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Christian Living

What is Church?

The Church of Jesus Needs to Focus on Three Things and Master Them All

In our normal usage, church is a building, a place we go to—often on Sunday mornings. I’ll be there later today. Other definitions for church include a religious service, organized religion, and professional clergy.

Yet a more correct understanding is that we are church, both individually and collectively. We, the church, are an organic body, not an institution, religious service, or profession. If we are the church, we can’t go there; we take church with us everywhere we go—or at least we should.

As the people who comprise the church of Jesus—his followers—I see three things we ought to be about, three things that warrant our focus:

Worship

Life isn’t about us; it’s all about him. Or at least it should be. As individuals and as a group we should worship him, our reason for being. Though God doesn’t need our praise and adoration, we should need to give it to him. We worship God by thanking him for who he is and what he does.

We worship him by praising him for his omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent greatness. This can happen in word, in attitude, in action—and in song.

Singing to God about him is a common form of worship. Yet at too many church services this musical expression of faith has turned into a concert. While this is not necessarily bad if the concert connects us with God, it is bad if all it seeks to do is entertain us.

By the way, when we say we don’t like the music at church, we’ve just turned the focus away from God and back to us, to our desire for entertainment over worship.

Beyond this we can also worship God in silence and through solitude, two pursuits that most people in our culture fail to comprehend. In fact, in our always on, always connected existence, even a few seconds of silence makes most people squirm, whereas solitude drives them crazy.

Yet we can worship God in both.

In addition we also worship God by getting along with other believers and serving those outside our group.

Community

The church as a group of people should major on community, on getting along and experiencing life together. Community should happen during our Sunday gatherings, as well as before and after, just hanging out.

Community is following all of the Bible’s one another commands, which teach us how to get along in a God-honoring way.

At some church services people scurry in at the exact starting time (or a few minutes late) and flee with intention at the final “amen.” They miss the community part of church; they miss a key reason for going. Remember, it’s not about us.

If we don’t like spending time with the people we see for an hour each Sunday morning, then something’s wrong: not with them, but with us. So, before we point fingers at others, we need to realize that the problem of why we shun spiritual community lies within.

Help Others

Worship is about God, and community is about our fellow believers. What about others? If we only focus on God and our local faith gathering, we stop too soon and fail to function as the church Jesus intended.

Jesus served others, so should we. And we shouldn’t serve with any motives other than the pure intent to show them the love of Jesus. Loving others through our actions may be the most powerful witness we can offer.

History is full of examples where this indeed happened, when the world saw Jesus through the tangible love of his followers.

A church body that looks only to God and at each other is selfish. A church that only gazes heavenward or internally is a church that is dying. We need to let our light shine so that the world can see (Matthew 5:14-16 and Luke 11:33).

The world watches us; they hope we’ll come through; they want to see Jesus in us.

That’s what church is. We worship and we build community so we can love others in his name.

Read more about this in Peter’s thought-provoking book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, 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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Bear Fruit

We Must Consider What Our Life Produces

The word fruit appears nearly two hundred times throughout Scripture. Coupling the word fruit with the word bear, as in bear fruit, bears fruit, and bearing fruit occurs twenty-nine times, split between the Old and New Testaments. Jesus often talks about the fruit that people bear, with the third of the Bible’s teaching on the subject coming from him.

Bear Fruit

Though people can’t produce physical, edible fruit, like a tree would, we do produce fruit in a figurative sense. It’s the output of our life, the results of what we do and don’t do.

In a spiritual sense we bear fruit when we tell others about Jesus, and they decide to follow him too.

In Jesus’s Parable of the Sower, he talks about a farmer scattering seed. The results vary depending on the conditions of where the seed falls, but the good seed produces a substantial yield of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what the farmer planted (Matthew 13:23). But this isn’t a story about farm output. It’s how we bear fruit. It’s a metaphor about growing God’s kingdom through saved lives—or not.

In this way, the fruit we produce through our daily actions and words reflect who we are as a person and the priorities of our lives. As we do this, we also impact those around us. This can be for good, or it can be for bad.

Bear Good Fruit

Though there may be rare exceptions, people want to produce good fruit. We desire to benefit others by the things we do and through the things we say. When we live a life that produces what is good, we draw people to ourselves and can point them to Jesus. They want to be around us because of the positive ripples our life produces. This is how we bear fruit, desirable fruit.

We do this by treating the people we meet with respect and kindness. These traits are lacking in today’s polarized, adversarial world. Society has lost sight of civility.

We can change this by being intentional in our interactions with others. This includes family, friends, and those we meet throughout our daily life.

We can also make a positive difference by the things we do. This includes helping others, especially when we don’t have to. It means going out of our way to demonstrate kindness, offer compassion, and assist those in need.

Bear Bad Fruit

Just as we can produce good through our lives, we can also produce bad. Jesus talks about this too. He urges us to produce good fruit and not bad. He adds that we’re known by the fruit we produce, that people don’t gather figs from thorns or grapes from briers (Luke 6:24).

Bear Holy Spirit Fruit

As followers of Jesus, we want to produce good fruit, spiritual fruit. Paul talks about the fruit we bear in our lives through the Holy Spirit. With God’s Spirit indwelling in us we will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). This may be the best way for us to bear fruit.

May we bear good fruit and have the fruit of the Spirit overflow from our lives. In doing so we will worship God and serve as a powerful witness to the world.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

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Visiting Churches

A Caring Community

Discussing Church 22

This church meets in a newer, contemporary building. It’s most inviting.

The 52 Churches Workbook, by Peter DeHaan

Consider these four discussion questions about Church #22:

1. Many people introduce themselves. Their genuine interest, without being pushy, refreshes me. They ask our names, which they repeat with care. When they share theirs, they pause, giving us time to hear and remember. 

How important are people’s names to you and your church?

2. The minister is losing his voice. After introducing the topic, he lets the congregation finish the message.

He invites them to share their stories of what others have done for them, how they showed love, and provided care. The congregation does this well. 

How well does your church do at sharing during a service? How can you do it better?

3. This congregation is a genuine community. They prove it in the quiet ways they help each other. “Caring for community is a witness,” says the pastor. 

What is your church’s witness? What is its reputation?

4. After the service, the pastor excuses himself. He fades away, perhaps because he doesn’t feel well, but more likely because he doesn’t need to be there. The congregation envelops us into their community. 

How well can your church function without your minister being present?

[See the prior set of questions, the next set, or start at the beginning.]

Get your copy of 52 Churches and The 52 Churches Workbook 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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Visiting Churches

Experiencing True Community (Visiting Church #22)

We arrive at the church to a bustle of activity. Only a few people are sitting; most mill about, socializing. Many make a point of introducing themselves, genuinely interested in meeting us.

Names are important to them. They repeat ours, deliberate and intentional.

When they share theirs, they pause, allowing time for us to truly hear.

52 Churches: A Yearlong Journey Encountering God, His Church, and Our Common Faith

The minister’s losing his voice and almost had to find a replacement; I’m glad he didn’t. Today’s message is on loving the world. He establishes the foundation for this.

Then, to save his voice, he invites the congregation to complete the sermon by sharing examples of what others have done for them by showing love and providing care.

What each person relates is appropriate and relevant, heartfelt and often poignant, sometimes with halting voices and occasionally, tears. Acts of kindness, often done in obscurity are now proclaimed.

They do this with sincere humility, lacking self-aggrandizement or calling undo attention to the person mentioned.

This congregation is a true community. They prove it in the quiet ways they help one another. Caring for each other is their witness.

The engaging community, present before the service and confirmed during it, continues afterwards. The pastor chats with us briefly and then excuses himself. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t feel well, but more likely because he doesn’t need to be present.

The congregation envelops us into their community.

[Read about Church #21 and Church #23, start at the beginning of our journey, or learn more about Church #22.]

My wife and I visited a different Christian Church every Sunday for a year. This is our story. Get your copy of 52 Churches today, available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Pharisees and Sadducees Represent Division

Disunity Today Hurts the Cause of Jesus

In our consideration of words that appear only in the New Testament, we come across Pharisees and Sadducees. Two related words are Zealot and Nazarene, along with Essene.

Pharisees

Appearing ninety-nine times in the New Testament, the Pharisees receive the most attention. They were a righteous group of Jews, noted for their meticulous following of the Law of Moses.

But they added to the 613 laws recorded in the opening books of the Bible.

Attempting to clarify what the rules meant and didn’t mean, they added their own understanding to guide them into best practice. This resulted in more than 20,000 additional rules for them to follow, which aren’t in the Bible.

But in their scrupulous attention to detail, they missed the point behind the law. That’s why Jesus often called them hypocrites and reserved his most critical words for them.

Sadducees

Another segment of Judaism during Jesus’s life were the Sadducees. The New Testament mentions them fifteen times. But, instead of adding to the Bible, they dismissed much of it.

As a result, they didn’t believe in the resurrection from the dead, among other things.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were the two major groups of Judaism that Jesus talked about. However, there are three more considerations.

Zealot

The label of Zealot occurs four times in the New Testament. It always refers to Simon the Zealot, one of Jesus’s disciples. This identifier distinguishes him from Simon Peter.

The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the Zealots, but history does.

Though they existed in Jesus’s time, they escape his mention. They opposed the Romans politically and advocated its overthrow. And Jesus had one of its members as a disciple.

Essenes

Though not found in the Bible, we learn about the Essenes through history.

As another sect of Judaism, though not as numerous as the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essenes lived a communal lifestyle, noted for poverty, piety, and celibacy (of its priests).

Notably, we can thank the Essenes for the Dead Sea scrolls.

Nazarene

Though Jesus was born in Bethlehem, his parents moved to Nazareth shortly thereafter and raised in there.

Three times the gospel writers refer to Jesus as a Nazarene. And once Paul’s detractors called him the ringleader of the Nazarene sect (Acts 24:5).

This implies that for a time some people viewed Jesus’s followers as a part of Judaism, though that didn’t last long.

Unity Versus Disunity

None of these five labels, especially Pharisees and Sadducees, appear in the Old Testament.

This suggests the Old Testament Jews had a degree of unity not found in the New Testament and that division didn’t occur until after the Old Testament narrative wrapped up.

Today we see the same scenario. We’ve divided the body of Christ into different streams of Christianity—and among the Protestant branch—into 42,000 denominations. That’s a lot of division and disunity.

But Jesus prayed for unity, that we would be one. And that as one, our witness would be stronger (John 17:21). We have a long way to go to realize the unity Jesus prayed for and achieve the witness he wanted.

What can we do to promote unity within 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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Christian Living

What is Our Christian Witness?

Our Actions and Our Words Determine Our Reputation

In the post “They’ll know we are Christians by our love” we talked about the importance of our Christian witness. This is best accomplished by our love and our unity.

Unfortunately, the world rarely sees our love and unity. Instead we model hate and disagreement. That’s what the world sees and often what they think of when they hear the word Christian. As a result, we tarnish our witness for Jesus.

Instead we focus on our theology, our politics, and our opposition to what we deem as evil. And in our inability to get along, we segregate ourselves into divisive denominations.

But these items are not the foundation of our Christian witness.

To our discredit these are the foundation of our undoing as Christians, losing sight of what it means to follow Jesus and be his disciple.

Is Our Theology Our Witness?

In the last several hundred years, Christians have debated, argued, and even fought over theology. Yes, in the name of pursuing a right theology, we have even killed one another. And toward what end?

The result of pursuing a right theology has fractured the church of Jesus, resulting in 42,000 denominations, which is a powerful confirmation of our inability to get along.

Our Christian theology is an ineffective witness to the world in search of answers.

Is Our Politics Our Witness?

Another area where Christianity emerges is in the political arena.

We support candidates who we believe hold to a Christian worldview, espousing a biblically ethical mindset. And we oppose the other candidate, who we view as the antithesis to all that is right and godly.

Yet Christians end up sitting on opposite sides of the political table: some champion one candidate, while others support the opponent.

We’re missing the point. Arguing about politics will never point people to Jesus.

Is Our Opposition Our Witness?

Much of Christianity, especially the evangelicals and fundamentalists, take stands to oppose what they feel is wrong in the world. Two areas emerged in recent decades: opposing homosexuality and opposing abortion.

To make the point, well-meaning, but misguided, Christians loudly take a stand, spewing invective to anyone who listens. We come across as hate filled bigots and not the loving followers of Jesus that he desires.

Instead of talking about what we’re against, we should talk about Jesus, his love, and his power to save and to heal.

Is Our Denomination Our Witness?

As Christians argued and fought, we’ve divided ourselves over a minutia of details, most irrelevant and others perhaps with a bit of substance, but little that amounts to a faith-jeopardizing heresy.

What’s our reaction to this? Instead of promoting Christian unity and trying to get along, we turn our backs to one another, stomp off in anger, and make a new denomination.

As a result, we produced 42,000 examples that tell the world Christians can’t get along with each other. Our denominations stand as a powerful witness, not to Jesus, but to our selfish disunity.

Our Love and Unity is Our Christian Witness

Let’s sweep aside our theology—yes, I did say that—and our politics and our opposition and our denominations. When it comes to Jesus and his kingdom, these things don’t matter.

What matters most is that we love one another and work to get along. Our love and our unity form our best Christian witness.

Everything else just gets in the way and tarnishes the name of Jesus.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

​Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.

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Christian Living

We Must Be Faithful and Fruitful

God Calls Us to a Faith That Produces Fruit

Two reoccurring themes in the Bible are the ideas of being faithful and being fruitful. We are to be faithful and fruitful.

The word faithful occurs over two hundred times in the Bible and shows up in most of its books (41).

The word fruitful occurs thirty-one times in eleven books, spanning both the old and new Testaments. (The word fruit—which can mean something to eat or the results of our actions—is as common in the Bible as the word faithful.)

Furthermore, the command to “be faithful” appears in eight verses, as does the command to “be fruitful.” It seems that God wants us to be both faithful and fruitful.

Be Faithful

Jesus talks about being faithful and his parables support this. Don’t we all want to hear him say, “Well done good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23)?

In the New Testament, the word faithful occurs most in the book of Revelation, both in some of the letters to the seven churches and in John’s vision where he commends God’s faithful witnesses.

In the Old Testament, the book of Psalms tops all others with seventy-one mentions of the word faithful.

Though some verses address God’s faithfulness to us, others talk about our faithfulness to him: a faithful servant, faithful people, faithful ones, and faithful to him and his covenant (that is, his commands, Psalm 78:36-37).

Be Fruitful

We should note that the instruction to be fruitful in the Bible always relates to biological reproduction and the growth of a population.

However, it isn’t a stretch to apply this metaphorically to other actions that produce spiritual growth, that is, spiritual fruit.

Consider the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Paul implicitly tells us to pursue these characteristics.

Be Faithful and Fruitful

Too often I’ve heard people who—after working hard to serve God but achieving little—shrug and say, “Well, at least I was faithful.” Yes, they were faithful, but they also failed.

God doesn’t want us merely to be faithful, he wants us to produce fruit in the process.

He wants us to be faithful and fruitful. Working hard and failing, is simply failing. Working hard and producing fruit is what God desires.

James writes that faith without deeds (which we can call fruit) is dead (James 2:26). As we pursue God and seek to serve him, we must be fruitful and faithful.

God expects nothing less.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

​Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.

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Christian Living

What is Post-Denominational?

Dividing the Church by Forming Denominations Isn’t Biblical, and It’s Time to Move Past It

Jesus prayed for our unity, that we would be one—just as he and his father are one. He yearned that his followers would get along and live in harmony.

Dividing into religious sects wasn’t his plan. Yet that’s exactly what we’ve done as we formed 42,000 Protestant denominations.

Instead of focusing on our similarities, our common faith in Jesus, these denominations choose to make a big deal over the few things they disagree about.

They should get along, but instead they develop their own narrow theology, which they use as a litmus test to see who they’ll accept and who they’ll reject.

How this must grieve Jesus.

While there has been some disagreement among the followers of Jesus almost from the beginning, the divisions started proliferating 500 years ago with the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

And since that time, it’s escalated out of control, with a reported 42,000 denominations today.

This represents the most significant degree of Christian disunity ever. The push for denominational division traces its beginning to the modern era.

While the modern era assumed that reason would allow us to converge on a singular understanding of truth, the opposite occurred. Instead, the pursuit of logic resulted in wide-scale disagreement.

This is perhaps most manifest among the followers of Jesus, who love to argue over their individual understandings of theology.

Yet there’s a sense we’re moving away from denominations and the divisions they cause. The word to describe this is post-denominational.

Just as we are moving from the modern era to the postmodern era, we are also moving from a time of denominational division to a time of post-denomination harmony.

In understanding postmodern, we don’t consider it as anti-modern but instead “beyond modern.” The same distinction rightly applies to post-denominational.

Post-denominational is not anti-denomination, as much as it is “beyond denominations.”

So, what is post-denominational? Post-denominational moves beyond the Protestant divisions that proliferated in the last 500 years, during the modern era.

Post-denominational sets aside the man-made religious sects that divide the church of Jesus. In its place, post-denominational advocates a basic theology to form agreement and foster harmony.

This allows the followers of Jesus to live together in unity, which will amplify their impact on the world around them. The people who follow Jesus are beginning to realize this. Many new churches label themselves as non-denominational.

This reflects a general mistrust among today’s people for the brand-name Protestantism of yesteryear, that is, denominations.

They’re weary of the criticism, the finger-pointing, and the disunity that denominations have caused. That’s why the label of non-denominational is so attractive to many people.

This includes those who go to church, those who dropped out, and those who have never been. They don’t want to align themselves with a denomination anymore.

They want a spiritual experience in a loving Christian community, one without denominational division.

For the sake of Jesus and our witness of him to our world, can we set our denominations aside and agree to work together to move forward in unity?

It’s a lot to ask, and it seems humanly impossible. But Jesus already prayed for our success (see John 17:20-26.)

May this generation be the answer to his prayer. May we be one.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

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Bible Insights

5 Things Jesus’s Disciples Did

We are to go out and preach repentance under the power of the Holy Spirit

After Jesus calls his disciples, he trains them and then sends them into the world. He gives them five simple instructions:

Go Out

To be effective Jesus’s disciples can’t hang out with each other. They need to go out into the world around them.

Preach Repentance

A basic understanding of preach is to tell or to encourage. A simple definition of repent is to turn yourself around, to make a U-turn.

When Jesus tells his disciples to preach repentance, he’s instructing them to encourage others to turn their lives around and head toward him.

Drive Out Demons

Jesus empowers his disciples to do miraculous works in his name. These wondrous signs certainly get people’s attention. Supernatural power not only helps people in need, but it also rightly directs our attention to God.

I think that’s the point.

Anoint the Sick

When Jesus tells his disciples to anoint the sick, he’s instructing them to bless those with health concerns and pray for them.

Heal People

Yes, Jesus wants us to heal those who are hurting. He gives us the power to do so, through the Holy Spirit. We need to walk in faith to make that happen.

The instructions Jesus gives his disciples, can also apply to us today. We are to go into our world and encourage people to pursue Jesus. As we do, we are to go in Holy Spirit power to perform signs, anoint people, and heal those in need.

While some people assume the supernatural power of signs and wonders ended with the disciples, I see no indication of that in the Bible. What Jesus gave to his disciples then, he gives to us today.

It’s up to us to accept his call and move into it. And when we do, our witness will be magnified, and Jesus will be exalted.

[Read through the Bible this year. Today’s reading is Mark 5-7, and today’s post is on Mark 6:12-13.]

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

​Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.

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Christian Living

What’s the One Thing That Matters Most?

The List of Faith Essentials Is Short, a List of Only One Item

Two thousand years ago the religious leaders, called Pharisees, heap a bunch of manmade requirements on the backs of the people so they can be right with God.

Some scholars place the number at over 22,000 regulations, far more than the 613 items the Law of Moses contains, which far exceeds God’s top ten instructions (aka The Ten Commandments).

While today’s religious leaders have numerically fewer requirements for their followers, they, too, heap a pile of expectations upon us: of things we shouldn’t do and things we should, of hoops to jump through to be accepted into their group (their church).

They spout requirements for us to meet, a checklist of tasks to complete—or behaviors to avoid.

We need to agree to their specific theological mindset, and if we question just one item they hold sacrosanct, we’re booted as a miscreant, likely on our way to hell.

Branded as a heretic, we’re banished from their community.

They call their requirements, the essentials. These so called faith essentials sometimes carry a prooftext, but more so than not they are no more than traditions, conventions, and preferred practices, with an elevated status for us to adhere to.

Some enlightened pastors advise to hold a short list of essentials. They have the right idea.

Jesus has this in mind when he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). The essentials of Jesus are simple. He creates no undue burden for us, much unlike the Pharisees of his day—or the Pharisees of our day.

But how short should this list of essentials be? Ten items, perhaps five or six? Can we boil it down to three?

How about one?

Yes, there is one faith essential. Jesus says so.

What is this one thing that matters most? It’s Jesus.

At the house of Martha and Mary, Martha is worried about many things (in a practical sense, her list of essentials), while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him. She focuses on one thing, and Jesus affirms her for that (Luke 10:39-42).

This one thing isn’t baptism. It’s not saying a certain prayer or joining a church. It’s not witnessing or tithing. It’s not going to church on Sunday or taking communion.

It’s not reading a certain version of the Bible or being filled with the Holy Spirit. And it’s not going through a class or completing a spiritual rite of passage.

It’s Jesus.

Jesus is the one thing, the one faith essential.

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.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

​Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.