Before 52 Churches, we visited a Messianic Jewish congregation: Jews who believe in Jesus as their Jewish savior, mixing Hebrew tradition with Christian faith. Recalling our time with this first Messianic Jewish congregation, I add another one to my list.
Consider these three discussion questions about Church 71.
1. Meeting Saturday evenings, the service at this first church involved time for worship and teaching. They concluded with a potluck, sharing food with a Jewish flair.
Besides a shared meal, how else can we foster spiritual community?
2. With some parts of the service in Hebrew, worshiping God in another tongue brought a freshness to me. Their unfamiliar traditions strangely energized me.
How can we keep our relationship with God fresh and invigorating?
3. Their worship space was in the basement of a Protestant church. This was ideal, since neither group used the facility at the same time.
In what creative ways can we find worship space for ourselves or provide it to others?
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Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Before 52 Churches, we visited a Messianic Jewish church: Jews who believe in Jesus as their Jewish savior, mixing Jewish tradition with Christian faith.
They met on Saturday nights. The service involved a time of worship and a time of teaching. They concluded with a shared meal.
Most of the service was in English, but a few parts of worship were in Hebrew. I mumbled the words the best I could, but I had no idea if my fellow worshipers pronounced their Hebrew words correctly or not.
Their hymnals were in both Hebrew and English. As I recall, page one was at the back. For their meal, shared potluck style, they provided food with a Jewish flair. I don’t know how authentic or Americanized these dishes were, but they were tasty.
The friendly people there embraced us. They welcomed us. We felt like family from the beginning.
Worshiping God in an unfamiliar way brought a freshness, an authenticity to our efforts. Their unfamiliar traditions occasionally confused me, but I also felt strangely invigorated by what we did.
They didn’t have their own building, but they did have their own worship space. It was in the basement of a Protestant church. This was ideal, since neither group used the facility at the same time.
There were two interesting things about this congregation. First, everyone there was Gentile. That is, they weren’t Jewish. It seems strange to me that a Messianic Jewish church wouldn’t have some Jewish people attending it.
When I asked about this, someone explained that sometimes a Jewish family did drive from another city to meet with them, but this didn’t occur every week.
The other interesting thing is most of the people present at this Saturday evening Messianic Jewish gathering also attend a Protestant service on Sunday morning. This perplexed me. This is, however, exactly what Candy and I did.
That was many years ago, but the experience stayed with me, and I want to encounter it again. When we embarked upon our 52 Churches journey, I desired to include this church and make a repeat visit. Unfortunately, they no longer met at the same place.
Instead their location rotated between the homes of their regular attendees. Revisiting them wasn’t going to work for 52 Churches. And though I would’ve liked to have returned later, we never got around to it.
There’s another Messianic Jewish congregation near where we live. It’s a thirty-five-minute drive, not close but not insurmountable either. I want to visit them and compare their practices with my recollection of the first Messianic Jewish congregation.
Get your copy ofMore Than 52 Churches today, available in e-book, paperback, and hardcover.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Doctor Luke records a curious line when writing about the early church. He says “…some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees…”
That means some Christians were also Pharisees, a Pharisee Christian. How strange. Isn’t that a contradiction?
Pharisees and the Sadducees
Judaism at the time was comprised of two main groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They had vastly different theologies about the same God and for that reason they didn’t get along too well, but they did manage to coexist within the same religious and societal context.
Most all of the original followers of Jesus (that is, early Christians) were Jewish. That implies some of them would have backgrounds as Pharisees and others, backgrounds as Sadducees. They maintained much of their culture as they grew in their new faith.
Christianity
While some of their practices needed to be re-examined, they could sustain other aspects. Clearly, some retained their identity as Pharisees.
For them, becoming a Christian occurred within the context of Judaism. It was not so much a conversion, but a transformation. In fact, there’s the implication that, for a time, some considered the early Christian movement, also called “The Way,” as another sect of Judaism.
What if the idea of a Pharisee Christian continued, comingling Jewish tradition with Jesus faith? For some it has and the results are Messianic congregations (Messianic Judaism). It’s certainly something to contemplate, connecting—or perhaps reconnecting—Judaism with Christianity.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
In Thursday’s post, Who Is a Christian Pharisee?, I talked about connecting—or reconnecting Christianity—with its Jewish roots—called Messianic Judaism. Although this thought may alarm some, there are ample justifications.
Old Testament Judaism foreshadowed and gave birth to Christianity, Jesus was a Jew, and almost all of his early followers where Jewish. It’s only through a deeper understanding of Jewish tradition that we can more fully grasp the history and meaning behind Christian faith.
However, what about religions without that historical connection? I’m not talking about melding two disparate religions together but instead of a Jesus faith existing within the context of a different world religion.
The January/February issue of Christianity Today addresses this extensively and from that I draw encouraging conclusions.
Hindus, for example, tend to accept those within their faith community who worship Jesus, even those who worship him only, providing they do so within the context of Hinduism. (See “The Hidden History of Insider Movements.”)
For Muslims, it’s a bit different, but another article addresses Muslin converts to Jesus who remain in their Muslim culture, albeit more covertly. (See “Worshiping Jesus in the Mosque.”)
These concepts may be hard to accept and some may reject them outright. However, I embrace them with excitement, simply because more people are finding Jesus in more contexts. Though these settings are far different from mine, they are no less viable.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
