Therefore, we deny that a group of Christians can be church without the office of preaching (AC V) and we deny that preachers can be church without faithful hearers (AC XXVIII).
Even now, before the final day, the church is known on earth in worship, where God gives and His saints receive and give Him joyful thanks. In the Church Triumphant in heaven, God and the Lamb gather the great multitude of saints adorned as a bride before her husband the saints stand before the throne to receive from Him and to praise Him with joyful thanksgiving (Rev. That happens primarily in worship, whether here on earth or there in heaven. The shepherd and the sheep belong together, regardless of time and place in the world. Christ the Good Shepherd gives His flock receives.ĭefining the church as shepherd and sheep (John 10:1–18) denies any claim that a special group within the church is the true church, whether the papacy, the local congregation alone, the clergy alone or even one particular institutional church body, such as the LCMS. Christ’s redeeming work and the delivery of that work through the preaching of the Gospel leave no doubt for the saints that there is a church or that they belong to it. Lutherans define the church as God’s giving and our receiving, that is, Lutherans confess that the church exists where the sinner is being forgiven in the stead and by the command of the Lord Jesus. Wherever one finds the living voice of Christ and those who by the Holy Spirit hear and believe it - both pastor and flock together - there is the church. The Shepherd’s voiceĬhrist, the Chief Shepherd, has called us out of the world and into His flock (1 Peter 5:2). And yet, the doctrine of the church is an article of faith, established only by the Holy Scriptures. Against such a background, Luther’s definition of the church seems too simple or downright naïve. The ancient confession - the ancient belief - that every Christian child learns from Baptism, “I believe in one holy Christian church,” has become regarded as a flight of fancy, as theoretically true but practically impossible. In the relativistic malaise of our current age, even Christians can begin to believe that no one possesses a true and pure confession of God’s Word. In other times, the church has been considered merely a human institution, a group of people who agree to stand and sit at roughly the same time on Sunday morning, rather than the Shepherd’s flock united by His Word.
A quick look at the list of worldwide Christian denominations seems to affirm this perspective. These divisions within the church have been so harmful and pervasive that, at times, Christians have considered Jesus’ promise of one, holy Christian church as a nice idea but not a reality. Divisions crept into the church during the days of the apostles, and theystill do today. From an earthly perspective there does not appear to be much in which to believe. That does not mean I see or fully experience the one, holy Christian church. For the children pray, ‘I believe in one holy Christian Church’” (SA III XII 2–3). When charismatic gifts are seen as liturgical group actions it becomes clear how the Spirit uses charismatic gifts to transform the gathered people of God into the unified Body of Christ.Martin Luther gives a simple definition of the church: “Thank God, a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd. I then argue that charismatic gifts are given to and enacted by communities, rather than individuals, and so are an example of group action actualising the corporate agency of the local church. After briefly introducing the category of charismatic gifts, I argue that charismatic gifts are a semi–scripted improvisational activity which immerse participants into the core Christian narrative of the universal and invisible church. This paper argues that one can better understand how the Holy Spirit unifies both the universal and local church by viewing charismatic gifts as liturgical group actions. Yet, in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4, Paul links these phenomena with his famous metaphor for the unity of the church as the Body of Christ. Charismatic Gifts, Holy Spirit, Liturgy, Group Action, Church Unity, Body of Christ AbstractĬharismatic gifts are an understudied and divisive aspect of Christian worship.
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