Pastors and other local-church leaders have access to lots of expert opinion about what the church should look like: missional, traditional, house church, mega church, New Testament church, et. al. The conversation starts to sound like 1 Corinthians 1:12, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”

Our friend Robert Osburn, executive director of Wilberforce Academy, has some needed perspective for this discussion. How about the church as “a model to the nation”? He says the church should be showing governments—local, state, or national—what community and service and leadership are supposed to look like!

In his post,  The Church as Model Nation, Robert restates a theme which we hold dear here at Darrow Miller and Friends. (In fact, he quotes Darrow’s long-time friend and fellow co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance, Bob Moffit.) Here’s a stunning paragraph as a sample:

The way God shows He has a much better grasp on reality than Oxford’s dons and Harvard’s robed gods is to craft a Body (Ephesians 3:6) whose Head bled to death so that He could end the hostility between ethnicities that are now reconciled by His blood (Ephesians 2:14).  God’s wisdom is not only multi-faceted (“manifold”), but He intends to make that wisdom known to those who are both spiritual and earthly leaders and authorities. (Please understand that the phrase “in the heavenly realms,” in this passage and Ephesians 1:21, was likely a metaphor for powerful authorities who reigned imperially over their subjects, though it probably also has secondary reference to the spiritual powers that animate much leadership in our world.)  Those with imperial authority desperately need a wisdom greater than theirs that is on full exhibition through the church that is envisioned as a model nation.  As such, the church has replaced Israel’s previous role as a model nation (Isaiah 60:1-3).

We highly recommend Bob’s post to our readers. Go here for the full article.

• Gary Brumbelow

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