The good and the bad…

Well good and bad…new web site is up with new podcasts available for download too! There’s still some features we’ll be adding, but check it out! www.ephesuschurch.tv or just ephesuschurch.tv if you’re nasty!

It seems we won’t be moving back into Brevard St. for a good while longer. They are having to do major renovations and we’ll have to wait till they finish. BUT…it’s going to be an awesome facility when it’s ready for us to move back in. So for now, we’re still meeting at the 24-7 Prayer Room.

New series starts this week, “Ephesians:Pocket Guide to Christianity” come check it out.

The trailer in all its glory

The trailer in all its glory

Originally uploaded by g8rben

Ben Eige
Pastor, Ephesus Church
www.ephesuschurch.tv

Sent via BlackBerry

The Vision

The last couple of days I[ve been pondering the importance of keeping the vision out front. Most good workshops or books will reiterate that, but it really hits home when you’re in the trenches. Ephesus Church has launched, seemingly with no hiccups. It almost did seem too easy, then it hit! Our facility that we had been planning in and meeting in for several months went down to an electrical system failure the week after our official launch. Or momentum seemed to come to a grinding, screeching halt. We’ve found a temporary (what I like to call a temporary temporary) location and our original building is under repair and should be available again soon, but it surely brought challenges. Our easy run was over. I struggled with discouragement, even as our launch team rallied and persevered like the incredible folks they are. All the doubts and questions bubbled up into my mind. I was praying through all of this and the vision God originally gave for Ephesus bubbled up in my soul. I went back to the videos we had created to express that vision and was re-inspired! Many times, leadership instruction on vision is geared towards keeping the vision in front of the people (In case you’re wondering, this “leadership-concept” has it’s roots in a book written a few thousand years ago…). But the thing is, I needed to keep the vision out front. About 6 months ago I preached a sermon in our sponsoring church about the need for planting churches and specifically the vision to plant Ephesus in Uptown Charlotte. A couple of months back, Pastor Farrell Lemings, senior pastor at Grace, gave me some advice. He said to get some copies of that message and tuck them away somewhere, because at some point I’m going to need to hear it again myself. Times will come where I’ll get discouraged, and we’ll hit road blocks and I’ll need to be reminded myself about the vision God has planted. I have to be honest, my first thought was “I’m too pumped about this deal! Good advice, but I doubt I’ll need it.” Once again, my arrogance had gotten the best of me. I do need to constantly be reminded of the vision. To be encouraged by the vision. To be shown that it’s God vision, and not my, or anyone else’s, vision. If it’s God it’s gonna happen. My response now has to be that I continually keep the vision out in front of me, and out in front of the team, and ultimately everyone plugging into Ephesus. Loving Jesus, loving people, and loving the city…

Passover and Communion

This past week at Ephesus I taught on Communion. If you’ve been in church a long time like I have, Communion can have the tendency to get blase, or if you are new to the Christian faith, you perhaps don’t have a full understanding of why we have snacks in church. Either way, you can check out the podcast at EphesusChurch.tv on iTunes or through our website here in the next day or two. Below, is something my dad, Jacob Eige, compiled, explaining the depth of connection between Communion and Passover as celebrated by the Jewish people for thousands of years in remembrance of their Exodus from Egypt. Hope you enjoy and thanks Dad!

Communion, The Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Last Supper, Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or even Passover they are all the same, a remembrance all point to a meal Jesus and the disciples had on the night He was betrayed. And just like many titles there are many thoughts, teachings, books and sermons on it as well. However, there is an overlooked aspect to this important part of our faith, the symbolism found in the Lord’s Supper. Not the symbolism handed down by the church but the symbolism of the elements and Jesus’ words. God has always used symbols to help us so let’s look at the ones the Disciples would note on that Passover eve with Jesus.
While we don’t have the space or the time to look at the whole picture I would like to focus on the two elements of Communion, the Matzo and the Cup. The bread of Passover is what we call unleavened bread. First, bread is considered symbolic of life L’Chaim. In John 6:48 Jesus says He is the Bread of Life. He was born in the City of Bread, Bethlehem. Next Matzo is unleavened bread. Leaven at Passover symbolizes sin and before Passover every trace is removed from the home. Jesus warns us about the Leaven of the Pharisees in Matthew 16:6. Next if we look at a large piece of Matzah we see that there are numerous brown spots all over the Matzah. For us it symbolizes the bruises and stripes that the Messiah bore as prophesied by Isaiah 53:5 that we deserve for our pesha, our rebellion against GOD and our healing both physical and spiritual. Next we will notice the numerous holes in the bread, symbolizing the three nails and a spear that pierced Jesus for our sins. Now we must note that Matzah is not widely used in many Churches for the Lord’s Supper and the ones who do seldom make note of it’s important symbolism before partaking.
Paul in I Corinthians 11:23-26 says in verse 25 that after supper Jesus took the cup. What cup are we seeing here? The Passover table at which Jesus and the Disciples reclined had 14 places set. Now at the beginning of the Passover meal there were 13 people present so why 14 places? Early on in the formation of the whole Passover, Haggadah or Pasach, a place was set for the expected Messiah. During the remembrance part of the meal the youngest person at the table would get up and go to the door, open it and see if the Messiah was there. As the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah and the sect of Christians, most of whom were still Jewish, grew, the Rabbis decided to change the empty place to that of Elijah reasoning that he had to come before the Messiah so he would be the one at the door. It was not a sudden change but an evolution of the meal, the Seder. Also when we reach the 3rd cup the Haggadah has the leader lifting up the cup at Elijah’s place as the youngest goes to the door. This is also called the Cup of Redemption. Jesus, I am convinced, picked up this cup from not Elijah’s place but from the Messiah’s place and said: “In this Cup is the New Covenant in My Blood which is poured out for you.” The symbolism of this was not lost on the Disciples that the Messiah had indeed come and that HE was lifting up the Cup of Redemption and saying to remember not just the exodus of Passover, His death on the Cross but that He would be coming back. I do believe, though, the full import of all this was yet to be realized by them.
What wonderful symbolism if we look at the Jewish roots of the Lord’s Supper. When we move past just the usual words of the Institution we uncover the desire of GOD for us to come deeper into HIS Love and what Jesus did for us as the Passover Lamb. It is good for us to take some time not only to examine ourselves but also to think again on

all the symbolism designed by GOD to draw us closer to HIMSELF and to remember what Jesus did as the Passover Lamb, which was no small thing.
This symbolism is GOD’S special tool to help us not only remember the past but to have promise in the present of forgiveness and healing and that The Messiah will one day return both as the Passover Lamb and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then we will drink with HIM from the 4th Cup, the Cup of Hallel, The Cup of High Praise which Jesus did not appear to drink from that night. Why? Because in Matthew 26:29 Jesus says, “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
I pray that the next time you partake of Communion, aka Passover, that you will remember and rejoice that we have a special way to remember one simple truth: Abba, GOD, loves us so very much.

Worship

Tonight at Ephesus I’m continuing the series on the church by talking about worship. What it is and why we do it at church. I originally intended to talk about worship as well as communion and preaching in one message. Boy was that poor planning. As dug in more and more I realized there’s no way I could do it! So tonight, it’s just worship. Even with spending the whole time on it tonight we’ll still only scratch the surface. I could easily do a whole series on worship and maybe someday I will. Needless to say, I wanted to direct you to 2 small books that give great insight into the entirety of worship. It is so much more than a few songs during a Sunday service and these books uncover the depth of true worship. I encourage you to pick them up and do some more reading on your own.

Inside Out Worship-compiled by Matt Redman

(you have to ignore the cheesy cover)

The Unquenchable Worshipper-written by Matt Redman

The Ephesus Road Trip ‘08 rolls on

Ephesus church will continue to meet at the Charlotte 24-7 Prayer Room through the month of April (or until Brevard Street is repaired). We are especially grateful to 24-7 for housing the vagabond church of Ephesus as we wait for Brevard St. to get repaired. It has really been a great venue for us in the temporary. Tomorrow evening at 6pm we’ll be hitting Pt. 3 of What is the Church and talk about what it is the church does on a regular basis and why we do it. This week we’re talking about worship, preaching and communion.  Well, I hope to see you at Ephesus.

Meeting Venue through April

We will able to meet at the Charlotte 24-7 Prayer Room through the month of April while the electrical system gets repaired in our Brevard Street location. The last two weeks have gone really well in this space giving us a very intimate place to dig into God and His plan for the church.

Beyond that, I’m really feeling the need for excercise. I’m tired and it’s totally my fault. I’ve been able to find a decent balance with my schedule, but I’ve gotten out of a good exercise routine. So this next week I’m challenging myself to get an exercise regimen into my schedule and make it a priority. I certainly believe we have a responsibility to keep the bodies God gave us healthy and I’ve been slacking there.

Lastly, Casey and I signed with a real estate agent this past Thursday to put our Davidson house on the market so we can move down into Charlotte. We’ve been going back and forth on this for a while because of the new baby girl that’s on the way and everything going on with getting Ephesus, we weren’t sure if we wanted to take on finding a new house and a move. But a couple of weeks ago I was praying about it all and felt strongly God was telling us we need to be down in Charlotte now. It has always been our desire to move into Charlotte as Ephesus got going, but we were dragging our feet. But now we’re jumping in with both feet. We know we have to be in the neighborhood and really being in the place God has called us. So pray our house sells quickly in this market AND we find a great place to live right in the middle of Charlotte. My challenge to everyone who is following after God’s plan is to jump in 100%. Straddling the fence eventually causes some serious pain…

Podcasts

The podcasts will continue to be updated! Week 1 in our series on the church has not yet been uploaded because we have run out of space on our free podcast service we are using. We are working out the final kinks on our own dedicated server which will be hosting our audio & video (coming soon) podcasts, our new website (coming VERY soon) and our email. We’ll be a self-contained internet content machine! Thanks to Brian Sullivan for working all of this out, and look for two new audio podcasts (The Church pts. 1 & 2) next week.

Venue sagas continue

It is looking like we will be at the 24-7 Prayer Room again this week, but I haven’t yet confirmed that with the director (as of 4:29pm on Friday April 4th). I was watching The Pursuit of Happyness today with Will Smith and watching him go through the struggles of being homeless and taking care of his son and believing that an incredible future was ahead. Yesterday I was rereading some portions of Confessions of a Reformission Rev and Mark Driscoll was relating the early days of Mars Hill when it was struggling to survive and wasn’t really what he had thought the church would look like, but he had a vision of something bigger, a vision God had given him and his role was to do whatever he could to set the foundation for this huge vision of reaching the city God had place him in. Chris Gardner (the real person Will Smith portrays in Pursuit) and Mark Driscoll both saw the dream come about. I’m holding on to that right now. God is faithful. He’s bigger than any of this, and I have a vision of a church impacting the city of Charlotte in personal lives and cultural influence. It’s bigger than anything I can do, it’s a dream God has birthed and no venue issues are going to stop it. So get on board the ride we’re on cause the trip is going to be a good one.

BTW, just got off the phone with Lisa at 24-7. Ephesus will once again meet there this Sunday. If you haven’t been to 24-7 yet, you need to go. It’s a place of peace to get close to God, pray for what’s going on in your life, pray for what’s going on in Charlotte, and pray for the what’s going on in the world. And while you’re there, consider a little financial contribution because what they provide doesn’t happen for free.

See you this Sunday at Ephesus where we’ll continue to dig into the true nature of the church!

Profanity

I’ve felt the need over the last few days to write about this issue. It’s one of those sticky ones in the church today, and I’ve spent time on it before at churches that I’ve been at. I’m a pretty open guy when it comes to lifestyle decisions that aren’t directly addressed or wrongly evaluated from a biblical basis, such as drinking (bible says don’t get drunk, unless you’re under 21, then no drinking!) tattoos (fairly ambiguous on this count, although some like to translate certain portions of Revelation as stating that Jesus will return with one), smoking (regularly smoking cigarettes will kill you, bottom line, and the body is God’s temple, but the bible doesn’t specifically address tobacco use), who you vote for, how you dress, the color of your hair, you know “whatever” I say. But cussing, cursing, profanity, whatever you want to call it bugs me. Now I’m not overly judgemental, and I enjoy my share of R-rated movies with a little too many f-bombs, but a great story (The Usual Suspects), and a few of my favorite preachers have a reputation of letting one slip out, but I firmly hold to the fact that the bible is rather clear on the use of foul, profane (as culture would deem) language. I just believe Christians, after being redeemed and willingly  engaging in a relationship with the risen Christ, should not use cuss words with any kind of regularity. Does the occasional wirty durd slip? Sure it does, we’re human, we’re sinners.  But many Christians, especially young Christians (both age-wise and time as a Christian-wise) have somehow determined that profanity, as a part of common dialogue, is okay. My point with this post is to say it just isn’t. That’s where I stand. Now, I’m not asking anyone to change their speech when they’re around me, that’s dumb, what I’m saying is search your heart and search Scripture about the use of foul language when you talk. Below I’ve listed a few relevant passages. Again, don’t pretend to be something else around me. I love you, always will. I’m not so shallow that this would change my relationship with anyone, but really ponder this and let God speak to your heart. Okay, now I don’t have to take a Sunday on this one…

These quotes are from the Message paraphrase, which I try to steer clear of when I’m engaging in teaching because it is a paraphrase, but I think Eugene Peterson translated these passages well for our current culture.

Psalms 34.13
Guard your tongue from profanity, and no more lying through your teeth.

Ephesians 4.29
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift

Ephesians 5.4
Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.

Colossians 3.8
8 But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk. 9 Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. 10 Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete.

Exodus 20.7
No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverant use of his name

James 3.9-12

With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. 10 Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! 11 A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? 12 Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?