community

What, No Candlestick???(Is Traveling 100 miles Sunday AM for Worship Normal Church Life??)In the Book of Revelation the Church at Ephesus is spoken of as having lost its first love and in so doing has come to the verge of losing its “candlestick” (2:5). The “candlestick” is earlier (1:20) described as symbolizing the church itself. It is as if Jesus is saying that the Church at Ephesus then constituted could lose its status as the legitimate church of that city. All because of a loss of “first love”.This seems rather severe. Would any of our “churches” today qualify as real churches by such a standard? Since Jesus is meant to be the head of each local church (Rev. 2:1 etc.) it would be troubling to think that the head of the “church” one belongs to does not even consider it to be legitimate. The question of church legitimacy is urgent and relevant to our day as well. We have people who are church members (of a kind) in a drive in/drive out form of Christianity today. Church “attendance” and church audience participation with singing and preaching one or two hours per week is considered the norm. “Love” is directed primarily straight up to heaven during a good song service and not really to the “one another” or the “brethren” in the New Testament sense. Do these “churches” really have their candlesticks? One could be a “member” of four or five of these modern “churches” today if one arranged one’s schedule to fit a prescribed “attendance” schedule. It seems that the first love of the candlestick bearing Ephesus church was more engrossing that the “churches” of today but yet it was Ephesus that was on the verge of losing its “candlestick”.What was Ephesus like at the time of its ‘first love’, one might ask? Are we anything like that?First of all it appears that Ephesian Christians, though capable of some travel, only lived “a Sabbath day’s journey” (@1 mile) from each other. Like Hasidic Jews today they would walk to meet each other on Sabbath days. Even Luke, a gentile, writing after the Ephesus church was established seemed to acknowledge that Gentile Christians like him continued to measure distances from the brotherhood in this way (Acts 1:12) Church communities were physically close. Emotionally and spiritually they were close also. Take Ephesus as an example—their “first love” period included these kinds of things: Paul, Priscilla and Aquilla practice their business of tent making there for a while and enter the synagogue (Acts 18), Paul comes back and teaches them every day for two years (Acts 19), the work spreads and there is even a riot over the loss of idol sales, Paul leaves and and on his way back near there calls the elders to see him in a neighboring town and he instructs them on working hard to give to the weak and then they embrace and kiss him after they hear they will not see him again (Acts 20). The first love was intense and very practical. It is easy to see why this church had the approval of Christ. Whether we as a body hold a candlestick is an open question but we can observe how to come closer to pleasing the Lord. One fundamental way to be more like the earlier “first love” Ephesus period is to love one another in a practical way. Owning businesses together, living close to one another so that we can teach each other daily and weeping and laughing with one another over the vicissitudes of life were part of that first love period. Why should they not be ours? The present phenomenon of driving 45 minutes to the “best” platform based performance at 11:am Sunday does not seem to jive with the candlestick holding church of Ephesus.