New Church Development in a Pluralistic World: Messianic Jewish Congregations

Today, in the Presbyterian Church (USA) many of our North American traditional perceptions of the local church, how it functions, operates and celebrates “Holy Days,” when it worships and where, are bound by the dominant Western European culture which has shaped America. These perceptions of church have been formed by Euro-centric theological practices in a mostly Gentile Christian culture. The Church has forgotten how it looked and functioned as a relevant Gospel witness in a Jewish culture, as faithful Jewish-Christian believers within their Jewish cultural context. The task of forming new churches today requires a critical review of our theology and practice of new church development. It is in the critical review that we may find a deeper conversion to the trans-cultural Gospel, a Gospel not tied to any one culture and at once rooted in God who became a Palestinian Jew in order to “make peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:15-20).

The Gospel came clothed in a first century culture and yet the Gospel transcends the captivity of any culture by pointing to God’s kingdom. The Church’s commission involves hearing the Gospel and re-visioning itself to engage in trans-cultural ministry at the doorstep of all the major cultural contexts of the world. These groups have come to America, not for the Gospel, but for what promises to be some version of a better life than back home, and in some cases, as a refuge from oppression.1 Regrettably, some immigrants, particularly those of color, come only to find marginalization and modern forms of racism. God responds to the cries and needs of our diverse world by calling out from the nations a people to serve the world.

The people God calls to serve the world, the church (the Greek New Testament term means “called out ones”), are formed as disciples in a community of faith to serve as faithful witnesses of God’s reign in the Messiah.2 Jesus incarnates what the task of the disciple involves and, in so doing, shows how to carry out that task. For example, Jesus was concerned for “the lost” (Luke 15), and for the welfare of the city, people’s health, just treatment of the oppressed, and the outcasts of the first century.3 The formation of particular Spirit-sent communities is the apostolic pattern that the twenty-first century church needs to reclaim. Taking up the commission of the Messiah to go into the entire world, that is, the specific cultures in the world, God’s people are called to faithfully fulfill our Lord’s Great Commission of disciple-making.4

The formation of the first new churches was also in response to the nature of God, which is missional, missio Dei.5 God sent the prophets of the Old and New Testament. God sent God’s Son, Jesus the Messiah. The Messiah sent the Twelve, the Seventy and the Church. God sent the Holy Spirit to empower the work of the church and to seal the presence of the indwelling Messiah in those who affirm faith and are called into community as disciples of the Messiah. Thus, an understanding of the divine calling to serve the nations arises from, and is modeled by, the activity of God, who has communicated with humanity, called a particular people, and sent them into God’s world. Jesus himself was the preeminent example of an emissary sent from God, God’s own self-disclosure, as is evident in John’s Gospel which equates Jesus as the Word and therefore Jesus as God who came and lived among us.6

In response to the life and redemptive acts of Jesus, the Apostles started new congregations of people who were equipped to faithfully witness to God’s reign in Jesus the Messiah in their ministry setting. Faithful witness meant that they were involved in the translation and transmission of the Gospel into these ministry contexts. This apostolic strategy was displayed as a congregational movement, held together through the Messiah’s call, their common faith in the Messiah’s Lordship, and their shared commitment to follow faithfully the new faith community norms instituted by the Messiah.

The Messiah’s call and formation of disciples,7 which resulted in the first new church developments, has seminal implications for today. I suggest that the Messiah’s call for the Church today needs to follow in the apostolic pattern of witness for the formation of new congregations in specific cultural contexts. The formation of messianic communities is rooted in the Apostles’ witness to the person and work of Jesus the Messiah, God’s Son and our Savior. The first believing communities were formed from devout Jews who gathered at the Jewish Festival of Weeks in Jerusalem, which occurred 50 days after Passover.8 This festival is celebrated in the Church as Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came 50 days after the death of Jesus of Nazareth and 10 days after the Resurrected Jesus the Messiah ascended.

The Festival of Weeks was a gathering of Jews from many nations in the first-century world. Hearing the Good News of Jesus the Messiah being preached in the language of these far away lands surprised them. Many believed and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. These first believers followed the Messiah using many Jewish forms of religious expression familiar to them, including holidays and ritual prayer practices of devout Jews, as they faithfully witnessed to the Good News of God’s reign in Jesus the Messiah.

The articles of this issue of Theology Matters focus on one particular people and culture group, namely the Jewish people, to whom God in the flesh first chose to proclaim Good News. These articles will pose questions about how our predominantly Gentile church needs to evaluate her neighborliness to those who are culturally different from us. I believe we need to question our assumptions about and practices of Christian devotion, such as our style and day of worship, when we contextualize mission to specific cultures. Indeed, many Christians who have experienced cross-cultural ministries nearby or abroad end up with a multi-cultural appreciation for how the Church expresses the Gospel in a different culture. With Christians everywhere “we are called to make a joyous witness to persons of other faiths in a spirit of respect and openness, and honesty”.9

In giving this “joyous witness” the message of the Kingdom invites us who are Gentile Christians to envision new ways of witness that are culturally respectful and that spring from the imagination of how a person from Jewish culture today, could hear God’s call to discover the Messiah’s grace and forgiveness. In response to the first-century joyous witness of the Pentecost believers in the Jewish gathering at the Feast of Weeks, many Jews heard the Gospel in their native language, welcomed the message that Jesus was both Lord and Messiah, repented and were baptized. The journey of faith begins with repentance and grows in spiritual maturity as we continue to turn (literally, repent) and follow Jesus the Messiah.

Included in our repentance needs to be a humble recognition that no cultural form of worship is obligatory or superior. Our uniting loyalty with all Christians is worship centered in the underlying purpose of worship, namely the adoration of our triune God, preeminently made known to us in the Messiah. Our culturally conditioned responses to the Gospel, especially those worship forms most meaningful to us from our faith community of spiritual formation, must not become the benchmarks of acceptance for those whose expressions of worship are different in form and weekly gathering day. In humility rather than superiority, we dare not mix our cultural practices of response to the Gospel, with the Gospel call to culturally different outsiders to receive the Gospel and become like us in our practice of Christian devotion. The Gospel call is one of hospitality and neighborliness to those who are culturally different from us in the host church.10 For example, the confusion of Peter about the hospitality of a Jew and Gentile meeting in his witness with Cornelius, aids us in seeing the distance between Gentile and Jewish cultures then, and I would submit, so also in many ways now.11 As the articles that follow will demonstrate, even now, both Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians practice worship and other expressions of the faith in diverse culture forms.

Thanks be to God, that Jesus breaks down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. In our common desire to follow the Messiah the dividing wall crumbles, for the Messiah invites us all to journey with him in the adventure to become more like the One who came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many.12 Although we are one in the Messiah, as agreed upon in the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, today we need to affirm respectful empowerment to practice culturally relevant devotion and forms of witness. In doing so we honor the gift of the Holy Spirit in one another and add nothing to the offer of costly grace whereby every tribe and nation is invited to faith in the Messiah, God’s Son.

I further suggest that part of this repentance may lead us in a spirit of humility to reclaim our historic and apostolic Presbyterian witness with Jewish people recounted in this issue of Theology Matters.13 In the Presbyterian emphasis of a “church reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God” we find abundant biblical support in the New Testament record for what I call “Messianic Jewish Congregations” or New Church formation with Jewish people. The New Testament records are the story of apostolic witness and formation of new communities of faith, many of which were started as extensions of synagogue worship, first in Jerusalem and then after persecution, throughout the Roman Empire among the dispersion of Jewish people.

I commend to you this issue of Theology Matters, which addresses messianic witness issues and new congregation formation. I conclude by suggesting a model of new church development, which is titled “Messianic Jewish Congregation.” This issue of Theology Matters will trace some of the messianic witness of the Reformed tradition of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which sought to continue a long and continuing witness to Jesus as Messiah in a culturally relevant way to a specific culture, the Jewish people.

“Messianic Jewish Congregation (New Church Development)

The Messianic Jewish Congregation (NCD) is used when a presbytery seeks to be a faithful witness to the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition in a presbytery where there is a large Jewish population. All the first new church developments of the New Testament, including those in Jerusalem, Corinth, Colossae and Thessalonica grew out of a Messianic ministry within synagogues in these cities. Twentieth century Presbyterian Messianic Jewish ministry has grown out of a Presbyterian effort to share the love and claims of Jesus, the Messiah with a religiously and culturally diverse Jewish population in major urban centers. Worship is held beginning on the Jewish Sabbath and with an affirmation of Jewish culture which is quite similar to other ethnic congregations that have a high degree of ethnocentricity such as African American Presbyterian outreach to unchurched African Americans. The focus of a Messianic Jewish Congregation (NCD) is to reach the unaffiliated Jewish population. (For example: Philadelphia Presbytery, The Messiah Now Ministries, and Congregation Beth Messiah)”14

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Jul/Aug 2001).