{"id":1926,"date":"2022-08-30T09:37:59","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T13:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2022-08-30T09:38:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T13:38:51","slug":"cracked-pot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/30\/cracked-pot\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracked Pots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.  They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d  <\/em>
 
A quarter century ago Tom Smith, a pastor in South Africa, was on the fast track.
 
Using his entrepreneurial spirit and ministry leadership gifts, he soon found himself presiding over a megachurch.  But the cost was high.  Smith gradually succumbed to exhaustion and burnout.  The work of God through<\/em> him was destroying the work of God in<\/em> him \u2013 an old story which all too many church leaders know by heart. 
 
Tom and his wife decided to step away from ministry.  They wrestled with a hard question:  Did they have any vision or energy left to serve a local congregation? 
 
In the end, they chose to begin again.  They met with a small group in 2003, searching for a picture or metaphor that might describe the kind of church they hoped to become.  They settled on Paul\u2019s statement in 2 Corinthians 4:7: \u201cBut we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.\u201d 
 
The named themselves the Claypot Church. 
 
After discovering that earthenware vessels on the retail market are surprisingly expensive, they located a discarded clay pot at a local business.  It was filled with mud and chipped here and there.  In other words, it was exactly what they were looking for.
 
Smith recalls, \u201cAt the conclusion of one of our services we placed the pot in a big bag and broke it on the concrete floor.  It symbolized our brokenness; everyone in the community took a broken piece home.  All of us wrote a prayer on our shards and we came together to reassemble the pot.  Although the pot is glued together, it still isn\u2019t a picture of perfection.  Yet when we put a candle in it, it radiated a glorious light.\u201d
 
The Claypot Church in Johannesburg is not a big church.  But it\u2019s a humble <\/em>church \u2013 launched on the premise that the strength and integrity of every congregation comes from Christ and not from us.
 
That\u2019s fully in line with what Paul writes in the last two verses of the first chapter of Ephesians: \u201cAnd God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way\u201d <\/strong><\/em>(vs. 22-23).
 
The Greek word translated \u201cfullness\u201d is pleroma<\/em>.  In the first century that had become a key term in philosophical conversation.  The good life was defined as being \u201cfilled-full.\u201d  Spiritual seekers yearned to be filled to the brim with the presence and power of divinity.
 
Paul is saying, \u201cThe fullness of God \u2013 everything you\u2019ve ever been looking for \u2013 is available right now<\/em> in Jesus.\u201d
 
And notice where this fullness is \u201clocated.\u201d  Paul declares that God\u2019s pleroma<\/em> is encountered in \u201cthe church, which is his body\u2026\u201d
 
This is unsettling news for the myriad self-described American Christians who consider churches something akin to kryptonite.  Instead of joining what will surely turn out to be a dysfunctional spiritual family, why not pursue instead a pathway of do-it-yourself discipleship? 
 
Paul\u2019s answer is that sharing life with other Christ-followers is not an elective in the Christian curriculum, nor a side dish we can pass up at God\u2019s buffet table.  Paul uses the metaphor of “Christ\u2019s Body\u201d more than 30 times in his letters.  The church is an organization<\/em> only secondarily.  Primarily the Body is an organism<\/em> \u2013 a living association of women and men who are becoming more and more like Jesus, with Christ himself as the head.  We are his arms, legs, hands, feet, sinews, and muscles. 
 
If Jesus is going to accomplish anything in this world, it appears he\u2019s going to do it through his church.  Therefore we walk, serve, and love together.  A disembodied limb or organ may be a great prop for a horror movie, but it\u2019s certainly not going to achieve very much on its own.

But what about the fact that every church, if you look long enough and hard enough, is seriously messed up?

One of the miracles of the gospel is that Jesus is able and willing to work through congregations with major flaws – in other words, with your<\/em> congregation.  And we must be willing to do the same.

In the end, we’re all members of the Claypot Church.

Which is a pretty wonderful thing.

After all, the cracks are what allows the Light to shine through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.  They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d   A quarter century ago Tom Smith, a pastor in South Africa, was on the fast track. Using his entrepreneurial spirit… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1927,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[493,480],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church","tag-ephesians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1929,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/1929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}