The radical church model at Ephesus

As I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new folks at Ephesus over the last few months one common theme keeps popping up. People are saying they have to hunt and hunt for a church that is solidly biblical in their teachings and actions. Unfortunately, this hasn’t caught me as much of a surprise, but shouldn’t it be surprising? Christian churches that aren’t obviously putting Scripture right out front? This often includes putting Jesus (or not, as the case may be) right out front. People are truly hungry for Jesus and Scripture and tired of wasting their time with feel good theology that makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but leaves way too much open to debate and makes no, true, eternal change in people’s lives. As a pastor, and a church, we’re committed to God’s Word and Jesus. It’s amazing how “attractional” this has been in our early months as a church. I’m very excited about how people are landing at Ephesus, because they see a church that is biblical and loves Jesus. At the same time, it’s exciting to see people discover who Jesus truly wants to be in their lives and then seeing their lives change, while we follow our “radical” model of preaching Jesus and the bible every Sunday. I love our church!

Time Change

I wanted to let everyone know that starting October 12th, Ephesus Sunday service time is changing to 10:30am. Our ReLaunch will be our first service held at our new time. There’s great reasons for a morning and an evening service and in the near future, as we grow, we hope to start a second service in the evening. But, we feel right now 10:30am on Sunday morning is the best time for us to come together. If you are planning on coming to our ReLaunch, please make note of the time change! We are planning on moving back to Brevard Street next Sunday, 9/28, but will still meet at 6pm until October 12th. If you have any questions, please contact us at info@ephesuschurch.tv Also, tomorrow (Sunday) in the Uptown area’s local section of the Charlotte Observer there will be an article about Ephesus Church by Marty Minchin! If you don’t live in the Uptown area, you’ll be able to find the article on the Observer’s website or by going to a local store and picking up a copy with the Uptown “Friend’s & Neighbors” section. Exciting stuff happening for Ephesus, thanks for being a part!

Baptisms and beyond…

Yesterday was a pretty phenomenal day at Ephesus Church. We had classic church plant baptisms in our backyard in an inflatable pool. I was thinking and praying about the baptisms before I headed to church yesterday evening and felt like that was a huge step for our young church just as it was a huge step for those being baptized, setting us up for the next phase. Then last night….Seth led a phenomenal worship set. The music was absolutely amazing, but it was so obviously authentic and Spirit-led. I was challenged as to how to transition from that amazing time of worship into a sermon. God spoke to me in the back of the room and I realized it all tied together. The message was from Ephesians 4.7-16 on maturity and growth. I realized it was right where God wanted us to go. Worship is amazing as we honor God with music and singing, but we can also have the tendency to want to “camp out” in worship and the euphoria it often brings. While not wrong in and of itself, it’s also not the whole package of our Christian faith. God desires for us to worship Him and He blesses us in the process, BUT he also calls us to growth and maturity, so the sermon was the right follow-up to an amazing time of worship. I had a blast with the sermon last night. I got up on a couple of soap boxes and really felt like God was directing much of my words to Ephesus last night. MUCH of what I said was not in my notes, which always seems to make it better stuff. To top it off we had our best attendance since moving to Area 15, on July 4th weekend no less! Needless to say I’m on a little bit of a high today!

Water Baptism

This past week at Ephesus, I finished up our series on “What is the Church.” I had originally intended to take some time on a Sunday and preach about the ordinance of water baptism, but did not have the opportunity to dig in. I said I would put more info on the blog, so here it is…

Water baptism is the second ordinance prescribed by Jesus to be regularly practiced by the church and Christ-followers. The other is the Lord’s Supper which we looked at in part 4 of “What is the Church.” First and foremost, Jesus modeled full immersion baptism by John the Baptist in Matthew 3. John’s baptism was a sign of full repentance of sin before God. Something that happens between the individual and God, when the individual comes to a full complete acknowledgment of our innate sinfulness, accepts the forgiveness only available through Jesus’ death on the cross and desires for those around him or her to know the change that has happened. Jesus directs us in Matthew 28.19-20 to baptize and we then see it carried out throughout the book of Acts as the early church was getting it’s start. Therefore, because it was exemplified in Jesus, declared by Jesus, and lived out in the life of the early church, we continue to practice it today. At Ephesus, we conduct baptism through the full immersion in water of the individual. This is due to the examples we see in the bible and the original Greek word from which baptism is derived being defined as placing someone fully in water. It’s that simple. Baptism takes on several forms of symbolism as does the Lord’s Supper. I’ll examine a few.

1. Forgiveness of sins-water is naturally seen as a cleansing agent, we bathe in it, wash dishes in, clean off dead bugs from our windshield with it. So as we are outwardly expressing our cleansing of sin through Jesus, it makes sense that water would physically symbolize a spiritual house-cleaning
2. Regeneration-Water brings life and baptism again symbolizes this. Jesus told Nicodemus one must be “born of water and spirit” in John 3.
3. Resurrection-Traditionally, when baptized one goes down into the water (careful to hold the nose for obvious reasons!) and comes up again. This symbolizes our connection with the resurrection of Jesus and is spoken of by Paul in Romans 6 and Colossians 2.
4. Unity of the church-Baptism is (at least it should be) a common experience for Christians, a sort-of “rite of passage” that is a jointly shared experience in several ways. First, we all, as followers of Jesus, have most likely been baptized at some point and see it as a shared milestone in our growth. Secondly, baptism is designed to be a public event where a shared joy and excitement occurs between friends and family. In these things we are further unified as the body of Christ.
5. Commitment to God-Baptism on a certain level also holds a degree of accountability. You have publicly declared your acceptance of Jesus’ death on the cross and folks around you now have no doubt about where you stand. You now have no excuse when you flip someone off in traffic for cutting you off and then being right next to you at the next light anyway…not that I’m bitter.

Water baptism is a powerful, personal experience as you seal in your own life what God is doing in you. It’s also a powerful public experience that allows Christians to celebrate with you  and others around you to get a glimpse of what is happening in your life. I look forward to many opportunities to get wet with the folks of Ephesus as we journey together 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.

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!

EPHESUS VENUE CHANGE THIS WEEK

I just found out late this afternoon that our building in Uptown has had a major electrical problem and we will not be able to meet there at least this week and perhaps longer. But Ephesus is still happening! Through the graciousness of the Charlotte 24-7 Prayer Room we still have somewhere to meet this Sunday. We will meet at 6pm at the 24-7 Prayer Room which is located at Area 15 at 514 15th Street, Charlotte, NC 28206. Here’s a link to a Google map. The 24-7 Prayer Room is just a few blocks north of I-277 heading towards NoDa.

We will be in a new place, but Ephesus will still be going on this week! We will have City Kids available for children birth-10 years old. We will also have a team at our Brevard Street location with directions to the Prayer Room for folks that don’t get the update in time. We are coming off an incredible launch this past Easter Sunday and we are looking forward to what God is continuing to do at Ephesus, no matter where we gather! I’m starting a new series this week about what the church is truly about, what a great way to dig into what the Church is really about as we meet this fresh challenge!

I’d like to ask you to note the venue change and also get the word out to everyone you can about where Ephesus will be this Sunday. Please email me with any questions you may have. Thanks for being a part of Ephesus as we continue to Love Jesus, Love People and Love the City!

The reality of the Cross

This past Sunday at Ephesus I touched on the physical realities of death by crucifixion. I want to give a little more of the details on this form of execution which was first practiced by the Persians and possibly learned by the Romans from the Carthaginians. The reality is that crucifixion, while horrific and violent, was fairly common during the Roman Empire. It was reserved for non-Roman citizens for crimes in which the government desired to make a very public mockery of the victim. While the crucifixion of Jesus is certainly the most recognized instance of this form of execution there are several other instances where execution occurred on a large scale. Notably the crucifixion of Spartacus and his followers during the slave rebellion of the First Century BC. There were upwards of 6000 crucified along a major Roman highway as so admirably portrayed by Kirk Douglas in the great man-movie Spartacus. The noted Jewish historian, Josephus, recorded many Jews were crucified following the failed Jewish revolt around AD 70. It is also tradition, although not with authoritative records, that Peter was crucified upside down. He made this request, because he felt he wasn’t worthy to die the same way as Jesus. All of this being said, crucifixion was a very horrific way to die, and very few survived crucifixion, and then only because they were shown mercy for some reason or another and taken off the cross or pole before they succumbed. Bottom line, either you died on the cross or the Romans very intentionally allowed you to live. No one ever accidentally survived. There has been some debate as to whether Jesus truly died on the cross or merely “swooned” or “almost died.” There is simply no historical evidence that this happened, nor is it realistic that it could have happened. Not only did the Roman executioners ensure death, because their own lives depended on them properly completing their job, but Jesus certainly was in a state of extreme trauma when laid in the tomb where he was wrapped in over 100 pounds of linens and without food or water for 3 days. You just don’t get up and walk out of a situation like that.

Next, I’d like to detail the physical realities of crucifixion. Much of this is taken from an article written in the March 21, 1986 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

First there was flogging

• A flog is a leather whip of braided leather straps with metal balls and small pieces of bone in them
• These bits of bone and metal were used to rip open the flesh on the back of the victim often exposing the spine and internal organs
• When whipped, these bits would grab hunks of flesh and tear them off the victim
• After being flogged Jesus would most likely go into shock which correlates with his collapsing while carrying the cross and being thirsty due to blood loss on the cross.
• This would lead to something known as hypovolemic shock. This is shock caused by the loss of large amounts of blood. It has 4 major effects

1. The heart races to try and pump blood that is no longer in the body
2. the blood pressure drops leading to fainting or collapse
3. the kidneys stop producing urine so as much blood as possible can be maintained
4. extreme thirst as the body needs more fluids to replace the lost blood

Next was the journey to the place of execution.

• Jesus would have had to carry the crossbar of the cross which weighed between 75-125 pounds outside of the city to to the site of crucifixion
• This rough hewn piece of wood would be resting on his ripped open back

Once at the site of the crucifixion:

• There would be the upright portion of the cross already in the ground
• Jesus would then be thrown to the ground which allowed dirt to get into his torn back with his arms outstretched across the crossbar
• He would then be nailed through the wrists to the cross by 5-7 inch long metal spikes. These spike would go right through the median nerve in the wrist causing pain similar to, but far beyond, something experienced when we hit our “funny bone” in the elbow as this nerve was crushed by the spike.
• The nail went between the two bones in the wrist to hold the victim to the cross.
  • traditionally it has been said that the nails went through the hands, but the palms would tear from the weight of the victim
  • At that time the wrist was considered part of the hand in common usage
• Jesus was then lifted to the upright portion of the cross where his ankles were nailed to the cross again through the major nerve leading to the feet
• At this point his arms would have been stretched an additional 6 inches and both shoulders dislocated
• While on the cross Jesus’ back, still ripped open would be scraping across the rough wood of the cross
• Then began the slow process of asphyxiation as the position of the body on the cross made breathing impossible except by pushing up on the nails in the feet to release the tension on the lungs and allow breathing again.
• All the while the exposed back is tearing across the wood of the cross
• To add to the insult of this act was that individuals were stripped naked and often times lost control of their bodily functions resulting in urine, feces, blood and sweat pooling at the base of the cross
• Eventually the combination of all these factors led to exhaustion and an inability to lift up and breath.
• At this point the victim would die.
  • those that did not die in the necessary timeframe would have their legs broken to quicken asphyxiation as the person could no longer lift themselves up.
  • This is why we read in the bible of the Roman executioner nearly breaking Jesus’ legs but realizing he is already dead.
• The spear to the heart would have released pericardial effusion around the heart and pleural effusion around the lungs giving the appearance of water when punctured by the spear
  • These would have been caused by the hypovolemic shock and resulting cardiac failure
  • This would have only occurred after the death of the victim

The bottom line is Jesus died a horrible, gruesome death at the hands of experienced executioners. But the ending of the story is that 3 days later He was no longer lying in that tomb!
Additional reading :

“Vintage Jesus” Mark Driscoll, & Gerry Breshears 2008

“The Case for Christ” Lee Strobel 1998

“On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ” JAMA, Vol. 255, Number 11, March 21, 1986 Edwards, et al

“The Science of the Crucifixion” http://www.apu.edu/infocus/2002/03/crucifixion/

Vol. 255 No. 11, March 21, 1986

UPDATE: Sermon notes from this weekend

I said yesterday during our Easter service at Ephesus that I would be putting up additional notes on this blog on physical ramifications of death by cross, substitutionary atonement and 1 Corinthians 15. I’m hoping to have those up by Wednesday or Thursday. I’m taking a little break today and spending some time resting with my family. But I will be good to my word and have those notes up! Our launch service yesterday was incredible! Lots of prayer and an amazing team came together to set Ephesus up for amazing things. God is moving in Charlotte and I’m excited to be a part of a church he’s using in this city! See you in a few days…