The fundamental basis of all Christian missionary enterprise is the universal authority of Jesus Christ, “in heaven and on earth.” If the authority of Jesus were circumscribed on earth, if He were but one of many religious teachers, one of many Jewish prophets, one of many divine incarnations, we would have no mandate to present Him to the nations as the Lord and Savior of the world. If the authority of Jesus were limited in heaven, if He has not decisively overthrown the principalities and powers, we might still proclaim Him to the nations, but we would never be able to “turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). Only because all authority on earth belongs to Christ dare we go to all nations. And only because all authority in heaven as well is His have we any hope of success.
John Stott

A Gaggle Of Geese

A Gaggle Of Geese A GAGGLE OF GEESE AND THE BODY OF CHRIST OR REFLECTIONS ON THE COMMUNITY OF THE SPIRIT By Calvin Culver

. As I was walked to work recently I heard above me a sound which, for the past several months, has been absent from our skies – the honking of geese flying overhead. I stopped to watch as their formation flew by over me when it occurred to me that we could take a lesson from these birds on the nature of discipleship. What, one may ask, does a flock of birds have to do with the Body of Christ? Let me start by asking this: why do geese fly in a V-formation? Well, as most people probably know, such a formation helps tremendously to decrease drag due to air resistance. This, especially on long migratory flights, enables the geese to travel long distances before tiring. Apart and by himself, a lone goose could probably never fly the long route from summer home to winter haven and back again. Together, however, a flock of geese can accomplish what is impossible for one alone.
. At the head of the formation is, of course, the leader. Though I know not the ways of geese, how they select their leaders, I would speculate that the chosen is one who is strong enough to take the brunt of the headwind while his fellows ride his draft, and in addition is perhaps one who has traveled the road before. He rides at the head while his flock follows, and guides them along the long and difficult journey.
. Such then is the nature of our journeys in Christ; we seek not to follow Christ alone, irrespective of our brothers and our leaders, for then what would we have but a horde of geese all jostling and shoving, trying to assume the position immediately behind the leader. Instead, Paul wrote, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” . We may also see something of the nature of the Church here. For, as I looked at the geese flying overhead I saw, not thirty-five or so geese in the sky, but a diamond formation, moving in unison. To be sure, there were individual geese in the formation but what I saw was, above all, a flock. This, I believe, illustrates a facet of the nature of the Church. We – modern, Western man – see the society around us through our individualistic metaphysic; that is, the nature of society is that it is nothing more, nor less, than a collection of individuals. Concepts of such things as societal consciousness or one’s responsibility to society are next to unknown, having been replaced by concepts of the sovereignty of the individual. . Yet this was not always so. Medieval thought, for example, tended to elevate society above individual, and it was almost axiomatically held that an individual could not be fully realized without acceptance and fulfillment of that niche to which society had assigned him. This could be called an extreme form of societal, as opposed to individualistic, metaphysic. . The nature of the Church, I believe, lies somewhere in between these extremes – in a sort of communal nature. It is certainly more than a mere collection of individual Christians, yet neither do the individualities of its members get subsumed in its whole. Still, there is something of a communal nature to the Church that we, with our Western individualism, have failed to recognize. Thus, for example, it seems to me that, as the Roman Catholic church has declared, there is no salvation outside the Church. Not, indeed, in a narrow sense which would define the Catholic – or any other – church as the one true Church, but in that God mediates his salvation through the body of Christ. Hence, the logical order of events at one’s conversion is that he is first joined to the Church and then bestowed with salvation. No one is truly saved who is not a member of the Church.
. Again, it is in this sense that Scripture declares that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. That is, the Body of Christ is the temple in which the Spirit of Christ has chosen to dwell. And again, when declaring that “the kingdom of God is within (among) you”, Scripture announces that it is within the Body that God has established his rule. It is our responsibility, as members of that Body, to demonstrate to the world what is the nature of that kingdom. And it is within this framework, as members of the true Flock, that we are called to follow one another, as each of us seeks to follow Christ.

Computers for Christ – Chicago