ” or “of Christ” (Rom. 16:16; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1; Gal. 1:22). To say that the church is “in Christ” is to root the church in redemption history, a concern that is predominant in Luke and Paul. Luke explains in the infancy narratives that the promises given to Israel are fulfilled in Jesus and the church (Luke 1:32ff., 54-55, 68-75; 2:25-32, 38). The age of the church which is the age of fulfillment was announced by the prophet Joel and initiated at Pentecost (Acts 2:16-21). But the creation of the church also came as a result of Jesus’ promise to send the disciples a “power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Luke points out that the church is connected with the ancient promises, the saving event of Christ, and receives the present power of the living Christ through the Holy Spirit.

~ Robert E. Webber. The Church in the World . Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1986. p. 20.

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I. Attributes of the early Church Which Define the Seven Core Passions of Revolutionary Spirituality, Barna pp. 19-39.

Whether you become a Revolutionary immersed in, minimally involved in, or completely disassociated from a local church is irrelevant to me (and, within boundaries, to God). What matters is not whom you associate with (i.e., a local church), but who you are.

~ Barna, Revolution , p. 29.

A. Seven core passions of the Early Church (and by design, of the new Revolution)

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