We are a household of faith.
Jesus organized His disciples. They assumed the model was the royal court of an Eastern potentate, as would be typical in Hebrew culture. It also included elements of an extended household, men of shared noble lineage, chosen by the Sheik as His closest aides, His retainers. This is often referred to in English as the Kingdom of Heaven. The problem is we tend to think in terms of Medieval Feudalism, as opposed to ANE Feudalism. Not merely the trappings, but the basic assumptions are quite different, and the former is thoroughly misleading in that respect. We do better to keep in mind the Eastern Sheik model, as that's what God chose for Himself.
Jesus remains our Sheik, our Master, the Head of Household. The issue was never shared DNA, but spiritual DNA. You who serve Christ are my brothers and sisters, terms we adopted long ago in Christian History. Where we go wrong is not seeing that relationship through spiritual eyes; instead we flavor it with a world of subtle Western-isms inappropriate to the Sheikdom of Heaven. No man on earth sits on any throne of organization in the Household of Heaven. We are all members of the same family, and some rise to leadership for reasons obvious to anyone with spiritual sense, that divine faculty often called "faith." It could also be called "loyalty" under the intensely personal loyalty model of men and women serving an Eastern Sheik.
In this Covenant of His Blood, we still organize, but organize according to His chosen model. When we come together for fellowship and operations of faith in this world, we come together as "church" in the English language. With so very much baggage attending that term, I'll avoid it for now. Instead, I'll paint it from the same palette as the image above. We come together as a gathering of the Household of Faith. We share a mystical union which transcends blood and DNA, and declare ourselves "kin" by the authority of the Spirit. Thus, at any time and place, the sign out front could read, "A Household of Faith Gathers Here."
There is only one Temple, and that one is in Heaven, God's own Divine Court. We build no temples here any longer. Rather, we build houses as homes. The act of gathering is too important to smudge with formalized trappings. Organization is necessary for our fallen natures, not for the sake of the Spirit. He is the organizer. We take away as much as possible the man made veneer to grant Him the fullest freedom possible. While only experience can teach each gathering what that means for them, in my case that means avoiding dedicated facilities, if possible. We dirty the concept of holiness if we allow any human excuse for labeling any physical structure "holy." The local Body of Christ should reflect as much as possible the very physical form of some ANE household operating under the Master's authority, in His domain.
Obviously this limits the size of such organizing. That is as it should be. We can share a lot of excitement in huge crowds, but we can hardly be united with every member if we can't name them all. The numbers will vary with cultural backgrounds, but here in good old US of A, we tend to lose track when a class is bigger than 12, and the worship gathering is bigger than some 75 or so. Occasional rallies are another issue, but regular weekly worship should be smaller. It becomes all too easy to rely on emotion as an actual barrier to the Spirit of sharing with our fellow worshippers. Removing barriers is the whole point. Yes, I've watched strangers get all huggy after a great worship concert, but that's just cathexis, the emotional simulation of what the Holy Spirit does. The word "cathexis" refers to the somewhat involuntary collapse of ego boundaries, a highly emotional experience. Cathexis can deceive you in romance, and can deceive in spiritual matters. It's not a sin, but it's not a spiritual answer to a very real fallen human need.
That need is a genuine covenant commitment, loyalty to others because of a shared loyalty to Christ. You need to see the face of Christ in my willingness to face you when things are not so huggy and happy. When we commune at our worst, we have won a mighty battle in the Spirit. Emotions are there to celebrate, but serve no other purpose. Worship without emotion is just as valid in God's eyes, just as pleasing to Him, as it expresses loyalty. We have a long legacy of confusing Spirit with emotion, and we must make it a conscious effort to swing that Sword of the Spirit to cut the division cleanly.
My work became long ago and effort to dig out the understanding of things long lost. No, it's not secret; it's been there all along, in plain sight. Others have spoken of it, but you will have a tough time finding their works. Feel free to dismiss me for a wacko. I'm not about to seek an organization in the mainstream sense. It would be all too easy for me to build such a thing, create a new denomination, grow a big membership, make a fat living and have my name remembered for a long time. Yes, I do condemn that. No, this is something else. I'm seized by a powerful understanding of God's revelation. It has made such a huge difference in my soul, and makes a growing difference in my life. Other people are reading my record of discovery and finding, to varying degrees, something useful to their journey of faith.
Sooner or later, the effort to offer this understanding to more people will mean organizing a larger gathering than now meets in my living room every Sunday. There are no particular plans for this; it's simply how God operates. My plan is to meet the need as I go, or prepare for things as God shines His light on my path farther out ahead of my walk. He has placed in my heart a concern to limit the human factors of organization, to prevent by pre-planning things which should not happen in order to be consistent with the teaching. Words are only symbols, a parable, of higher truth. I'm going to call the local gatherings "a household of faith." I will not cooperate with anyone who seeks incorporation by man's laws so long as those laws require some compromise with the liberty necessary for following our Lord. For now, that means no incorporation, no tax-free status, no formal budgets and board meetings, no constitutions and by-laws documents, etc.
Instead, it will always be the basic house church model. You join the household, not in the legal human sense, by necessarily moving into the physical home, but you join spiritually the family of faith which gathers there. It operates under the authority of some householder, the host/hostess of the home. It's always a "private" gathering in that sense. By their own spiritual inclinations, they control who gets in the door, and who has to leave whenever they choose. Obviously, if they do a poor job, the rest of the family meets elsewhere next time. Nobody owns the organization, nobody controls it, but the whole group must find a way to operate under the burden of spiritual discipline. The host must always love the family enough to explain just about anything they ask regarding the meetings and related activities. A literal head of household in the ANE would do that, too. Who teaches or leads the worship is for the host/hostess to decide.
In the end, you have a very powerful element of accountability, with nothing to gain from politics. A phony will blow it, provided the membership aim at keeping a spiritual sense. Members are not bound by anything other than inclination to participate for each meeting. Every activity is volunteer, and runs on the bodies who show. The host remains in charge, in so far as any human is. When it works, it quickly looks like an extended family under a head of household. When it doesn't work, people vote with their feet.
I can claim I am called to be a head of household. For now, I am also the host, as it were. Let me be the first to proclaim that is subject to change, because I have no vested interest in control. My only urge is to see the message set before others. Indeed, I honestly predict this will someday gain a new front man, so to speak. I have no doubt someone out there will be touched by God to join this work, and be far more talented than I at teaching and leading. Nor will I pretend to control the content of teaching. It's not possible for me to be involved without teaching in some way, but if the group moves off on their own, that's not my problem. The Lord is washing from me any ambitions. If you aren't moved by my words, I'm not talking to you. The results remain my Father's business, not mine.
So the ministry here at this static archive website will still be called "Kiln of the Soul." Anyone who wants to coordinate with me can use that label with my blessings (for what that's worth). The individual gatherings under this teaching will be called "household of faith" instead of "church." The terms symbolize the focus on embracing a different cultural image, and setting aside previous trappings of Western Evangelical churches. May we never find ourselves returning to the traps of the past, but always treat the human organizational concerns as ever temporary tools of the Household.
Note: "ANE" is the abbreviation for Ancient Near East.
By Ed Hurst
31 May 2009
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