Institutional Christianity: Our Response

Institutional Christianity: Our Response

By Daniel Juster

Institutional Christianity includes all the streams of Christianity that are organized into associations of congregations, ministries, leaders and missions organizations. It includes everything form the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, to Protestant denominations and those more recent associations called apostolic streams. It includes missions agencies which also are institutions, and missions movements like YWAM, or Youth with a Mission. Even independent congregations that are in no association are institutions with a defined order of government, services, and leadership. In a sense, there really is no Christianity without institutions and that is true of Messianic Judaism as well.

Yet it is popular today to say that one is a Yeshua believer but does not believe in institutional religion, Christianity or Messianic Judaism. It is also popular in some Messianic Jewish circles (thankfully, we think the minority) to bash Institutional Christianity and to teach in a way that delegitimizes and denigrates institutional Christianity. This approach places the teacher in a position of superiority as one beyond the errors and failings of Institutional Christianity. “Follow me since I am free of all these errors.” One can find plenty to criticize in Church History. After such criticism, one can then present the true Jewish interpretation of the Scriptures that is totally apart form the teaching of Institutional Christianity, while still affirming that there are true believers in the institutions. Yet, such individualism in regard to the true believes does not recognize that we are all part of corporate bodies and are not merely believes as separated individuals. As part of such presentations, some also show disrespect for the creeds, confessions of faith and the governmental structures of Institutional Christianity. Some who do this present aberrant teaching that is not in accord with the Bible, such as the “One Law” doctrine that teaches that all Christians are responsible to keep the whole Law of Moses (that can be kept without a Temple). Others teach this “One Law” doctrine with the assertion that true believers in Yeshua are the lost tribes of Israel. It is interesting that such people have formed institutions or organizations. However, some who teach against Institutional Christianity are for the most part submitted to true Biblical teaching, though we believe that this approach to Christianity is divisive and can lead to sectarianism and further division.

As Messianic Jews that identify with apostolic and prophetic restoration, our identification with the Church (the Ecclesia) is mostly with the churches that developed out of the Protestant Reformation. We believe that the Reformation began a process of return to a more accurate understanding and application of the Bible. So we find fellowship not only with individuals but desire and are open to corporate relationships with all institutional bodies that are founded on the historical Reformation standards that defined true biblical faith, such as justification by faith, being born again, and the full authority of the Bible as our final authority for faith and practice. The Reformation eventually had a very positive effect on purifying and bringing positive change to the Roman Catholic Church. However, sadly from the perspective of the first Reformers, Protestantism fragmented into multiple institutions, some due to conscience. They were committed to practice truths that were not permitted in their former institutions. Sometimes they people separated for very unnecessary reasons. So today there are Baptists of many associations, Methodists, Anabaptists, Pentecostals (many different associations), holiness denominations, Christian Missionary Alliance, Free Church Associations and we can go on and on. Some say there are thousands, but most today world wide are connected in some way to Pentecostal and new apostolic streams. We are sad for the unnecessary fragmentation since the Reformation, but do want to acknowledge all that has come form Institutional Christianity.

First without Institutional Christianity there would not be two billion people in the world who profess Christianity and one billion who are broadly Protestant Evangelical. Without Institutional Christianity, there would be no New Covenant Scriptures since the manuscripts were copied and preserved by the efforts of Institutional Christianity. There would not be vernacular translations, since these were spurred and supported by the Institutions of Christianity. There would not be a visible Church that is expressed in visible congregations and associations. The progress of the Kingdom of God in planting congregations, winning the lost, establishing hospitals that have cared for the needy, orphanages, and movements that fostered biblically rooted social justice like the elimination of slavery in England, simply would not have taken place. Actually, remove Institutional Christianity and you mostly remove Christianity. As one senior Messianic Jewish leader of 40 years in the United States said, without the institutional churches, the world would have been a much darker place. We have to remember that institutions of all kinds are led by human beings who are still sinners. Great leaders in and from institutions have fostered most of the spread of the Gospel and the gains that have been made. However, great sin from those in the institutions has also fostered pain and evil. There has been glory and shame, as we would expect under human leadership!

Institutional Christianity has also provided us with creeds, confessions of faith and models of government. Some say that they reject creeds and confessions of faith. They say that they simply accept what the Bible says. Hence they have a one article confession of faith, the Bible is true. However their approach in finding truth in the Bible came from the Reformation and was fostered by its institutions! When one studies history, it is very clear that this is wrong headed and simplistic. Multiple cults and heretical groups claim to believe the Bible as their authority. Creeds and confessions wonderfully sift out those who are rejecting foundational Biblical truths. They distill biblical faith foundations that the association or institution of congregations and ministries believe are crucially required affirmations to protect from dangerous error. Some statements were also partly a just response to heresy.

In addition, there are theological classics and devotional classics that are amazing and wonderful. These are from people connected to Institutional Christianity and would not have been written or preserved without Institutional Christianity. These are the writings of people who have reflected on the meaning of Yeshua and New Covenant realities and have formed the Christian traditions of understanding over many centuries.

Overall, our conviction is that the spread of Christianity through Institutional Christianity, especially for us the Evangelical and Pentecostal, has been a great gain for the world. However, though great blessing has come form Institutional Christianity, this not come without those Institutions also sinning, and sometimes grievously. However, as matter of fact, we saw off the limb on which our ministries depend if we seek to influence the Christian world to a more accurate understanding of the Bible with a more Jewish contextual approach if we reject Institutional Christianity. There would not be Churches and Christians to influence without institutional Christianity. Even congregations and movements that claim to be anti-institutional would not exist if they did come out institutions.

So how do we approach the institutions of Christianity. We recognize a law that great efforts of progress in the Gospel in the world require the coming together in associations. There has to be institutions. Therefore we are profoundly not anti-institutional. We also follow the command of Romans 13, “to give honour where honor is due. “ So in our seeking partnership with congregations, denominations, and streams, we want to first be educated about all the good, beautiful and true things that have come from their institutions. Honoring and humility first opens the door for relationship and mutual blessing. This includes honoring that in their creeds and confessions that provided a stable framework for their association and mission. While we do not accept everything in some of these faith confessions, we seek to be open and embrace that which is true in these confessions, and to have our own statements that reflect our agreement and our distinctions. We also learn form their governmental structures and seek to compare these structures from what we see in Scripture and early second century history. There is much wisdom in such structures. However, we will seek to apply this wisdom in our own institution in the way that that fits our convictions.

Though we do give such honor, we also are committed to be honest in love with regard to the failures of Christian Institutions. So this is where our relationship might lead to correction.

First of all, we are deeply grieved by the history of teaching in Institutional Christianity that was Anti-Semitic. The Roman Catholic Church has official repented of this teaching and now affirms the election of the Jewish people. Sadly this legacy of the Catholic Church was not overcome by the Reformation, but Luther and less so Calvin but Calvin as well, carried on the teaching of contempt for the Jewish people. The failure to understand God’s love for the Jewish people and their ongoing election has been the most grievous failure of the Institutional Churches. But this is not true of all institutions. Puritans to various degrees overcame these errors, as did Moravians, Methodists and Pentecostals. Yet even those who overcame the error of Anti-Semitism and declared that the Jewish people were still elect of God, did not come to see that continued Jewish life in the New Covenant was ordained of God. We are thankful for Church Institutions today that do affirm the truth on these matters and we especially are thankful for the Four Square Churches, the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, and various other apostolic streams that have explicitly affirmed the truth. We seek the alignment of Church Institutions with Israel and the Messianic Jewish community. We are called to be one.

Secondly, due to historic Anti-Semitism, the many in institutional churches have not been diligent, in their seminaries, colleges, training schools and Bible colleges, in seeking the original Jewish context for interpreting the Bible. We still see such trends in some circles where the value of the Hebrew Bible is just not perceived, and where wrong hyper grace teachings are put forth (for correction see Michael Brown’s great book on hyper grace or Walter Kaiser on the Rediscovering the Unity of the Bible). This produces a wrong understanding of the New Covenant Scriptures. We are thankful for those prominent Christian teachers and scholars that are clear on these issues. We want to make it clear that we do not think Protestant Evangelical Christian traditions of worship and celebration are pagan, wrong, due to being on the wrong days (weekly Sunday celebration and annual celebration of the resurrection). Everything that celebrates Biblical events, teaching or more is good. We affirm all that is good. We are not teaching that the churches have to take on the Torah calendar pattern of life. However, Christian feasts are rooted in Jewish Biblical contexts. We believe it has been a mistake to not tie Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday to Passover and First Fruits through clear reference and teaching. Even the Feast of Pentecost is often disconnected to the Biblical feast of Succot. We do believe that teaching on the fall feasts and identifying with the Jewish people who celebrate them is important for the grounding of Christians.

Thirdly, we are concerned for the fragmentation of Protestant Evangelical-Pentecostal, Charismatic Christianity. We would urge all to look to the example of Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravians. He anticipated so much of what we want to see. He emphasized deep passion for Yeshua, the Unity of the Body of Believers and real effort to overcome fragmentation and come to what we call cooperative unity, world missions and love for and missions to the Jews. Yes, he even affirmed the continuation of Jewish life in Yeshua.

We believe in the last days that there will be mighty apostles and prophets that will call and lead the biblically true institutional churches into cooperative unity in every city and region and that this restoration will include alignment and deep unity with the Messianic Jewish community that is part of the One New Man with them. We are glad already to see such cooperative efforts in different parts of the world in such bodies as The World Pentecostal Fellowship and the World Evangelical Alliance. These two overlap.

The churches are corporately the children of the Jewish people. They were born out from the Jewish people from Pentecost (Sukkot) in Jerusalem. The first world missions were led by Messianic Jews. The Jewish people are the corporate parentage of the Church and hence the churches that historically developed. Yes, we seek repentance for what was and is wrong, forgiveness and reconciliation. But we also seek to do this with honoring an affirmation of every legitimate church body that teaches biblical truth and does the true works of God.

The Holocaust and the Gospel

Daniel Juster, Th. D., Restoration from Zion of Tikkun International

I have been involved in efforts for many years to see the Church come into alignment with the restored Messianic Jewish community. Our own ministry in Tikkun International has been deeply committed to this (see Asher Intrater’s new book Alignment). The Toward Jerusalem Council II project is very much given to this task, to see the Church in all its streams, officially commit itself and declare its stand of alignment and support for the restored Messianic Jewish community. We have traveled in Europe to site where regional and international Church councils declared both anti-Semitism and the rejection of the Messianic Jewish life in decrees from 307 A. D. in Alvira, Spain and then in several councils after. On our journeys Church leaders practiced prayerful repentance for these actions. We have included Church leaders who have repented for the Holocaust including at Aushwitz. One of the things I noted in trips to such places as Nuremburg, Germany, is the great spiritual desert where the worst crimes were committed. This is so common in Europe, there are so few who are followers of Yeshua. How can the Gospel ever flourish were there as been such sin without adequate repentance? From studying spiritual warfare, the evidence is clear to me that darkness rules where there is such sin, and it is intergenerational as taught in the Torah, “visiting the sins of the fathers to the children to the third and fourth generation.” Many will be lost due to these sins, for the descendants cannot respond to the gospel in significant numbers. The key to overcome and redeem such people is a group that can represent them, repent and pray for forgiveness. If we have a few from their ranks we can see a door opening for repentance and forgiveness.

In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal on January 20, there was a book review of Anatomy of a Genocide by Omer Bartov. Bartov’s mother immigrated to Israel in the mid 1930s from the twon of Buczacz in Ukraine. The family members who did not emigrate were murdered. This is not unique, and the usual horrible features of the Nazi genocide are repeated. We are so familiar with the terrible and oft repeated atrocities. However, this book adds a level of evil that is beyond the normal unspeakable horror. The evil is not that townspeople supported the Nazi’s in their quest of murder. Rather it is that those who seemed to be friends with the victims changed from friends to enemies and practiced relished sadism in a way that alarms us and shows the depravity of human beings. “Killers knew their victims personally, and most of the time such familiarity only added to the sadistic glee with which they slaughtered children or buried entire families in mass graves. Many of the perpetrators were known as decent folk before the killings began, not displaying any particular tendencies toward violence or ideologically fueled hatred. Afterward they were able to return to their normal lives without a trace of their capacities for cruelty or any indication of remorse or shame. The bloodshed left no stain.” Or did it?

Years ago I used to entertain the thought that very civilized people who seemed to behave with graciousness, could have a lurking root of evil within that could be tapped given the right circumstances. This real inner evil can only be removed through the cross and conversion on a deep level. This view seems even more correct given the story of this town. But then a second question looms. How can the descendants of these people in this town receive the Gospel. The hardness toward the Gospel often has roots in the depth of sin. It is a judgment of God that leads to Hell for many. So the key here is to have massive prayer for such a town and to find some who will respond and then to begin the repentance for that town. I think only then can we see the Gospel take root and make great gains. Yes, we do want to see all people saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, but such roots of sin will require much prayer for this to happen.

Launch of the Messianic Jewish Movement

Before 1970 there were attempts to produce a Jewish expression of faith in Yeshua, and we can be thankful for such attempts. There was Edward Brotsky, the Jewish Baptist in Toronto and later Philadelphia, and others. But it was shortly before 1970 that a Jewish Evangelist, Manny Brotman, anointed by the Spirt in Evangelism, and with great passion, was able in his preaching and witness to win many Jewish people to Yeshua and fostered the idea of Messianic Jewish congregations.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, the Chernoff family began to entertain such ideas. Marty Chernoff, who had been a Baptist missionary and had been “baptised in the Spirit” and saw a vision to build a congregation on the basis of the idea of “Messianic Judaism” as the key term. There was an outpouring of the Spirit on the young people, which they describe as waves and waves of the Spirit upon them. The was much Holy Spirit laughter. Then there was Joe Finklestein, in Philadelphia, a chemist, who attracted Jewish young people to his home, and the same power of the Spirit was experienced. They called his group “the fink zoo.” They and Herb Links, a Presbyterian Jewish leader, connectedl to what was happening in Cincinnati. They began to influence the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America, later renamed teh Messianic Jewish Alliance.

Unbeknownst to them, a two young Assemblies of God ministers, Ray Gannon and Phil Goble, experienced a mighty anointing of the Spirit in evangelism and saw scores of Jewish people come to know Yeshua. They planted Temple Beth Immanuel, and it soon had 150 people, very large in those days. (Today this congregation still exists and is known as Ahavat Tzioni). David Stern, who later became famous for his Jewish New Testament and Commentary, was its cantor. He was a professor of economics at U. C. L. A. and also later taught at Fuller Seminary.

I also came to know these people in the early 1970s. But in 1972 when I started, I was still running form a bad experience in the Charismatic world. (see my book Dynamics of Spiritual Deception on this). Though scholarship, I came to believe that Jews who are called to faith in Yeshua were called to identity and live as Jews. This was so very early, 1972-1974. Then Manny Brotman had his sharing seminars in Washington, D. C. (1973). Paul Liberman and Sid Roth began Beth Messiah Congregation. Shortly after, Manny became the first Rabbi. And by 1976 through spiritual healing ministry at Adat Ha Tikvah, the new name of my congregation in Chicago, I was pulled back to the charismatic orientation I later would become the leader of Beth Messiah Synagoguge near Washington, D. C. in January 1978. The following summer we would immerse 26 Jews in the name of Yeshua.

This is why the Chernoff family speaks about the Messianic Jewish Movement as the Jewish revival. It was a supernatural move of the Holy Spirit that tracked with the Jesus movement of those days.

Now as we debate the issues of the Jewish percentages on Messianic Jewish Diaspora congregations (not our problem here in Israel-we have different problems), we have to ask why there were no major questions about Jewish numbers or percentages in those days. We had a wonderful Jewish percentage and a wonderful minority of Gentiles who were called to the movement. The reason was that we were in the middle of a Holy Spirit power thing that was winning Jewish people left and right. That took care of the demographics.

Today we spend much time on theological debate and questions of authenticity. I have been involved in this and worked hard, even to writing several books on such issues. But in the beginning we did not have so much theology, and so much Rabbinic understanding or orientation, but there was power and effectiveness.

Acts 2 at Shavuot (Pentecost) is the template for the move of God among the Jewish people and Acts 13-15 applies the same Holy Spirit power to the mission to the Gentiles. So I am convinced that the problems of the Messianic Jewish movement in the Diaspora (and in Israel as well, but in different ways) will not be solved by getting the rules right for Jews and Gentiles. These things will not fall into proper order until we have a new outpouring of the Spirit for the successful reaching of our people. When thousands of our people come to Yeshua in our movement in the Diaspora and then thousands more in Israel, through a mighty outpouring of the Spirit, our perspective on all these things will be different. We will have the wonderful and massive challenge of disciple making.

The origins of a successful movement often tell us about the founding principles that must be recovered to see this success continue into the future in new generations. The Messianic Jewish Movement began as a mighty move of the Spirit, it was a fully charismatic movement, and nothing else will enable us to solve the problems we face today. I would advise that we spend much more energy praying and seeking God for such an outpouring than debating the issues. And everyone who knows me knows I am theologically oriented!! But this is my view after almost 45 years in this thing!!